With digital transformation accelerated throughout the pandemic, corporate networks underwent some of their most profound changes in years, as businesses rushed to get their workers connected to a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN).
As its name suggests, SD-WAN makes use of a software or virtual “overlay” to connect users across cities or countries by using any public or private network.
Its scalability, flexibility and centralised control were especially useful to keep businesses going during the early days of Covid-19 lockdowns.
Setting up an SD-WAN quickly allowed them to hook up their remote workers from home or other new locations without the lengthy and troublesome setup associated with traditional dedicated network links.
In 2020, only 16.8 per cent of Asia-Pacific enterprises had SD-WAN deployed but 58.8 per cent planned to deploy it within a year, while another 6.9 per cent wanted it in two years, according to research firm IDC.
Only 17.6 per cent of those in Asia-Pacific had no plans at all for an SD-WAN deployment, it was found.
Yet, as IT budgets now become more stable after the “emergency” expansion years earlier, some chief information officers (CIOs) may find their SD-WAN costs starting to rachet up and catching the eye of their finance counterparts.
An SD-WAN connection is excellent for businesses that have most of their apps on the cloud, because it can enable a fast connection directly over the Internet, without having to transit through an office network, as was the case in the past.
This works hand-in-hand with the rapid move to the cloud for many businesses, starting from everyday apps such as Microsoft Office to more complex ones like an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that manages payroll, invoicing and other operations.
With apps now run as Software-as-a-Service on the cloud, businesses found that the fastest and best user experience was often delivered by the best link that an SD-WAN connection could use.
However, what’s often underestimated are the costs involved in the transfer of data. While SD-WAN pricing has become more competitive as the technology matures, many businesses may not have factored in the flood of data from more users connecting remotely, thus pushing up costs.
Hybrid work, to be sure, is set to be a permanent fixture – despite complaints from prominent tech bosses – and the amount of data is only going to keep going up, as will costs.
This is not to mention higher cloud costs that businesses are already finding themselves being asked to bear, as they move more of their infrastructure onto the cloud.
Indeed, cost should not be a primary driver to move to SD-WAN, despite being a big factor previously, experts say.
Early shifts to an SD-WAN often resulted from a comparison of the costs of running an overlay over cheaper networks, say, a business fibre broadband link with a dedicated but costly multiprotocol label system (MPLS) connection of old.
So, by shifting some of the bandwidth needs to an SD-WAN-enabled link to the Net, where the cloud apps were running, businesses could save costs.
However, calculations could be complicated by a number of factors today, for example, the number of connects at each site and the number of sites converted to SD-WAN, according to John Burke, chief technology officer of consulting firm Nemertes Research.
By his estimates, organisations can only start saving with SD-WAN if they link up more than 20 sites. And even then, he contends, the amount saved is expected to be smaller and the payment may only come after more than a year for a large deployment.
Besides cost, the quality of a connection matters as well. Finding a telecom operator in each location to provide the best connectivity to overlay one’s SD-WAN solution onto isn’t an easy task.
And when things go wrong, as they usually do, finding the one person at the telco who can help get the network back up again could be tough if there are multiple parties involved.
As businesses look abroad again to expand their operations, one challenge is making sure their offices, factories and workers are well connected.
This is difficult without knowing the local market. SD-WAN may offer centralised control to a network team but the underlying network, whatever flavour it is using, needs to be robust and resilient. That’s not even mentioning the big performance indicator – app performance.
Businesses today want to have visibility over their connections and have analytics of how well their apps are performing on them, said Ben Elms, chief revenue officer of Expereo, which helps connect up businesses across the globe.
Global carriers have been consolidating back to a local or regional level, which means multinational businesses need to find a reliable partner that could put together the right connections across countries with a single point of contact, he noted.
To be sure, getting one’s SD-WAN set up right is important to success. Whether this is a over a simple business Internet link, a connection at the edge of a hyperscale cloud provider or even an overlay over existing MPLS links, the advantages of the new technology can only realised if it is optimally set up.
Each business may have its own priorities as well. For example, some mid-sized businesses may have a preference for continuing to run critical apps such as ERP on a private cloud.
A digital native startup, on the other hand, would most likely benefit from jumping on the fastest network that can offer an SD-WAN connection to its cloud apps.
Finally, let’s not forget security, either. While SD-WAN offers simpler management through a centralised console, it also involves multiple “boxes” or pieces of equipment to be set up at each connected office, factory or retail shop.
This means they need to be secured with the appropriate cyber defences to keep out intruders. Sounds a bit more complex than simply fencing up an office network, like before? For sure.
This is why many businesses end up trusting their suppliers as “co-pilots” to get their SD-WAN network up and running, sometimes starting from its very design to its everyday running.
Instead of building up their own team of networking, cybersecurity and cloud specialists, these businesses would tap on the expertise of third parties to manage the associated complexities of running an SD-WAN. This way, they also don’t have to worry about dealing with multiple telcos.
Businesses can still use a tablet to see how well their network and apps are doing but they won’t need to interface with multiple telcos across the world to do that, said Elms.
“Customers often want to do it themselves,” he noted. “And then after a while, they will quickly ask us to do it for them.”
