3 Major WAN Transformation Obstacles (And How to Overcome Them)
Digital innovation is no longer just aspirational; for today’s modern business, investing in smart innovation is a requirement to remain competitive and ensure growth. Yet, with any digital innovation comes ever-increasing traffic demands and associated connectivity costs. As such, savvy network and operations leaders are looking to replace their traditional WAN architectures with software-defined wide-area networks (SD-WAN) to support digital innovation, improve staff productivity, and create new business opportunities. The market for SD-WAN grew 30% last year, and it’s expected to increase another 30% this year.
SD-WAN is on the rise - yet, moving beyond a traditional WAN architecture does present some challenges. For example, SD-WAN adoption can lead to inadequate security and a high total cost of ownership (TCO) for your organisation. The best way to overcome these challenges is to understand them. In this post, we help you navigate the increasingly complex market of SD-WAN solutions to help you make the right choice for your organisation and your people.
Obstacle 1: Inadequate Security
SD-WAN adoption is accelerating, as is the number and range of available solutions for your organisation. However, not all SD-WAN solutions are created equal. With many solutions, advanced security does not come built in. Or, if it does, the security offerings are insufficient to appropriately protect your organisation from the latest and emerging threats. Further, not all solutions have been properly vetted by third-party experts, like NSS Labs.
Specifically, many offerings fail to address the entirety of Layer 3 through Layer 7 advanced security, lacking built-in intrusion prevention system (IPS) technology, web filtering, secure sockets layer (SSL)/transport layer security (TLS) inspection, and other protection types.
To solve for this, organisations (in both branch and remote office networks) need to pair dedicated security applications alongside their SD-WAN solution. At a bare minimum, this should involve an additional firewall at each location. Overcoming the security limitations of some SD-WAN solutions can, however, create complexity for your leaders, which can also increase TCO.
Obstacle 2: Performance Versus Security
The security capability of your SD-WAN solution is paramount. According to a Gartner survey, more than 70% of respondents listed security as their top concern when it comes to WAN. However, once you overcome the security obstacle, another challenge presents itself: your productivity.
For example, not every SD-WAN solution is able to identify and classify application traffic and apply routing policies at a granular level. The result is that certain applications cannot be prioritised over others. This one-size-fits-all traffic model can impede end-user productivity. For those SD-WAN solutions with adequate built-in security, some of the settings also have the potential to further degrade network performance.
Seek a solution that does not limit performance, even when SSL/TLS inspection capability is turned on. Keep a few questions in mind as you vet potential solutions: Is it application-aware and does it employ automated path intelligence for optimised routing and prioritisation of business-critical SaaS applications, VoIP calls, and video? Does the solution integrate with security elements across the enterprise for integrated and automated threat-intelligence sharing? It is possible to deliver robust security at no cost to productivity; you just need to identify the right vendor and solution!
Obstacle 3: TCO Remains High
The third challenge to WAN transformation is total cost of ownership. SD-WAN provides significant cost-savings over traditional WAN, yet still some leaders are surprised to find a much higher TCO than expected. Specifically, adding multiple appliances for different capabilities increases capital expenditures (CapEx) as well as the amount of staff time needed to manage it all (operational expenditures or OpEx). Often, network staff must manually monitor and compile log information for threat management, which is time-consuming and highly inefficient.
How to Overcome These Obstacles
Investing in SD-WAN is a smart if not necessary decision for your organisation. You may encounter obstacles along the way, but we hope this post helps you begin to plan and solve for these challenges. To maximise your investment, opt for a secure SD-WAN solution that tightly integrates networking and advanced security capabilities to avoid unnecessary complexity and costs.
Another tip: Consider opting for secure SD-WAN-as-a-Service in which the solution is fully managed by experts, like Optec. This will save significant internal time and resources (especially considering the current technology skills shortage) and ensure optimal performance and security, always.
At Optec, we’re pleased to partner with Fortinet to offer best-in-class solutions like Fortinet Secure SD-WAN. To learn more about these products, or to see if SD-WAN-as-a-Service is the right choice for your organisation, please get in touch with us today.
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