What’s the key to a successful SD-WAN implementation? Like any large technology solution roll-out, getting SD-WAN right is all about upfront strategy and planning.
SDWAN Best Practices For A Successful Implementation –
Best Practice 1: Align on your what and why…
Plan strategically for your SD-WAN implementation. The basis for SD-WAN success lies in your ability to understand your organization’s needs today and anticipate what you might need going forward.
Ask yourself and your stakeholders:
* What business challenge is SD-WAN trying to solve?
* What opportunity are we trying to capitalize on?
* How is technology inhibiting us today?
By thinking strategically with a forward-looking perspective, you’ll avoid common pitfalls like focusing on how products work vs. what they enable.
Best Practice 2: Identify your who…
Once you’ve determined that SD-WAN is right for your business and aligned with your buying committee, you’ll need to determine who will design, procure, install and ultimately manage your solution—your team or a managed service provider.
In a managed deployment, the organization purchases the service from a service provider who works with the organization to design, install and operate the SD-WAN infrastructure, such as endpoints and dual uplinks, at each site. Additionally, day-to-day management and software provisioning is in IT’s hands via an SD-WAN controller. Two areas to evaluate when considering DIY vs. managed SD-WAN include your in-house expertise and your management and monitoring needs.
Best practice 3: Pinpoint your where and when
Once you’ve determined who will design, install and manage SD-WAN in the long run, you need a migration plan. Understanding exactly what you have in place now—as well as what you might need in six months, one year, three years—will help avoid hang-ups like project delays and budget overruns.
Other Considerations….
If you’re facing any of these common challenges, SD-WAN might be right for your organization:
* Increasing downtime/no resiliency: You’re facing outages that disrupt critical business operations and/or impact end-user experience.
* Apps reside in the cloud: You need to deliver fast and secure access to cloud environments—including to remote employees.
* Distributed workforce accessing network from outside controlled environment: Your employees are tapping into the network from their homes, branch offices, satellite sites or local coffee shops.
* High bandwidth/performance demands: Your teams need bandwidth-hungry apps like video conferencing and other collaboration tools to connect, innovate and engage.
* Network complexity: You’re managing multiple network solutions, vendors and resources, perhaps with interoperability and resource constraints.
* Limited visibility: You lack a holistic and deep view into and control over network activity: who’s doing what, on which applications, when.
* IT budget pressures: You’re facing declining or stagnating budgets but need to deliver more to your teams as the business evolves.
Cybersecurity….
Cybersecurity is the #1 concern for many business leaders today and SD-WAN, software-defined wide area networking, is one way to address that concern.
Watch this replay, SD-WAN Demystified: A 30-Minute Guide for Business Leaders, to learn more about this important topic.
You’ll discover how Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) can revolutionize your organization’s connectivity, enhance security, and streamline operations. From simplified management to cost savings, they unravel the complexities and empower you with the details needed to decide if SD-WAN is a good choice for your company.
For FREE help sourcing and designing a custom SDWAN approach to meet your enterprise network needs, whatever they may be, simpl at FreedomFirey as ask us at FreedomFire Communications