Enterprise Connect Panel Discusses SD-WAN Best PracticesEnterprise Connect Panel Discusses SD-WAN Best Practices

The idea of the software-defined WAN is trending, which means lots of hype and confusion to work through on the way to deployment.

Historically, the communications and networking industries have only had a loose association with each other. However, as more communications functions move to the cloud, the network, particularly the WAN, plays a more important role in how these applications perform.

This is one of the reasons why Vonage, one of the largest unified communications as a service (UCaaS) providers, has introduced a software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) service. The service, called SmartWAN, is intended to deliver enhanced quality of service to UCaaS customers.

However, as I pointed out in my Enterprise Connect SD-WAN session preview post, "Software-Defined WAN: Realit or Just More Hype," SD-WAN is a somewhat confusing topic. I tackled this topic on Tuesday, leading a discussion among panelists from Level 3 Communications, Talari Networks, VeloCloud, and Cisco with the aim of defining this nebulous topic and coming up with a few best practices for deployment.

Defining an SD-WAN isn't easy, but all panelists agreed on the following attributes:

During the panel we also discussed why customers should deploy an SD-WAN and, not surprisingly, every vendor agreed that an SD-WAN offered a big savings over traditional networks, such as MPLS. However, in my research, I've found no guarantee of a savings, particularly in a hybrid mode with MPLS. But I don't think cost should be the driving force anyways. As I commented during the panel, if all a business wants to do is to save money, then it should renegotiate the network contract.

The value proposition should be around having an agile network. A digital business needs a flexible IT foundation. The infrastructure will only be as agile as the least agile component, and that today is the network. SD-WANs can make the network agile.

To wrap up the panel, I asked each panelist to come up with one piece of advice for any company that's considering moving to an SD-WAN. Here are the responses:

In my previous post, I asked if SD-WANs are a reality or just more hype. Based on the feedback, it appears this technology is still largely hype but moving towards reality as the best practices get developed. Hopefully we'll address more of these topics at Enterprise Connect 2017.

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