1. Choosing an SD-WAN partner shouldn’t mean giving up control
Replacing legacy infrastructure can bring countless roadblocks when attempted without the right support. With increasing pressure on IT departments to enable business outcomes in real-time, organizations often default to selecting an SD-WAN service provider who takes full control of the implementation and management of the project.
The result? Even while these clients may reap the benefits of reduced hardware-delivery expenditures, on a long-term basis these companies will face the frustrations of living with a ‘black box’ solution. In this scenario, there are few opportunities from which to learn and adapt your approach over time.
The good news is that there is an option that marries both control and support. Choosing a managed service solution provider can help ease you into the new era of your business, while preserving your ability to optimize your own operations.
2. SD-WAN is the start of a larger innovation conversation
When it comes to networking, one of the most common use cases we see for adopting SD-WAN in Canada is in the retail environment, where organizations often depend on MPLS to manage network traffic flow between their retail locations and remote workers.
These clients are seeing their bandwidth costs rise higher and higher as employees and customers have become increasingly connected. Add the challenge of spanning Canada’s large geography, and the need for a solution that better connects teams and sites across the country at a lower cost becomes clear.
The potential to dramatically reduce bandwidth and transport costs can motivate the adoption of SD-WAN—but there’s more to the story. Switching from legacy infrastructure should be treated as an opportunity for innovating the business. For a retailer, that could mean simplifying the onboarding of a new location or offering on-site online ordering for customers who can’t find what they came in for.
Bandwidth concerns have become more urgent during the COVID-19 pandemic, with more employees than ever connecting to their work networks from home. An SD-WAN solution can stabilize and increase bandwidth across an entire enterprise, enabling remote work activities and reducing friction during these trying times. SD-WAN can also be easily scaled to meet the ever-changing bandwidth needs of modern organizations.
3. Securing your network during the “new normal”
With large numbers of employees working from home, many enterprises are finding their network security unsuited for keeping networks secure across a high volume of remote connections. An SD-WAN cloud security solution can consistently deliver protection from external threats, even for users accessing the network from offsite. This reduces strain on your organization’s data center while providing peace of mind for remote employees.
4. C-suite buy-in is key to success
Success for an SD-WAN deployment can be measured for both IT and the wider business. It’s important to bring the leadership team into the conversation early, especially the CIO, to help them drive innovation from the top and ensure the value of the project is understood at the most senior levels within the business.
One of the top rationales for adopting a new technology that resonates with CIOs and line-of-business leaders is saving time and increasing productivity. When it comes to SD-WAN, VeloCloud SD-WAN as a Service enables organizations to shift their time investment to categories that are the most critical to the organization and the most difficult for the organization to achieve.
Expanding visibility into your network, driving innovation with greater agility, and gaining support from leadership are just three ingredients to a successful implementation of SD-WAN. Learn more about how OnX Canada and CBTS have partnered with VMware to offer the industry-leading VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud solution to clients.
To help you navigate your network in today’s uncertainty, discover more about business continuity by checking out resources posted on VMware’s Business Continuity Solutions page, or visit onx.com/coronavirus.
For further reading on ways to adapt your remote work strategies and cloud capabilities to the COVID-19 pandemic, check out these recent blogs: