There are many ways to generate value from a successful SD-WAN deployment, but how that value presents itself to IT leaders, Network Admins, and ultimately the application end-user, is where the ROI & adoption really start to accelerate.
ADVODA Technology Solutions consulted on vendor selection and project deployment for a client recently and that value manifested within mere days following activation.
With this project, the client’s primary objective was to improve resiliency, increase application performance, and provide valuable business insights to C-level leadership who rely more on technology than they ever have in their 100+ year old company history. To accomplish these three key goals, they were looking to migrate off an expensive & rigid MPLS network that was vendor locked, convert the sites to internet services, and insert an intelligence overlay to take care of the network automation.
A key item to note is that many client sites are located in rural areas, where obtaining two good broadband connections is a struggle.
After inserting the SD-WAN intelligence overlay into the network, the customer removed the legacy MPLS circuit and now runs on an active/active architecture, supported with DSL & Fixed Wireless internet connectivity. The SD-WAN service is performing the heavy lifting with auto-VPN to all sites and ensuring that the mission critical, homegrown, applications are being prioritized across over a dozen levels of QoS policy setting available.
Only three days into the new branch configuration, end-users started to complain about application performance causing disruption in productivity. The IT infrastructure team initially expected the culprit to be the local ISP and were ready for the SD-WAN analytics to confirm that gut feeling. After a quick login to the portal, it took only five clicks to drill into the site, find the utilization, identify the application, and ultimately uncover what was causing the performance issue, an affair of less than 60 seconds. From there, they had the workstation IP of the culprit and it took longer for the IT Manager to look up which user owned that workstation then it did for them to identify the cause.
If it wasn’t the ISP, then who?
Well, in this case, it was a single internet application that was being streamed by the site manager, on the background of their computer. Because policy setting was still being shaken out by the infrastructure team, they were able to verbally coach the culprit into correcting their behavior, in order to improve performance for all users at the branch and ensure the integrity of their office productivity.
Ultimately, SD-WAN is a solution and tool to maximize the performance of the network, applications and application sessions for businesses. In this particular use case the right SD-WAN solution for this business improves resource efficiency, accelerates time to resolution, gains a path to vendor accountability and demonstrates an overall advanced level of network visibility to significantly enhance the customer experience.
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Authors:
Jason Clairmont, Client Engagement Director, ADVODA Technology Solutions
Rick Corbett, President & COO, ADVODA Technology Solutions