The Larson Group

1. In your opinion, how has the SD-WAN landscape evolved over the years? What are some of the advantages of the current technological evolution?

Advantages of the technological revolution as it pertains to SDWAN is an organizations ability to source low cost providers in the areas where they operate and maintain the same level of control and security provided by traditional network providers. Depending on physical locations, traditional network providers have been slower to install and much more expensive due to factors where they may not be the LEC (Local Exchange Carrier). SD-WAN also allows organizations’ IT departments, typically pressed for resources, to scale and respond to a rapid business expansion. If organizations require traditional networks for compliance or other preferences, SD-WAN options are still viable as a low cost and “mobile” option to stand up sites quickly in an interim basis. If not primary, most definitely a viable “tool” for delivering fast, secure solutions for the business.

2. What according to you are some of the challenges plaguing SD-WAN and how can they be effectively mitigated?

I believe that the challenges facing SD-WAN have shifted from the traditional perceived challenge of “proof of concept” in the earlier days, to a broader challenge of choosing a hardware/software flavor that blends into the product lines of other areas of an enterprise technology stack. Today, most vendors handle network resiliency, traffic shaping, QOS (quality of service), and method of failover very nicely and it comes down to HOW an organization’s IT group chooses to configure their network flow. The options for local drain versus data center backhauled applications and other “net routes” are a factor and will be a matter of preference of the engineers in the room when a decision is made to select an SD-WAN vendor. The bigger challenge for IT leaders today will be how a vendor or hardware stack (or managed provider’s choice) will “fit” into all of the other infrastructure tools and chosen application suites. Not that any one vendor will every truly be able to deliver “one pane of glass” for IT, most WiFi Access Point, Route/Switch, Endpoint Security, and MTDR vendors all have a flavor of SD-WAN and usually a preferred partner that will play nice with the SD-WAN devices for a better view of end-to-end network traffic. Whichever SD-WAN solutions is chosen is basically the new combined firewall/routers of the late 80’s and 90’s and must “plug into” an organizations overall security and technology stack if the department is looking beyond just network connectivity. The SD-WAN devices must fit so that visibility options are available by other network applications and monitoring solutions.

Be sure to consider the organization’s full infrastructure and how your selected SD-WAN hardware and software will integrate with all network devices, security applications, and monitoring solutions

3. Which are a few technological trends influencing SD-WAN today? What are some of the best practices businesses should adopt today to steer ahead of competitors?

Trends influencing SD-WAN is a convergence of network connectivity and bandwidth teams and the Security Events and Risk Management Team. Most security applications and their ability to integrate with an SD-WAN provider for analytics, flow monitoring, and maintain flexibility in API’s or real-time access is becoming more and more important.

4. Do you have any advice for industry veterans or budding entrepreneurs from the SD-WAN space?

Be sure to consider the organization’s full infrastructure and how your selected SD-WAN hardware and software will integrate with all network devices, security applications, and monitoring solutions. In the argument for a scalable, layered approach to security that must be considered and is just as important as the operational effectiveness of the SD-WAN flavor when just considering network connectivity and traffic flow. Sometimes that decision can be overwhelming as IT engineering brains start to focus attention to the feature functionality set, QOS, failover or load balancing and your overall hardware and software that you may have under contract may or may not “play nice”. New security concerns and opportunities like installing ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access), network compartmentalization, VLAN’ing, and other over the top considerations will also have their own preferences on how they interact with SD-WAN from one vendor to the next.