Enabling the Journey to the Cloud

Reading the news, opening Facebook, pretty much everywhere I go, there is some type of conversation about COVID-19. The overarching message is that “We will make it through this”. I believe this is true, but I also believe there will be many resulting changes both personally and professionally.

As the product manager for NaaS at ISM Canada, I have been thinking about how my product line can help businesses once the virus lifts and we all start thinking about our path forward. With any digital transformation that a business is thinking of implementing, it is essential that they have the right network in place to support the technology.

Businesses have recently been focused on ensuring their infrastructure is flexible enough to allow their employees to work from home securely, with consistent access to reliable and efficient applications. This has accelerated the journey to the cloud because cloud-based technology provides employees the ability to work from any location that has internet access. The network technology best suited to support this journey is software defined wide area network (SD-WAN).

SD-WAN technology enables businesses to build high-performance WANs using a combination of low-cost internet circuits and higher-cost private circuit technologies, like MPLS. SD-WAN simplifies the management at a reduced cost and offers greater flexibility by directing network traffic based on business rules and priorities.

SD-WAN Benefits

• Improved user and employee experience through full visibility and transparency to network and applications using cloud-based customer portal/executive dashboard and best path selection (MPLS, Internet, LTE)
• Increased network agility and performance with direct access to cloud and internet apps from all locations, increase in office bandwidth, and load balancing across all circuits
• Operational agility attained through rapid provisioning of new locations/additional capacity and rapid deployment of new cloud applications (50% to 90% reduction in time) *
• Single, secure corporate VPN with end to end traffic encryption
• CAPEX/OPEX savings with simplified branch infrastructure and leveraging cost effective broadband connectivity (40% TCO reduction) *

*Source: Gartner SD-WAN Report 2019

So how does SD-WAN support your cloud migration?

Since the cloud typically offers better flexibility and performance, at a lower price, than housing resources on-premises your business wants to ensure the network supports the infrastructure. SD-WAN controls the connectivity, management, and services between datacenters and branches over large geographical distances as well as cloud instances. The technology routes traffic across the WAN using intelligent software that is designed based on the business requirements for each application. This is vital when moving applications to the Cloud to ensure your business has the flexibility and bandwidth necessary for a successful migration.

With the cost savings, application performance enhancements, and journey to the cloud support provided by SD-WAN technology, I believe that many businesses will move towards these cloud-based technologies as life starts to return to normal.