Channel Post speaks to Bhaskar Peruri, the Regional Manager at Silver Peak about SD-WAN offerings in the region, the market positioning of Silver Peak, and the challenges SD-WAN solutions address
What are the advantages of SD-WAN over traditional WAN systems?
An SD-WAN architecture offers a number of distinct advantage over traditional WAN architectures. An SD-WAN provides secure and reliable virtual overlays to connect users to applications with the flexibility to use any combination of underlying transport technologies without compromising network or application performance.
This enables distributed enterprises to dramatically lower costs, enhance business agility and accelerate time to value for new business initiatives. With an SD-WAN, IT organizations can confidently embrace the internet and accelerate cloud initiatives. They can also proactively secure business operations and dramatically simplify IT operations.
With the move away from traditional dedicated MPLS private circuits, in favour of ubiquitous broadband services, a myriad of new features and functions can make the WAN more robust. Tie this together with simpler deployment models and easier management, and an SD-WAN starts to sound more appealing.
How big is the market in terms of SD-WAN solutions? Where does Silver Peak position itself on the market?
According to research firm MarketsandMarkets, the Software Defined WAN Market size is estimated to grow from $738.9 Million in 2016 to $9,066.2 million by 2021, with an estimated Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 65.11%. The SD-WAN market is segmented by components, deployment types, technology services, verticals, and regions.
The SD-WAN market is segmented based on components installed at enterprises and in branches and includes virtual appliances, physical appliances, and hybrid deployments. The physical appliances had the largest market share in 2016. Physical appliances are directly installed on the premises of enterprises and assist in laying a foundation for the network connections at branch and remote office locations.
Having physical appliances deployed, enterprises can shift toward a broadband-based WAN at their own pace, whether site-by-site, or via a hybrid WAN. On the other hand, the SD-WAN Market by deployment type also comprises on-premises and on cloud. On–premises deployment helps in upgrading the in-house capabilities of enterprises solutions, such as firewall and remote site surveillance. The on-cloud solution provides easy provision for deploying advanced cloud-based solutions, such as high quality internet and highly-secured access.
The on-cloud-based services are expected to become the largest segment by 2021. An increasing demand for SD-WAN cloud-based services is driving the market.
Historically a WAN optimisation vendor, Silver Peak has designed, developed and released an SD-WAN solution called Unity EdgeConnect, that includes physical and virtual EdgeConnect appliances, the Unity Orchestrator global managements system and the optional Unity Boost WAN optimization performance pack.
Silver Peak has always been good at application identification and it brings that capability, along with its policy controller, into the industry’s only complete SD-WAN solution that simply and intelligently pools any combination of connectivity types into high-performance virtual WANs to deliver an unmatched user experience edge-to-edge.
What sort of industry verticals do you reckon go for SD-WAN solutions?
Prior to today’s advanced SD-WAN architecture, there were only a few options for branch and remote site connectivity. Traditional WAN MPLS circuits provide dedicated private and predictable connectivity on WAN, but circuits of this type are typically expensive, and their deployment and modification can take weeks to months.
A more economical option is to deploy site-to-site virtual private networks across existing internet circuits. While this is feasible with a small number of sites, it could become complicated to manage a full mesh of VPN-connected sites. Verticals that are adopting SD-WAN deployments include geographically distributed enterprises across the telecoms, construction, logistics, oil and gas, utilities, banking and financial services, insurance and retail industries.
It is said that SD-WAN is SDN for your branch office. Is this statement true? How so?
An SD-WAN architecture aims to solve many of the problems with previous iterations of WAN technology through increased flexibility. Since an SD-WAN architecture is based on an overlay, it can be provisioned over any type of WAN connectivity: dedicated or Internet-based circuits. In addition, SD-WAN benefits include provisioning and management that is abstracted into a controller and configured from a central location.
Even if you’re comfortable with the existing Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) network, applications around segmentation and encryption make deploying an SD-WAN over a traditional MPLS-based WAN more attractive. What makes an SD-WAN architecture a serious competitor in this space is its features, particularly those related to path aggregation or bonding, path selection and path conditioning. In traditional WAN, dynamic routing protocols move traffic on and off of links depending on their current state. While this works well in most scenarios, it doesn’t provide much flexibility.
What sort of challenges does an SD-WAN address when it comes to managing WAN systems?
An SD-WAN abstracts any combination of existing circuits, or underlay networks, into a single logical virtual WAN overlay. We can then classify applications traffic by connection and even aggregate links of disparate types together. The SD-WAN appliance, whether physical or virtual, manages the underlay and allows the network team to focus on connecting users to applications wherever they might reside.
Silver Peak offers more advanced features such as guaranteed packet delivery, packet-based load balancing and integrated WAN optimisation. Coupling an SD-WAN with a WAN optimisation technology is a further example the broader benefits an SD-WAN can deliver. Sites that traditionally had a rack full of gear to provide connectivity can now likely be serviced with a couple of small SD-WAN appliances and a few wireless access points.
And while a rip-and-replace model may not make sense from a cost perspective, site refreshes and new builds may be good places to take advantage of this technology. Building a site can be as easy as ordering an Internet circuit and shipping a small SD-WAN appliance. Not only is the deployment faster, but managing and troubleshooting the WAN is greatly simplified by having a central controller for all of the endpoints, since changes are quickly and easily pushed out across the entire WAN.
The controller also enables troubleshooting from a network perspective, offering aggregated metrics and historical trending data on key metrics. While SD-WAN aims to solve many problems, it does introduce some of its own. Users looking to solely use Internet-based connectivity are at the mercy of the Internet, although there are features of an SD-WAN that can make internet circuits perform much like dedicated WAN circuits.
What sort of connection types does an SD-WAN support? Is this solution viable on a long run?
One of the benefits of an SD-WAN is its consumable WAN virtualisation, or its ability to easily segment applications and users as they traverse WAN. Previously, this wasn’t easily done without layering a technology such as dynamic multipoint VPN on top of an existing WAN. For enterprises that are looking to extend isolated networks from the data centre out to WAN connected sites, an SD-WAN can potentially help solve the WAN piece of that puzzle.
Most SD-WAN appliances only accept Ethernet-based connections, ruling out any deployment across legacy time-division multiplexing-based circuits without some kind of translation to Ethernet. While there are some limitations of an SD-WAN, the technology is here to stay. Its flexibility and ease of management make an SD-WAN applicable across almost any kind of WAN deployment, whether in an enterprise data centre infrastructure, colocation provider, cloud service provider or other user.
Agility is increasingly a differentiator for business success today. Leveraging the cloud enables companies to “spin up” new services in a matter of minutes rather than days or weeks.
Transitioning to this new WAN model deserves careful consideration based on cost advantages and improved services. Consider how broadband WANs can bond multiple paths to assure application performance and availability as the organisation introduces new services into the WAN. Through a centralised controller, virtual overlays can be quickly configured based on the unique requirements of the applications, from high-availability to high-efficiency. With tunnel bonding and dynamic path conditioning the virtual overlays will always offer superior performance to any of the individual underlay links.
What sort of ROI does SD-WAN system offer when compared with traditional WAN systems?
An SD-WAN architecture aims to solve many of the problems with previous duplications of WAN technology through increased flexibility and agility. Since SD-WAN technology is based on an overlay, it can be provisioned over any type of WAN connectivity: dedicated or Internet-based circuits or both. In addition, the benefits of an SD-WAN include provisioning and management that is abstracted into a controller and configured from a central location.
What makes an SD-WAN architecture a serious competitor in this space is its features, particularly those related to path aggregation or bonding, path selection and path conditioning. Silver Peak’s technology couples SD-WAN with WAN optimisation technology demonstrating further the benefits our offerings offer to enterprise customers. Sites that traditionally had a rack full of gear to provide connectivity can now likely be serviced with a couple of small SD-WAN appliances and a few wireless access points.
Are companies and especially network engineers eager to adopt SD-WAN solutions over traditional WAN systems? What challenges do you as a vendor or solution provider face when it comes to converting customers to using SD-WAN systems?
Transitioning to this new WAN model deserves careful consideration based on cost advantages and improved services to an organisation and the overall business. Consider how an SD-WAN can bond any combination of WAN connectivity into high-performance virtual WANs or overlays to deliver an unmatched end use application experience edge-to-edge.
Applications can be classified and grouped into business intent overlays aligned to the unique requirements of each application. Voice and video traffic, for example, can be configured with a high-availability policy, directing this traffic over the MPLS circuit as the primary link with the internet link used only in the event of a brownout or outage on the primary link.
It comes down to potential payback. As organisations look to reduce bandwidth costs, they can either fully deploy a broadband WAN or take a hybrid approach to utilise both broadband and MPLS at the same time. They can centrally implement policies across the WAN to dictate applications traffic movement to either form of connectivity based on industry and organisational requirements.
The opportunity is clear and present to evaluate and pursue the SD-WAN alternative for reduced costs and competitive advantage. With the move away from traditional dedicated circuits, a myriad of new features and functions can make the wide area network more robust.
SD-WAN benefits include provisioning and management that is abstracted into a controller and configured from a central location. Even if you’re comfortable with the existing Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) network, applications around segmentation and encryption make using an SD-WAN over an MPLS-based WAN more attractive.
