The enterprise shift to a cloud and hybrid-cloud infrastructure is fueling strong growth of the SD-WAN software market, which is projected to hit $4.6 billion by 2023. However, the act of implementing SD-WAN does not, by default, maximize the performance of your enterprise application portfolio. Optimizing your spend on a software approach to managing Wide Area Networks is what ultimately leads to improvements in application visibility, the customer experience, performance, security, redundancy and reliability.
The good news is that there are great SD-WAN products available today, and innovation is occurring at such a rapid pace that will allow organizations to optimize their shift to the cloud. But too often, manufacturers imply that everything will work flawlessly if you just buy their solution.
Over the past few years, I’ve personally been involved in more than one hundred SD-WAN consulting projects and I can tell you that is far from the case. The benefits of SD-WAN can be elusive if you lack the right approach to SD-WAN implementation...and the right partner. Each customer brings its own unique challenges, requirements and opportunities.
Based on our body of work, I’ve assembled 6 key considerations for SD-WAN deployment success:
1. Gain Full Application Awareness
SD-WAN implementation teams must have insight into what applications are used across the enterprise and how they are used. This process begins by engaging with application stakeholders at the onset of the process across Finance, ERP, CRM, HR and other business units. By doing so, you learn where application dependency exists and what the optimal prioritization should be.
So that’s the what -- determining what applications you use. Do not overlook the how. Are you an email-centric business or do you rely more on team messaging tools? How deep in the cloud is your application portfolio? These are the how questions that must be answered at the onset of SD-WAN implementation.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Does your organization even have a single list of deployed applications? Are there applications shared across multiple business units that create inter-dependency challenges? Which applications are custom-built versus off the shelf? Your SD-WAN implementation partner should be able to conduct an application inventory analysis to answer these questions and more.
Finally, the expanded remote workforce has only heightened the need for application awareness; cloud and legacy applications that have been largely or wholly used on-premises such as payroll, customer service and human resources have been pushed to home offices across the world. Application dependency and prioritization changes from remote work must be factored into any SD-WAN implementation.
2. Identify Cloud Access Needs
Leading IT organizations have accelerated and increased investments in cloud infrastructure and cloud-based tools to support expanded remote work fueled by the pandemic. The confidence to move forward with these investments is supported by the fact that more than 65% of IT executives in the U.S. expect at least a quarter of their workforce to make work from home permanent.
The data from the 2020 Qualtrics and PwC study also finds that 78% of the top quartile of IT leaders have made new investments in cloud infrastructure to support a remote workforce, while nearly 9 in 10 of these leaders have introduced or made additional investments in cloud-based productivity and collaboration tools (e.g. Gsuite, Office365, etc.).
These trendlines underscore the shift to remote work, but also the challenges organizations face managing and optimizing an increasingly complex multi-cloud infrastructure alongside legacy networks. SD-WAN implementations should consult early with cloud strategy teams to determine access requirements around security and scalability. Understanding how workforces access the cloud (SaaS, IaaS) and cloud paths utilized (AWS, Azure, etc.) are even more critical in a remote work environment. Your organization is unlocking connectivity to the cloud and the public Internet for remote offices and home office workers. SD-WAN, implemented correctly, can deliver secure access via these connections.
3. Lead With Security
I don’t have to sell you on the fact that security considerations should be a core component of your SD-WAN implementation project. But how do you go about making it happen? First, the security team should be engaged in this project from day one. Security-first is a heavily used term, but it matters. Trying to bolt on security capabilities after the fact creates complexities and vulnerabilities.
Security is tough because not all SD-WAN products come embedded with next generation security capabilities. More often than not, you will need to integrate with existing and complementary enterprise security platforms and tools. Work with your security team to understand the current security posture, then match the list against SD-WAN security capabilities to gap fill. If your security posture includes comprehensive Unified Threat Management (UTM) great, you will not need to prioritize that as part of any SD-WAN solutions and services you choose.
Security issues are often as much about poor communication as they are about the tools themselves. I’ve seen security teams with policies for remote work access that the SD-WAN implementation teams were not initially aware of, resulting in denied network access for workers. Clarity on network segmentation is also necessary for SD-WAN teams to understand which users can access which applications prior to implementation.
Communication is also key during the transition itself. There is no flip of the switch to transition from your legacy SD-WAN to a new SD-WAN solution, which means there exists a period of time when both WANs will be operational in some form, and will have to peacefully and securely coexist until the transition is complete.
4. Support Connectivity Diversity
Diverse connectivity options at all Branch, Edge, Data Center, Hub and Cloud locations across the enterprise are critical to successful SD-WAN deployments. In working with hundreds of organizations to implement SD-WANs, I can tell you that transport-independent connectivity is critical; you must be able to quickly and easily access applications via MPLS, Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), Broadband, LTE, 5G and even legacy connectivity options. Dynamic path selection ensures stability in today’s unpredictable and fluid operating environment.
The need for connection diversity goes hand-in-hand with having the ability to prioritize mission critical application delivery utilizing primary links and secondary links for best effort traffic. With link diversity, secure application delivery is ensured and the inherent nature of SD-WAN load-balancing for active-active links means that you can have multiple connections available for traffic. Finally, diverse carrier and connectivity options generate cost optimization for carrier services. Translation: more bang for your buck.
5. Ensure Operational Flexibility
As is the case with any IT project, decision makers and implementers must anticipate how SD-WAN will operate after sites are deployed. What staffing resources, training, resource enablement and help desk training will be required to ensure success? Additionally, the deployment must allow for flexibility to scale the solution up and down as business and network needs change.
Flexibility requires visibility -- into network traffic patterns and volume. If a connectivity link is pushing the limits at 90% of capacity, you need a solution that can automate rerouting to secondary links. And these operational issues have a cascading effect if the right teams aren’t in the loop. A Help Desk, for example, receiving complaints about the performance of an ERP application must know if the SD-WAN solution can self-heal to address the issue.
The flexibility to scale is essential to implementation because, in most cases, SD-WAN deployment does not start as an “all-or-nothing” proposition. You might start with a proof of concept in 2-3 office sites based on collaboration between enterprise decision makers and your SD-WAN implementation partner. Some organizations prefer to launch a proof of concept that does not touch sensitive applications or takes place in a lab environment fully removed from a production site, while others are more aggressive and want to battle test the solution in the most challenging environment. Determining the right path for optimizing a proof of concept requires operational flexibility, and a collaborative relationship with your partner.
6. Develop a post-implementation strategy
Optimizing your implementation also means having the right managed services and, ultimately, the right SD-WAN implementation partner. Despite strong growth projections and new case studies with proven ROI emerging every day, SD-WAN is still in the early innings when it comes to reaching its full potential.
Seek an SD-WAN Managed Services provider with a proven track record of enterprise SD-WAN deployments under their belt. By doing so, you can maximize the agility, application control, and efficiency benefits along this cloud journey—while ensuring your internal teams can remain laser focused on strategic business outcomes.
Your Managed Services provider should be proactive in identifying and diagnosing issues so the network can remain in an optimized state without sapping your operational resources. This provider should further be able to:
- produce detail requirements definitions unique to the client infrastructure and environment
- determine critical success factors for the project
- produce vendor selection criteria
- produce detail scoring analysis matching vendor features to client requirements - determine the best fit
- help conduct the Proof of Concept/Proof of Value
To learn more about how ePlus can optimize your SD-WAN spend, reach out to our networking team.
