Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN), is an application-aware, over-the-top WAN connectivity service that uses policies to determine how application flows are directed over multiple underlay networks, irrespective of the underlay technologies or service providers who deliver them.  Organizations can deploy SD-WAN at strategic business locations in place of more traditional WAN connections or implement SD-WAN as a comprehensive WAN application in either a primary or business continuity strategy.  

Is SD-WAN Right for My Organization?

Enterprises have been increasingly investing in open and flexible cloud solutions, and SD-WAN represents an effort to engineer similar benefits in their data center architecture. SD-WAN architecture is particularly beneficial to environments separated by distance — for example, between main offices and branch offices. Whereas traditional WAN can be expensive and complex, SD-WAN architecture reduces recurring network costs, offers network-wide control and visibility, and simplifies the technology with zero-touch deployment and centralized management. The key to the SD-WAN architecture is that it can communicate with all network endpoints without the need for external mechanisms or additional protocols.

This means customers have the flexibility to choose the type of underlay network that works best for their users and environment, maximizing the utilization by allowing you to use all available bandwidth across available underlay networks.