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THE EVOLUTION OF WAN
Though MPLS and local access still dominate the enterprise wide area network, SD-WAN adoption is going mainstream rapidly, driven by digital transformation initiatives and increasing cloud migration. MPLS was designed before the cloud era and is beset with issues such as long deployment times and high costs. SD-WAN, on the other hand, is ideally suited for cloud-based applications and emerging technologies.
According to the latest report by Market Research Future, the global SD-WAN market is bound to touch $19,093.2 million by 2026 and is driven by the need for acceptable networking infrastructure that adheres to the latest security policies and seamless connectivity. And a recent IDC survey found that 42% of respondents have already deployed SD-WAN either in part or in full, with 95% expecting to deploy it within the coming two years.
“WANs designed for a different era are not ready for the unprecedented influx of WAN traffic that cloud adoption brings today. Such traffic causes management complexity, application-performance unpredictability, and in many cases, data vulnerability,” says Osama Al-Zoubi, CTO, Cisco Middle East and Africa.
He says new business models have driven the need for a new network model. SD-WAN architecture, which was already positively impacting business prior to the pandemic, is now more crucial than ever. This new approach to network connectivity has proven its ability to lower operational costs and improve resource usage for multisite deployments.
Tarik Belhachemi, MEA Head of Connectivity and UC/CX Business Development, Orange Business Services, says the goal of SD-WAN services is to deliver robust, consistent performance and agility by routing data through the fastest, most reliable connection possible. It also simplifies the distribution of services to branch sites without sending in an IT team and bandwidth can be scaled according to requirements.
“However, SD-WAN is a highly dynamic technology and needs continuous end-toend monitoring to provide the business resilience, agility, flexibility and scalability it can deliver. Deployed effectively, SDWAN offers enterprises the capabilities to keep pace with customer’s growing digital demands. SD-WAN, however, isn’t a plugand-play solution. As with any emerging technology, consultancy and careful planning are paramount to reducing risk,” he adds.
Tarik Belhachemi
Managed SD-WAN
The growth of the SD-WAN market has presented new opportunities for managed security service providers (MSSPs) to offer managed WAN services both on and off their networks. Recently at GITEX, Zain announced the launch of SD-WAN managed services in collaboration with Cisco. The company is the first service provider in Kuwait to offer world-class SDWAN services to its business customers, enabling them to optimize their networks to suit their unique needs while balancing performance and cost.
“By viewing SD-WAN as a value-added services platform, as opposed to just another service offering, MSSPs can not only open the door to significant benefits for their customers but also expand their own revenue opportunities,” says Kalle Bjorn, Director of Systems Engineering for Middle East with Fortinet.
Belhachemi from Orange Business Services adds that as cloud adoption increases and matures in the region, we are seeing a corresponding rise in interest in managed SD-WAN services. But SD-WAN is a new technology. Today’s networks are far more complex than they were a decade ago. It is vital that enterprises carefully plan their SD-WAN transformation and don’t underestimate the intricacies of the underlay network.
“Not all service providers will focus on the underlay, especially if they do not provide the network. This is why it is essential to work with a trusted partner to avoid future users to their applications and data in a cloud or mobile environment, all while ensuring multi-branch and multi-cloud network security, he adds.
Bjorn from Fortinet says one of the core components of SASE, along with clouddelivered security, is SD-WAN. At the end of the day, SASE’s outcome for the large or mid-market enterprise is to provide consistent security and the best quality of experience. While cloud-delivered security provides that security to users working from anywhere, SD-WAN actually enables that quality of experience. SASE will be incomplete if it doesn’t have SD-WAN as part of the framework.
“A SASE framework should integrate security and networking - not just stitch them together, but create a unified policy so that they’re easier to transform when implemented,” he says.
While SASE and SD-WAN are often mistakenly pitted against one another, they are designed to work in harmony, according to Al-Zoubi from Cisco. SDWAN is the foundation for SASE-enabled architecture and offers the ability to extend IT’s visibility beyond the corporate network and into the Internet and cloud.
“SD-WAN provides full-stack multilayer security capabilities for both on-premises and cloud. It bridges organisations’ current security deployments with their SASE rollout by providing consistent security policy enforcement that can be deployed and managed anywhere,” he sums up.
Kalle Bjorn
orchestration and compatibility issues in the network transformation. Without a stable, solid underlay, enterprises will not gain the benefits they expect from SD-WAN and risk having significant deployment issues,” he says.
SD-WAN vs. SASE
For enterprises embarking on digital transformation initiatives, SD-WAN alone may not bring in the WAN transformation they require, and this is where Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) comes in. Though the goal of both technologies might look identical, it is important to understand the different between these two.
“SD-WAN is a software-based approach to building and managing networks that connect geographically dispersed offices. Most often, companies use SD-WAN to securely connect branch offices to their corporate networks, instead of relying on MPLS connections, firewalls or proprietary hardware to do it,” says Tarek Abbas, Systems Engineering, Emerging Markets, Palo Alto Networks.
A SASE solution provides mobile users, branch offices, and retail locations with secure connectivity and consistent security from any location, by offering companies a single, centralised view of their entire network. This helps companies to quickly identify users, devices and endpoints, apply their networking access and security policies, and security policies a, securely connect
