Competition is forcing almost every business to be a digital business. Just how intense is the pressure? An IDC study found that 85% of decision-makers within enterprises believe they have two years to make digital transformation progress, or they’ll fall behind the competition and suffer financially.
From an IT perspective, digital transformation has a major impact on the WAN and network security. SD-WAN (Software-defined WAN) helps enable digital transformation by boosting network agility and capacity. However, at the same time, digital transformation brings about new network security risks that require modern solutions.
Let’s take a look at how SD-WAN enables digital transformation, the threats facing enterprises, and how businesses can leverage modern network and security solutions to get the most out of their digital transformation investment.
The role of SD-WAN in digital transformation
Cloud computing and a surge in bandwidth consumption are at the heart of many digital transformation initiatives. It is common for modern businesses to have mission-critical services running across a variety of cloud platforms. Additionally, Big Data Analytics, IoT, and other digital initiatives require significant amounts of bandwidth. At the same time, speed and agility when provisioning new sites are more important than ever.
As a result of these demands, many enterprises have moved away from MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) in favor of SD-WAN. With SD-WAN, organizations switch from costly MPLS bandwidth for more affordable public Internet-bandwidth while also avoiding the inefficient backhauling that makes MPLS so cloud-unfriendly. With the MPLS paradigm, cloud-bound traffic is first sent through enterprise security appliances (usually at a central location) before being routed on to its destination. It then follows the same inefficient path back. SD-WAN addresses this by enabling the use of public Internet transports for cloud-bound traffic.
Additionally, because SD-WAN allows businesses to use multiple different WAN transports, it can increase flexibility and agility, making it easier to deploy new sites faster.
The importance of optimized global connectivity
Cost savings and agility are only one aspect of digital transformation. Predictable, high-performance connectivity across the globe is important for modern international businesses. However, SD-WAN solutions that act only as an overlay cannot outright replace MPLS for reliable, middle-mile transport on a global scale. This often leads to a hybrid WAN configuration where MPLS is used to deliver predictable, SLA-backed connectivity and Internet bandwidth is used to provide additional capacity. Unfortunately, this approach hamstrings global businesses by keeping them tied to MPLS services and slow-moving telcos.
Just how much can telco-services like MPLS slow down a business? A recent survey found that 46% of respondents indicated moves, adds, and changes took a business day or more and 73% indicated that deploying a new site required three business weeks or more.
Because of these challenges, multinational and global digital businesses have begun to turn to SD-WAN solutions that can provide global connectivity that is on-par with MPLS in addition to SD-WAN overlay functionality. Today, SD-WAN services like Cato Networks and Aryaka can do this at a global scale.
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The security challenges of digital transformation
Cost and performance aren’t the only concerns the digital transformation movement is bringing about. The dynamic nature of modern networks creates new security challenges most SD-WAN solutions cannot solve on their own.
Not only do enterprises have to securely connect physical WAN locations to one another, they must provide secure access for SaaS (Software as a Service) applications, remote workers, and a mobile workforce. One approach to securing the network is to leverage security solutions such as NGFW (Next-generation Firewall) or UTM (Unified Threat Management) appliances at branch locations. However, this falls short of addressing mobile and remote users. Further, it can be overly complex and costly. Appliance sprawl becomes unwieldy to manage at scale, increasing the potential for oversight that can lead to a breach and, according to the aforementioned Cato survey, 45% of respondents found the cost of buying and managing such appliances and software to be a major security challenge.
Cloud-based SD-WAN helps address these security challenges by building security into the underlying network infrastructure. Features such as NGFW and intelligent anti-malware engines are inherently a part of the network fabric. Because the infrastructure is cloud-based, mobile and remote users receive the same protection as everyone else.
Final thoughts: using SD-WAN for a successful digital transformation
In the digital era, enterprises must adapt faster than ever. Legacy WAN technology like MPLS can place a business at a competitive disadvantage by increasing cost and decreasing agility. The overlay functionality of SD-WAN can help drive down costs, increase capacity, and improve agility.
However, solutions that only offer overlay functionality cannot directly address the challenges of predictable performance or network security. With just SD-WAN and no converged security, branch deployments become more complex and time-consuming, eroding many of the benefits SD-WAN brings in the first place. To address those challenges, cloud-based SD-WAN solutions that provide an underlying network and security infrastructure are required.