Guide to Managed SD-WAN

In fast-paced industries, prioritizing efficient resources and seamless connectivity is a must. However, managing in-house networks is often costly, time-consuming, and for those who aren’t technically minded, it’s often confusing.

Managed SD-WAN, however, has emerged as a reliable, scalable option for businesses of all sizes to optimize their service delivery and connectivity while reducing costs. By delegating network management through SD-WAN, capability, and security can improve, too.

In this guide, we’ll explore what managed SD-WAN entails, how it works, and why it might be a viable option for your business.

What is Managed SD-WAN?

A managed SD-WAN (software-defined wide area network) setup is a delegated, all-in-one business networking solution. Think of it as a complete kit for managing internal connections, securing communications and data, and ensuring applications run smoothly.

“Managed” in this context means that your networking needs are handled by a third party off-site. It’s effectively a cloud-based, hands-off solution, where a provider monitors and manages your network infrastructure while you can focus on running your enterprise.

This provider can help you oversee a smooth, efficient digital transformation – particularly if your existing infrastructure is outdated.

For those reasons alone, it’s easy to see why a managed SD-WAN solution is a tempting proposition. However, there’s plenty more to consider – so do keep reading.

How it Works

To set up managed SD-WAN, you would typically approach a provider offering such a service and agree for them to control and manage your network via the cloud. That means there are no internal or in-house controls for you to handle.

For example, a typical managed SD-WAN provider can support:

• Problem detection and immediate response
• Performance and functionality monitoring and enhancement
• Operation streamlining
• Overlay management
• 24x7 operations data center support (i.e., through a Network Operations Center “NOC”)
• Security solutions, auditing, and provisioning
• Continuous network management
• Service and solution integration
• Public cloud queries
• Growth management

When you agree to a package or solution with a provider, your delegate then takes on the technical tasks of setting up your infrastructure. That can involve setting up new connections and ensuring any existing infrastructure you have in place integrates smoothly.

From there, networking concerns are the responsibility of your provider, meaning they’ll manage your uptime and address problems if they arise. They’re also on hand to act as your on-call helpdesk if you need support.

DIY vs Managed SD-WAN

For all there are clear benefits to running a managed SD-WAN network, and we will cover them shortly, some business operators prefer the DIY approach. That is, to manage their networking and security in-house.

There are a few reasons why this is the case, which can vary from firm to firm:

• Managing your own networking can be simple if you already have IT professionals in your workforce
• You can pick and choose different security measures and have complete control over networking management decisions
• Some companies have complex or custom needs that managed network services can’t always support

DIY SD-WAN is usually a good choice if you have IT team support available or are unlikely to need extra networking support as you grow over time.

Managed SD-WAN, meanwhile, is a great choice for growing enterprises that might not have the IT acumen to ensure its network is fully scalable. It’s often a reliable choice for larger firms who are continuing to grow and who need expertise on standby at a moment’s notice.

One of the largest benefits of running managed SD-WAN vs. DIY SD-WAN is the fact you have access to years of expertise from the get-go. There’s no need to hire or train networking professionals to build a management team, and spend weeks getting staff up to speed.

The route you choose depends largely on your growth potential, any skills gaps you have in your workforce, and the capital you have to invest. Consider the return on investment in hiring managed SD-WAN solutions – will you make back the money spent with the time and effort you save?

Key Benefits of Managed SD-WAN

Let’s explore a few of the more prominent benefits of using a managed SD-WAN service – beyond cost savings.

Enhanced Network Performance

A managed SD-WAN provider will choose a series of applications and standards that help optimize your network's performance. For example, a provider might balance application loads by optimizing the least busy channels for the most demanding services.

What’s more, SD-WAN experts continuously monitor your network to find opportunities to boost productivity and reduce downtime with next-generation measures. For business operators, this can be a time-consuming and sometimes inexact science!

Improving network performance is, in many cases, vital for providing the best quality of service to clients and customers alike.

Efficiency

SD-WAN managers help their clients to optimize network bandwidth and connectivity latency, and ensure user traffic isn’t limited by slower, older applications and measures.

Regular auditing can help improve data transfer and communication efficiency simply by optimizing the right channels and cutting unnecessary processes.

Simplified Management

One of the key reasons business operators choose a managed SD-WAN approach is to simplify often complex, overgrown network resources. An operator lacking technical expertise, for instance, might find they have multiple applications and connections running that are holding them back.

SD-WAN management can cut out unnecessary processes, not only reducing overall costs, but also simplifying management into a single platform or hub. Although business operators still delegate network tasks to the manager, it’s easier for them to understand performance stats and decisions made.

Increased Reliability

With a constant, vigilant eye over your network and application performance and uptime, you have an instant response team ready to fight back against emerging problems. Operators rest easy knowing their SD-WAN managers will remedy security threats and potential slowdowns as soon as they arise.

That means they can continue running their businesses knowing if anything goes wrong, it will be handled as a priority. There’s a much lower risk of network and broadband problems causing major business downtime – because there’s an expert on hand to monitor and fix.

Enhanced Security

All managed SD-WAN solutions are designed with security prioritized as one of the most important considerations. Depending on the business at stake, managers might suggest different network security measures and protocols.

However, typical measures might include setting up a secure access service edge or SASE. This type of architecture can enable managed SD-WAN providers to provision web gateway security, on-demand firewall support, and networking based on zero-trust principles.

Given that the shift toward remote work has opened up various new security challenges for firms, improving network security can only ever be a good thing.

Managed SD-WAN Features

Not all managed SD-WAN services fit the same template, simply because business needs vary from case to case.

Regardless, here are some typical features and deployment options made possible with SD-WAN technology.

Centralized Management Platform

Many managed SD-WAN providers offer a centralized management platform as a cloud portal. This is a front-facing application that business operators can use to communicate with their providers, raise questions, and even make requests.

Sometimes, where decision-making is shared between the delegator and the managed service provider, business owners can toggle services such as traffic routing and various security features.

It’s also easy for business owners to monitor device health and performance in real-time. You can spot if there are faulty routers, for example, or if your VPN (virtual private network) service is down.

Multi-Path Connectivity Options

SD-WAN providers can encourage multi-path connectivity to help relieve bandwidth strain on a network. This is entirely possible through using multiprotocol label switching, or MPLS, which helps data reach its intended destination faster.

Altogether, this feature helps to ensure networks continue running smoothly and efficiently. It also helps to prioritize uptime for general network resources.

Automated Failover and Redundancy

Failover and redundancy automation features ensure that business operations continue to run as expected without disruption. Downtime can be a productivity, reputation, and revenue killer!

By using solutions such as dynamic path selection, or DPS, network traffic switches between available and unavailable resources automatically. That also means any activity depending on network connectivity goes uninterrupted.

SD-WAN providers can also ensure sessions continue to operate on the same servers, further protecting any mid-connection activity that would otherwise be lost.

Scalability and Flexibility

Wide area networks managed by third-party providers are highly scalable – meaning it’s easy for companies to add and remove resources via cloud services with very little notice.

Configuration in the cloud ensures that any changes made to a network are efficient to deploy and means-test. The scalability and flexibility in network configuration through managed SD-WAN also means companies can pivot to react to sudden industry or consumer demands.

Crucially, these features also ensure businesses can continue to grow without having to set aside extensive time and resources. When delegating any kind of business process to a third party – whether managed security services or network operations – it’s easier for your firm to grow as new challenges arise.

Policy-Based Management

Policy-based management through an SD-WAN provider ensures that traffic and resources are optimized purely based on a company’s individual needs. Therefore, you can expect configurations to change and scale depending on the challenges you face from one day to the next!

This also helps to ensure the end-user experience is prioritized – and so you can keep to your service level agreements (SLAs).

Conclusion

Delegating business operations such as network monitoring and deployment to third parties is increasingly popular. With cost and time demands on business owners always growing, it’s not hard to understand why!

Of course, there are always benefits to running network management in-house, too. Therefore, it’s good practice to weigh up the pros and cons of either option. That said, managed solutions are highly cost-effective, depending on individual service pricing.

In the meantime, consider how much time, money, and hassle you could save by delegating network cybersecurity concerns to a team of industry experts. Be sure to contact VikingCloud for a consultation and find out more.