Why now might be the best time for CIOs to consider SD-WAN

Binesh George, CEO of Redvine Networks

In 2020, carrier agnostic SD-WAN will become more mainstream.

CIOs will need to give thought to whether they can afford to remain on traditional MPLS networks, or join the others. SD-WAN already provides the scalability; agility and manageability that will transform their organisation.

Never has the time been better for SD-WAN to be a serious consideration for enterprises, including businesses that have branches and remote offices outside of South Africa.

Cost conscious solutions

Customers are increasingly cost conscious and we need to think about solutions that make sense, that is not just about moving away from MPLS.  Many companies, like retail and public sector for example, have branches in small towns and although the connectivity costs are higher in more remote towns/ cities, there is a growing need to provide a solution that keeps the total cost manageable.  

That solution is SD-WAN.

Connectivity is critical

As more businesses move to cloud applications, connectivity is critical.

Across the continent, there are fewer types of connectivity available in smaller, more outlying regions so CIOs will need to ensure they have multiple types of connectivity available, to build redundancy across the network.

As an agnostic SD-WAN provider, we typically put in place a minimum of two different service provider links, paired with the right technology for African customers to ensure redundancy is built across the organisation.  

SLA and performance management

We believe that CIOs need to drive SLA and performance management from their service and/ or solution partners as a matter of course. They should no longer be satisfied with best effort links, that don’t consider the performance of their business critical applications.

2020 – the year of SD-WAN

2020 will be the year of SD-WAN adoption, driven by a necessity to have maximum uptime to enable business critical cloud services and applications and CIOs should consider agnostic solution providers that provide the best fit both commercially and technically, without tying oneself into lengthy, expensive MPLS contracts.