As the demand for internet connectivity continues to rise, paired with the increasing adoption of cloud applications, traditional wide area network (WAN) architectures fail to deliver the expected application experience, falling short on optimizing cloud connectivity, improving security, or providing complete visibility of the network to manage devices and resolve network issues. At the same time, innovation in the networking domain is responding to a market that is shifting from a focus on “speeds and feeds” to one focused on innovative services and a programmable network.
The increase in remote work environments due to the pandemic is driving some of that change and leading many IT leaders to recognize the importance of remote access, speed and security, and to re-evaluate their network infrastructure investments. As a result, enterprises are increasingly adopting SD-WAN as part of their larger connectivity strategy to reduce costs, increase network performance and security, as well as help network teams manage large remote sites more efficiently.
But Now for the Bad News…
While the benefits of SD-WAN for enterprise networks are well-documented, the approach also presents some challenges.
First, a lack of interoperability across distributed multi-domain networks leads to siloed operations, complex platform interactions, and, ultimately, higher operational costs. In turn, this places an increased burden on already stretched network operations teams to not only maintain business-as-usual services but also to roll out new technologies, such as SD-WAN branches. Having to manage multiple vertical solutions across multiple domains also comes with a steep learning curve for NetOps teams.
Also, while SD-WAN lends itself to more software-orientated development and deployment strategies, without an automation solution that can abstract the complexities of these modern technologies, it’s a tall order for NetOps teams within organizations to even pursue automation without re-tooling and re-development.
Another significant challenge of SD-WAN that most enterprises overlook is the amount of time it takes to deploy and migrate remote sites. Teams may risk missing key deployment deadlines because the end-to-end process of deploying SD-WAN to a single site takes longer than anticipated. Challenges can also arise after deployment, such as when changes need to be made. At that time, it often becomes apparent that many existing SD-WAN tools are very “ClickOps” heavy and fail to provide a way to ensure consistent configuration compliance for every device managed by the solution.
Overcoming the Challenges
Organizations understand that integrating SD-WAN into their networks can pay significant dividends, but they may also hesitate due to the challenges involved. Automating SD-WAN can overcome those challenges, especially an automation solution that can abstract the complexities of SD-WAN and other modern network solutions, along with traditional network devices, and integrate with the enterprise’s entire IT ecosystem. Such a solution can provide end-to-end automation for deployment and day-to-day management of SD-WAN technology within the legacy network using a single toolset while providing agility and flexibility that allows for collaboration across IT and networking teams.
SD-WAN is evolving and enabling the acceleration for more innovative services. By extending SD-WAN into a multi-cloud reality with enhanced security and analytics and connecting innovation at the edge with application and cloud concepts, enterprise organizations can increase the speed to deploy new sites, minimize human errors, and remove the tedious backlog of change requests.
How Itential Simplifies & Automates SD-WAN Management
Itential simplifies and automates the management and configuration processes for SD-WAN, enabling organizations to drastically reduce risks, improve efficiency, increase agility, launch applications faster, and drive overall business value. Itential supports a wide range of southbound options for interacting with the network and SD-WAN systems, allowing users to automate even the most complex multi-vendor SD-WAN environments.
Users can gain greater velocity for their SD-WAN deployments and operations by leveraging the capabilities of Itential’s automation solution such as:
- Low-code workflow canvas to build integrated workflows that enable the automation of any CLI-based network devices and API cloud services.
- The ability to ensure your SD-WAN network is secure and reliable by combining automation and configuration management.
- Pre-Built Automations for SD-WAN deployment, change, and compliance use cases.
- No-code integrations with any SD-WAN system, IT system, or source of truth with Itential’s library of open integrations to 100+ systems.
To learn more about how Itential simplifies and automates SD-WAN management, click here or watch this demo on how to automate SD-WAN deployments and management with Itential.
Article originally published on www.NetworkingComputing.com.
Morgan Stern
Vice President, Automation Strategy ‐ Itential
Morgan Stern serves as the Vice President of Automation Strategy for Itential, where he is responsible for assisting Itential’s global customers in developing, implementing and deriving value from their automation strategies using the Itential Automation Platform. For the majority of his career, Morgan has focused on assisting large enterprise and service provider organizations in maximizing the business impact of new technologies as an architect, consultant, author, and industry speaker.
