Software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) provide a dynamic, policy-based, application path selection across multiple WAN connections and supports service chaining for additional services such as WAN optimization and firewalls. Agnostic to WAN transport technologies, SD-WAN are meant as a replacement for traditional WAN routers.
Dean Vaughan, vice president for Asia Pacific and Japan sales at Silver Peak, says enterprises are turning to SD-WAN as a means to drive their cloud and digitalisation strategy to deliver the highest application performance as they seek greater efficiencies in their multi-site business operations, and bridge the gap between transition and transformation.
He opined that businesses today are challenged with increased latency and degraded application performance as cloud-destined traffic is backhauled to the data centre. This translates to poor end-user quality of experience and potential security threats.
An advanced SD-WAN optimises performance for SaaS applications where IT teams can gain visibility and control over SaaS across the enterprise and provide users with consistent performance.
This presents an opportunity for communications service providers (CSPs) to provide an alternate solution to retain customers who are looking to reduce their exposure to global Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) costs.
In Singapore, Starhub is addressing the opportunity with what it claims is an end-to-end digital network management solution. Leveraging Silver Peak’s SD-WAN edge platform, Unity EdgeConnect, to provide what StarHub calls a smart solution to help customers gain centralised control and full visibility over their entire network operations across distributed locations.
“We are confident that the unified dashboard will empower our enterprise customers to dynamically optimise bandwidth for load sharing, prioritise traffic for time-sensitive applications and implement security policies enterprise-wide,” said Charlie Chan, chief of Enterprise Business Group, StarHub. “The business climate is evolving quickly, and we are here to help customers stay agile, optimise cost and efficiencies by adopting simplified yet robust digital ICT and networking solutions.”
According to Vaughan, Unity EdgeConnect enables StarHub to offer its enterprise customers a centrally managed business-driven SD-WAN edge platform that ensures the customer’s business priorities are always reflected in how the network behaves.
