I find most modern day IT conferences pretty much the same. Arrive, set up the booth, meet and greet, wine and dine and listen to presentations, some inspiring, some not so much. But, with so many attendees, it is important to be seen, be present and tell your targeted audience exactly what you can do for them with your solutions.
Channel Partners Expo in Las Vegas April 9-12 this year was a show to remember for several reasons. It was well attended, it had a lot of products for resellers to look at and above all, it was warm outside and that in of itself was comforting coming from a cold and snowy Salt Lake City Utah.
FatPipe Networks had steady traffic to the booth, with a large amount of interest in our current technologies. Some patrons knew about FatPipe networks and were pleasantly surprised at how our SD-WAN solutions have evolved and developed. FatPipe is known for being the first to market with networking solutions that helped shaped what SD-WAN is today, and the veterans in the reseller industry were cognizant of how FatPipe leads the industry with the concept of load balancing, redundancy and failover.
Today, however, the SD-WAN market has changed and FatPipe has too. The demand for the digital transformation which includes cloud based applications, IoT, AI, mobility, and secure management of data across the network is increasing dramatically. There is still reluctance to fully embrace SD-WAN technologies perhaps because of the legacy systems still in place, which are expensive to maintain and difficult to change. However, it is now well known that with SD-WAN, companies can take advantage of less costly connections, including the internet, but are wary of security. In fact, several recent surveys have identified security as the number 1 issue for network administrators, but what might not be apparent is that it is the talent to implement and manage SD-WAN that ranks a close number 2.
FatPipe’s highly secure, easy to manage SD-WAN solutions are once again leading the industry
It was really encouraging to talk to resellers of all shapes and sizes at Channel Partners this year and explain how FatPipe is once again leading the SD-WAN charge with solutions that meet both these, and many more, key concerns of network administrators. FatPipe’s latest software release has a patented security module that is FIPS 140-2 certified, making FatPipe a leader in secure data transmission across the WAN.
The concern about implementing SD-WAN solutions with unqualified IT staff is an interesting factoid that can be successfully addressed with FatPipe’s Enterprise View. A single pane view of the network allows FatPipe users a very simple and easy methodology to change settings, apply prioritization to application access, set automatic failover thresholds based on user defined criteria and manage the WAN traffic easily and effectively. And all this requires basic IT skills, no propriety certifications, retraining or refresh. In fact, FatPipe has installations at thousands of institutions across the globe where the skills of IT personnel varies from highly certified to very basic, and each site manages their network traffic using this easy to use tool from FatPipe.
FatPipe has developed solutions for the modern day SD-WAN environments with a suite of SD-WAN products that are secure, very easy to use and have the very best ROI in the industry.
Channel Partners was enlightening and exhausting, but at the end of the day, it was great to see old friends and meet new people, share ideas and above all, let all know that FatPipe is once again leading the SD-WAN market with innovative, industry leading solutions.
Most WANs of today still use routers and technology that, at
the time, served a purpose and provided a mechanism to expand the network to
remote branches and locations across the world using MPLS or similar protocols.
But times have changed.
Traffic on WANs has increased by almost 10 fold in the last 15
years. T1 was “revolutionary” many years
ago, providing speeds of a blistering 1.5Mb/s. Today, this throughput is not going to make
the grade in 99% of WANs. Fiber, or
optical networks can reach speeds of over 100Gbps. It is like buying a new car every 5
years. You see the features and you
want them, as do network administrators.
So what is the “Intelligent Edge?”
First, what really is “the edge”? A definition from Wikipedia is “an edge
device provides an entry point into enterprise or service provider core
networks. It can be thought of as a
router that provides authenticated access to faster more efficient backbone and
core networks.” Essentially, “the
edge” of any network is thought of to be a place where you generate, collect,
and analyze data on the edge of the network where the data is generated rather
than in centralized servers and systems.
Computation is largely or completely performed on a distributed device
node known as smart device or edge device.
OK – so now we understand “what” the edge is, so what is the
“intelligent edge? As Wide Area
Networks grew and became more complicated with more and more devices being
attached, both hard wired, wireless and remote, the need for bandwidth
increased, dramatically.
Today – there are almost 24 Billion devices connected to the
internet with the expectation of 50 billion by 2020. Think of the “intelligent Edge” as a place
where computing occurs. It is
“intelligent” because there is technology there that has ability to control,
analyze and compute. This can be a
manufacturing floor, a farm crop field, a city, your home, power plant, sports
arena, your car, in the air, or under the sea.
These interrelated computing devices or objects are referred to as the
Internet of Things (IoT) and these devices are driving how and why the “intelligent
edge” is becoming a key focus for network managers. This
intelligent edge connects these devices, performs analytics, computes, and can
control actions that were formerly confined to the central or cloud based data
centers.
The usage and access demand is what is driving “edge”
technologies and solutions. It is much
better to access the information and data as close to the connection point as
possible.
On average, users have 5 different devices to attach to the
network. Of course they expect to
attach to a network and access the applications and data they need,
instantly. But this requires a network
with agility, flexibility and “intelligence” to understand where the requests
are coming from, how to manage the requests in the most efficient and effective
manner possible and to provide reliable connectivity which, after all, is why
sensors and monitors are being installed in machines such as wind turbines, to monitor
vibration, wear and operating effectiveness, and help prevent brownouts or
blackouts. However, without constant
and reliable connectivity, the data provided by these sensors would be “lost”.
The un-intelligent router in all its forms is struggling to
find relevance in this scenario. The availability of ethernet handoff is
killing the router business. They are trying hard to find relevance in this
scenario.
So where next for the “intelligent edge”?
As stated earlier, more and more devices are being connected
and more and more data being collected on a multitude of things to help
streamline decision making to prevent downtime or in the worst cases,
failure.
Networks of the future are going to be driven by the need
for instant information, instant decisions, and instant remediation. All of which is why the “intelligent edge”
will become a mainstream “product” in the design and implementation of ANY
network. Having said that, what does
this mean for networks of today, and what should the administrators plan for to
embrace these changes?
Let’s look at the current most important issues faced by
network administrators and how embracing intelligent edge devices will affect
how these issues might be dealt with.
Firstly – Security:
Many recent surveys suggest the number one issue faced by
network administrators worldwide is, security.
Security of data, whether in transmission or stored somewhere is
critical. We just have to look at the problems faced
with social media company data breaches, credit card company breaches and
others to know that data security is by far and away the number one issue. Can the “intelligent edge” help? Yes and no.
It is not the “edge’ that can prevent hacking, it is the underlying
software that transmits the data that is key.
The transmission of data across the network, from edge device or user to
data center to other devices, needs to be secure. Administrators need to deploy software
solutions that provide highly secure data transmission, and that includes data
from the edge. The intelligent edge,
does however, compute locally and provides a more local management issue, rather
than a broad network security issue.
Second:- Ease of
Management:
Believe it or not, the costs of recruiting, training,
certifying and managing skilled IT staff is becoming a major issue for any
business. The days of paying for
continuing education and propriety certification are waning. Today, administrators are looking for
solutions that are easy to manage, especially when devices and or offices are
remote. The Intelligent Edge should be
simple, easy to install and manage remotely, and for the most part, this is
true once the devices are installed.
Third: –
Compatibility with existing networks:
Organizations are reluctant to rip and replace their
networks. If a solution can augment
existing installations, administrators will look favorably at these
recommendations. So, does the
intelligent edge help with these decisions?
Certainly, as they can use existing infrastructure provided there is an
underlying software that can manage data transmission and device access
securely and reliably.
Fourth: – Network
performance:
Latency, bandwidth, reliability, duplication and overall
cost of the network are all top of mind.
Intelligent edge devices cannot perform or provide the benefits they
claim to bring to a business if the underlying network is slow, unreliable or
using legacy systems that are slow and difficult to manage or update. The Intelligent Edge is only going to be as
good as the network infrastructure it is connected to. The bottom line here is to make sure the
network is configured to take advantage of intelligent edge device data.
So now what?
The Intelligent Edge is certainly something that can help network
administrators predict the future more accurately. The more data these devices provide, the
better the decision will be on how to use this information, and with the advent
of AI, this information can be acted on immediately, providing “instant”
remediation or feedback that helps businesses learn what we like, when
equipment may malfunction, where to route data to avoid a line failure, how to
prepare for the best solution, and even where we might choose to travel to
next.
So just install intelligent edge devices and move
on? Stop! Read this first!
Earlier in this article, we mentioned the need for the
underlying network infrastructure to be “intelligent edge” ready. Remember, you can have all the sensors and
monitoring services available, but if the data they produce is not getting to
the right places at the right time, you are back to square one. Adding more devices or “edge services” does
not make network administration easier unless you have the right network
solution to take advantage of these benefits.
Without installing software solutions to monitor and manage
your edge devices, the “intelligent edge” becomes another user on the
network. In order to take advantage of
the many benefits the “intelligent edge” provides, you need to make sure your
network is ready.
It must be ready to:
Transmit data from all devices, including the intelligent edge devices, securely and effectively, without user intervention.
Proactively route data on the best available link in times of congestion
Automatically failover in a sub second if a connection should fail
Use all and available bandwidth proactively and intelligently, without having to reconfigure the network
Automatically detect and remediate attempts to breach the security of the network
Be managed easily and simply from a single point, with zero touch provisioning for remote branches.
FatPipe Networks has been providing network solutions for
over 15 years and is the only company with a patented security module that is
FIPS 140-2 certified, providing military grade security for traffic across the
WAN or across broadband networks.
FatPipe solutions give administrators the comfort of the highest SD-WAN
security available.
Fatpipe patented technologies have eliminated the need for
BGP routing, and with it all the delays in inefficiencies of route propagation.
Fatpipe brought intelligence to the edge.
Using FatPipe’s single pane GUI management tools,
administrators can not only see exactly what their network looks like, but with
FatPipe’s QoS, they can prioritize application access no matter where the
application resides, in the cloud or locally.
In addition, FatPipe’s solutions allow for load balancing over multiple
links, including Cable, DSL, MPLS, DIA, 3G, 4G, 5G LTE and satellite. FatPipe’s management tools are easy to use,
requiring basic IT skills saving companies’ significant time and IT staff
educational costs.
FatPipe has always been a company serving network administrators. FatPipe was providing WAN SD-WAN solutions long before SD-WAN became a buzz word. The solutions are built to work with existing LAN and WAN infrastructures and protocols. In fact, FatPipe is the only SD-WAN vendor to support up to 40Gbps bandwidth and up to 15 interfaces.
Organizations are looking at how to reduce the costs of WAN management and WAN optimization. With the advent of Cloud based applications for a private, public or hybrid cloud, businesses are searching for the best solution to help not only implement these changes, but to manage them as well. Here are three of the most important factors affecting WAN administration today:
Security: Without question, the most important factor affecting the implementation of any SD-WAN solution, is security. Our research revealed that security of applications hosted in the cloud and locally was paramount to IT administrators. But it is not only security of cloud based applications. Transmission across the WAN is equally important, especially for organizations with international operations.
Ease of Management: This gives rise to the second most important factor affecting WAN administrators. Administrator skills required to manage the WAN. Organizations cited that the need to have highly skilled, and in some cases, vendor certified personnel to manage their WAN equipment was costing too much, especially with on-going maintenance of proprietary systems and solutions. More than 50% of respondents stated that they have difficulty in retaining IT expertise, especially in today’s job market. Solutions that keep it simple, easy to manage and cost effective are preferred.
Compatibility with existing networks: Very few suppliers can claim to have a suite of offerings that can address the complex need to address security, ease of management of private and public cloud application needs and compatibility with existing networks. Rip and replace is not something WAN administrators want, or should do. There is growing need to upgrade, enhance and augment existing infrastructures, using the equipment and legacy systems to help implement a SD-WAN solution that is compatible with current networking technology and protocols such as BGP. EIGRP, and OSPF, and well as provide inbound and outbound load balancing and traffic control.
FatPipe offers its customers SD-WAN solutions with WAN Optimization and network optimization. These solutions are available as appliances, virtual machines (VMs) and instances in the Azure and AWS cloud.
FatPipe has always been a company serving network administrators. FatPipe was providing SD-WAN solutions long before SD-WAN became a buzz word. The solutions are built to work with existing LAN and WAN infrastructures and protocols. In fact, FatPipe is the only SD-WAN vendor to support up to 40Gbps bandwidth and up to 15 interfaces.
SD-WAN for Azure addresses connectivity issues for users of Microsoft Cloud based real time applications, such as Office 365.
FatPipe’s SD-WAN for Azure, an SD-WAN virtual machine enables Microsoft customers who use Office 365 and other cloud based applications by overcoming the need to reconnect every so often when the sessions break. This is especially important for customers and offices where large groups have to use Office 365 or other cloud-hosted applications, or when a single line connection to Azure is not adequate to address line drop issues.
Using FatPipe’s patented MPSec technology, multinational corporations, embassies and government agencies can use cloud-hosted applications knowing that their traffic is transmitted securely using FatPipe’s cryptographic module, FIPS 140-2, certified by NIST.
Delays and interruptions are reduced with FatPipe’s built in WAN optimization, reducing bandwidth needs and using FatPipe’s QoS gives priority to real time applications.
FatPipe for Azure provides real time Azure cloud offerings including Office 365, AI, Business Intelligence, Azure stream Analytics and Event Hubs where thousands of telemetry data have to be sent to the Azure Cloud. Using FatPipe for Azure, VoIP, video, data and VPN sessions are not dropped, but simply failover to other available lines.
A Global logistics company was looking to migrate real-time applications to Azure and improve performance for their Office 365 users. Using FatPipe’s SD-WAN for Azure, they made this migration securely and easily. “We have been a FatPipe partner for several years, providing connectivity for our customers. We are excited to deploy FatPipe SD-WAN in Azure as we execute on our cloud strategies with our customers” said Aneil Raghunanan, IT Project Manager.
At FatPipe we know the adoption of private and public cloud services has reset expectations of what enterprise UC/CC and networking IT teams must deliver. FatPipe SD-WAN aligns with most cloud strategies.
