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Network Connectivity and COVID-19

Network Connectivity and COVID-19

Yes, the COVID -19 virus has absolutely affected the global economy, and not in a good way. It has also forced businesses, especially essential businesses, to be creative in the way they may not have expected even a few weeks ago.

Working from Home

Employees working from home is not necessarily new, but the number of employees working remotely has dramatically increased, thanks to the stay at home call from officials and business owners globally. As a result, the demand for secure and most importantly, reliable connectivity, has never been more acute. So how has the modern-day business adapted? What are the essential needs for remote workers, and how does the WAN administrator of today deal with these significant changes?

Facts: More than 25% of businesses have not updated their work from home security policies in the past 5 years. Driven by the need for secure remote access, companies are scrambling to implement solutions that are robust, secure, and of course reliable. This dramatic increase in the need for remote secure and reliable connectivity has placed extraordinary demands on the carriers as well as network administrators, some of whom are also working from home.

“The spread of coronavirus and social distancing mandates have put many IT pros in a precarious, but necessary, position of having to quickly transition to a largely remote workforce”. (Jackie Crankshaw, Lifeboat Channel Chat, 03/27/2020). “With more employees working from home, cybercriminals have more access points to exploit networks”

Hacking is always a present danger, but in today’s environment, the chances for breach of a network have significantly increased. Network administrators must be wary of the security issues they now face, and have to accommodate the changing business environment, especially as more workers are connecting from home offices.

Secure connections for remote workers

There are plenty of choices out there, and VPN connections are, for the most part, a logical way to go. But what good is the VPN if the connection itself is less than reliable, or worse still, down.

The key to ensuring remote workers can do what they are asked to do and help keep businesses up and running is to have the data traffic be secure, and of course, reliable.

For example, Video conferencing and VoIP calls are bandwidth hogs, and with more and more remote workers using these methodologies to connect, the demand for reliability and continuity of call is paramount.

So how can businesses of today, with all the challenges of social distancing ensure their “connectivity” is reliable and secure?

Simply deploying a VPN is not the answer. Without the ability to manage the links, or lines coming into the HQ data center, the VPN tunnels from all the remote workers will suffer from congestion and in some cases, the link may drop all together. This defeats the remote worker purpose.

The best possible way to ensure reliable connectivity is to enable software driven networking solutions to manage the connections.

FatPipe Networks have been developing and deploying software driven network solutions for well over 20 years, and have 13 seminal patents that enable customers to design, customize and manage how their data traffic is managed across the network. This includes remote worker connectivity.

Road Warrior solutions from FatPipe Networks

In fact, FatPipe has had a remote worker solution for many years, FatPipe Road Warrior solutions, which give customers the ability to load balance the traffic across multiple links, as well as failover in a sub-second should a link degrade or fail completely.

The difference with FatPipe solutions is the seamless nature of how it works. Just set it and watch how the traffic is automatically directed by the FatPipe software. FatPipe Road Warrior solutions allow customers to enable as many VPN tunnels (Fatpipe has tested to over 9,000 simultaneous connections) as necessary, and use any link type, including copper, fiber, wireless (3G;4G;5G; LTE) and satellite to load balance and failover when the demand requires.

In today’s disrupted business environment, knowing your connectivity is reliable, secure and manageable is critical. FatPipe Networks has been in the market for over 20 years and has recently received a Gartner Peer Review rating of 4.9 out of 5, taking the top spot in recommendations from customers as a best of breed SD-WAN solution.

If you have employees working from home, students learning “on line”, citizens trying to get information from their local city council, or just want to be able to manage data traffic coming into the network, then FatPipe must be a solution worth exploring.

Call FatPipe Networks today – 801-683-5656 ask for sales.

www.fatpipeinc.com

Not all SD-WAN solutions solve the problem

Buy SD-WAN – it will solve your network issues and improve your efficiencies. Really? How often have you been approached by an IT solution provider who represents a particular vendor’s product and convinces you that it will solve your problem? You trust them and buy their solution only to find it can only do 50% of you need it do.

This is very common in today’s market. Most WAN administrators want very simple things. A network that works efficiently, securely, and “autonomously” so that they can concentrate on delivering applications to their user base that help drive company profits.

So why is it so challenging to implement Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) solutions that work as desired? Research has shown that a large percentage of SD-WAN solutions deployed are either re-tooled or worst case – removed because they have not met specific needs.

Don’t buy the Hype!

Marketing plays a significant role in decisions made. Certain features and functions are marketed to solve business needs, but savvy administrators do not buy the hype. They require suppliers to prove effectiveness of the recommended solution.

Here is where the rubber meets the road.

Businesses will do Proof of Concept, and it is usually a good way to determine if the products will solve the problems. Or is it? Only if your POC has been designed to show you how the solution solves the “real” problem, not mask it with fancy screens showing how it “may” solve it without really getting to the bottom of the issue. The pressure to close the sale is always the driving force.

The truth is, most vendors want to help you solve your network problems. However, there is a flood of opportunists who simply want to make some cash. Simply put – software-defined network solutions should be simple to understand, simple to implement and above all, simple to manage!

Key Issues Facing Administrators

Now it is well known that businesses are most wary of the security of their data flowing across their network. How can they ensure that this traffic is secure from origin to destination and back? What about cloud-based applications, the internet as a reliable link, back up off-premise, and application performance? Can SD-WAN provide a comprehensive solution to ALL the issues, not just a subset?

Firewall companies will sell an SD-WAN solution, router companies will sell an SD-WAN solution, and ISPs will sell an SD-WAN solution. Which is right for your business?

It is all about the “S”

It is the “S” in SD-WAN that is critical to decision making. Without a comprehensive, integrated and simple to manage software suite, your SD-WAN may look a little like a cobbled together smorgasbord of hardware and software that is frequently difficult to navigate, difficult to remediate issues and impossible to customize. To exacerbate the problem – you need to retrain your IT staff, get new certifications or worse still, hire expensive administrators. And just wait until you have to upgrade! What happened to the SD-WAN that will solve my problems and be much more efficient?

The best approach to an SD-WAN solution is to focus your research and effort on the “S”. It is the software that drives the management of traffic on your network, not the hardware. It is the software that will give your business the flexibility and control required to ensure your data is secure, no matter which link is used, or where it is destined, and it is the software that will allow simple and easy to manage traffic management.

So, the software MUST be able to work on multiple platforms, virtual machines, large or small edge devices, and provide the user with a simple, easy to understand and use interface that provides a complete view of your entire network to enable effective traffic management.

It really is about Traffic Management

After all, it is about traffic management, isn’t it? The software you choose (the SD-WAN solution you choose) will determine the security, flexibility, reliability, and performance of your network. Can you afford NOT to look at the best of breed “S”?

FatPipe Networks have been developing networking solutions for over 20 years and were the first to sell “SD-WAN” into the market, even before SD-WAN became a buzz word. FatPipe’s software suite is unmatched in the industry with a comprehensive solution that addresses security, reliability, performance, compatibility and most importantly, is simple to install and easy to manage! Regarded as “best of breed SD-WAN” FatPipe works with any link type, including cable, wireless, 3G, 4G, 5G, LTE, satellite, broadband, and legacy systems such as BGP.

If you are serious about the “S” in SD-WAN, you must include FatPipe Networks in your evaluations.