Tag Archives: software defined

01 Oct

SD-WAN can jump start digital transformation initiatives

SD-WANs can jump start digital transformation initiatives

ZK Research data shows that 94% of companies have at least one digital transformation initiative underway. The research firm also found that a shocking 75% of CxOs admittedly do not know what their industry will look like or who their competitors will be in five years. This means that success in the digital era isn’t based on the company that has the lowest prices, best products, or even the top people.

Sustaining a market leading position is predicated being agile and having the ability to quickly adapt the business to seize new opportunities faster than the competition. The digital era is Darwinism at its finest – it’s the most adaptable that survives and the rest are fodder for the winners. This is why the transition to digital is at the top of every CxOs priority list.

While the concept of becoming digital makes sense, executing a plan to transform can be quite intimidating for most organizations, particularly well established businesses that haven’t relied on technology in the past, as there’s a perception that digital transformation requires big moonshot-like initiatives and investments.  Retailers believe they need to Amazon over night while taxi and car service companies want to Uber up. The fact is, while there is urgency, there’s no need to try and make that hard pivot overnight.  In fact, moonshots often fail and business and technology leaders need to understand that digital transformation is more about executing manageable chip shots rather than complex moonshots.

The chip shot reference should make it clear that I’m an avid golfer and I’ll extend the analogy further by pointing out digital transformation should be done one shot at a time and SD-WANs can facilitate that. For example, a bank might put a futuristic plan together for “digital banking” that involves a number of new technologies, such as virtual reality, digital signs, Internet of Things, digital mirrors and other advanced technology.  One might look at the end game and find the journey so daunting that it paralyzes them.

A better way to approach this type of digital plan is through a series of smaller initiatives where the deployments can be controlled and managed the ROI easily calculated. For example, the bank may choose to put video terminals in an office at all branch locations, allowing customers to talk directly to product experts, even if that branch has no local personnel with that knowledge base. This is a small, manageable change that’s easy to implement with a measurable ROI.  Without video, experts travel from branch to branch limiting the number of appointments per day to just a few.  With video, product experts can be available all day long giving the bank the ability to sell more products to more people.

What does SD-WAN have to do with this?  The answer is everything! We live in a customer experience driven world where a good customer experience leads to loyalty and a higher share of wallet.  A bad experience will drive customers away, perhaps never to return. One interesting factoid that supports this, comes from ZK Research, which found that two-thirds of millennials changed loyalties to a brand in 2018 because of a single bad experience.

Here is where a little SD-WAN will pay big dividends as video requires a high quality, low latency and jitter free network. Imagine being in a bank, sitting a high end customer down in front of a terminal only to experience a horrible video experience. That customer may never try and service again.  Instead of fueling customer acquisition might be chasing them away.  Also, the bank may be less likely to recommend it, giving the impression the project was a waste.

The key takeaway here is that success with digital transformation is dependent on network modernization, particularly the WAN where bandwidth isn’t a bountiful commodity. Businesses require an agile, secure and dynamic network capable of supporting whatever applications are deployed.  Legacy WANs cannot support digital businesses, but SD-WANs are built from the ground up with agility and flexibility in mind. With the banking example, the video service requires flawless connectivity and SD-WANs can automate the process of prioritizing traffic or reserving bandwidth to ensure the quality remains high. When the call is over, the reservation on bandwidth needs to be removed to not impact other applications. These processes on a legacy network, using manual processes are slow, time consuming and error prone and will likely lead to application problems. SD-WANs make this touch free.

The digital era has arrived and IT leaders need to be prepared.  This requires agility and dynamism at the network layer as it’s the resource that connects everything. SD-WANs create a foundation that enables businesses to accelerate their digital efforts.

FatPipe Networks have been developing and innovating SD-WAN solutions for 18 years.  For the best of breed SD-WAN solutions, call FatPipe today at 801-683-5656.  FatPipe Networks www.fatpipeinc.com

 

 

26 Jul

12 Attributes of a Best of Breed SD-WAN

12 Attributes of a Best of Breed SD-WAN Solution & Why You Need One for Secure Traffic Management

SD-WAN is really about traffic management.   Sure, zero touch deployment is not necessarily a traffic management solution, but the reason software is driving WAN deployments and configurations is simply that it is capable of managing your data links and traffic across these links.

Network Security

Extensive research has established that security is the number one issue faced by WAN administrators.  Hosting your data in the cloud, hybrid cloud or on premise has created the need for highly secure traffic management between users and your data.   There are a lot of SD-WAN solutions out there that claim to have the capabilities to manage this traffic securely, but not all SD-WAN is the same.

If you think security, firewalls are part of the conversation.   Firewalls are designed to detect and prevent intrusion, but are not WAN traffic management devices.   Traditional Routers are designed to route traffic over multiple links, but have been complicated to install and definitely complicated to manage.

SD-WAN has certainly disrupted the traditional networking industry and today, software managing your data traffic is becoming much more commonplace.   For SD-WAN to be successful in today’s complicated networks, it must be simple to install and, above all, simple to use and administrate.   It must be able to run on popular hypervisors, be compatible with cloud infrastructures and understand multiple link types, including legacy systems, such as BGP networks, as well as the less expensive and ubiquitous broadband networks.

So how does the WAN administrator find the best SD-WAN solution when there is so much choice and marketing hype?   Understanding the features and functions of pure SD-WAN is important, especially when it comes to security of your data.

Best of breed SD-WAN solutions will come with the following features:

  1. Easy to install
  2. Support ALL link types (existing legacy systems (BGP) as well as Internet, satellite, 3G,4G,5G, LTE, cable)
  3. Support multiple links in one device (up to 12 interfaces is not uncommon)
  4. Support bandwidth ranges from 10Mb up to 40 Gig.
  5. Provide secure management of BOTH inbound and outbound traffic.
  6. Allow customization and assignment of application traffic on certain links with instant failover
  7. Ability to determine healthy links instantly, which allows for instant failover, of BOTH inbound and outbound traffic. This usually means the methodology used to test the links is very important.  Ask what algorithms the software uses to test the links.
  8. Cloud support with emphasis on secure traffic transmission and instant failover capabilities to multiple link types.
  9. Zero touch branch deployment
  10. Options to host or outsource to MSP
  11. Opex or Capex offerings
  12. Most important! Easy to use management tool!   It must provide a simple to use traffic management tool that allows for quick, easy and intuitive changes to any link or application traffic not matter where that application or link is located on the WAN.   You should NOT have to retrain your IT staff or pay for certified staff to manage your SD-WAN implementation.

Of course, this is not a comprehensive list, but if you are looking for an SD-WAN solution to sustain your systems for some time to come, you need to consider each of the features above and map them to your long-term plan.  Remember, security is the number one issue, so do not look at any SD-WAN solution that cannot provide selective encrypted data flow across the network, and preferably choose solutions that incorporate stateful firewall IDS/IPS features.    SD-WAN will definitely benefit the efficiency of your network, but do not settle for limited capabilities, knowing that your user count will increase and your network will expand.

FatPipe Networks has been developing and selling SD-WAN solutions for over 17 years, and are widely known as the “inventors” of SD-WAN.   The software suite is extremely comprehensive, but what is most talked about is the easy to use interface, EnterpriseView™ – which is a single pane view of the network allowing administrators easy access and with simple to understand menus, administrators can make changes to traffic management, no matter the destination, starting point or route taken.

FatPipe Networks encryption is FIPS 140-2 certified, making it the only SD-WAN vendor with an encryption module approved by government agencies.  To add to the security capabilities, FatPipe recently announced firewall support next generation firewall IPS/IDS features allowing users the luxury of having a highly secure traffic management solution with integrated firewalling.

FatPipe’s comprehensive SD-WAN suite is unique in the industry especially its patented SmartDNS™ which provides customers with INBOUND fail-over capabilities, not seen in other SD-WAN offerings.   FatPipe also provides industry leading policy-based routing, giving administrators the ability to set thresholds based on common network issues, such as latency, jitter, and packet loss that will trigger if certain user defined conditions are met, ensuring data is not lost or compromised due to congestion or other link issues.

FatPipe is certainly a top contender if you are seriously considering SD-WAN or are upgrading your current network solution.  Call FatPipe today at 1-801-683-5656 x 1224.

www.fatpipeinc.com

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29 May

LTE Intelligent Edge device from FatPipe now available

FatPipe Announces General Availability of Integrated LTE to its Intelligent Edge SD-WAN Devices

FatPipe technology allows for seamless failover of sessions including VoIP to LTE without dropping sessions.

MAY 22, 2019 (Salt Lake City) FatPipe Networks, the inventors and multiple patents holder of key SD-WAN technologies, announced the availability of integrated LTE as a WAN option in its intelligent edge SD-WANs.  This innovation is designed to assist small branches in having a back up to their fixed line solutions. In addition, customers can also use multiple 4G/LTE connections in locations where they do not have fixed line options.

FatPipe’s SD-WAN provides automatic failover and intelligent load balancing from one line to another without dropping a session or VPN connection. This ensures that a session or a VoIP call is not dropped when a line fails and the session is carried over to another line.

“This is of great value to retail and financial institutions as they do not have to re-start a session or double charge a customer by mistake,” said Dr. Ragula Bhaskar, CEO of FatPipe, “FatPipe’s LTE option has been available to early adoption customers for a year and now we are formally announcing the general availability. FatPipe is also 5G ready.”

FatPipe’s Integration of LTE into its Intelligent Edge SD-WAN leverages three of FatPipe’s previous innovations:

  1. FatPipe’s superior patented SD-WAN technology enables data to be placed on a single line and failed over seamlessly to a second line without dropping the session or packets vs other SD-WAN technologies that either drop the sessions and have to be re-started or have to duplicate the packets on two lines, which places undue burden on bandwidth by double bandwidth needs. Such duplication technology is especially detrimental to LTE and 4G transmissions.
  2. FatPipe’s patented Dynamic IP addressing scheme technology, which can use dynamic (not fixed)  IP addresses of LTE and aggregate the line with a fixed IP. This reduces monthly costs, especially for LTE cards. 
  3. FatPipe WAN Optimization reduces the amount of data transmitted by 40% to 90%,  further reducing LTE costs.

FatPipe’s SD-WAN solutions simplify multi-vendor interoperability and include key features that transcend WAN failures to maintain business continuity, including zero-touch branch deployment, hybrid WAN connectivity, tuned application performance, easy integration, granular network visibility, multi-path security, secure full mesh VPN connectivity and flexible centralized policy deployments.

“FatPipe’s intelligent edge with 4G directly addresses market demand in our customer base,” said Dante Passalacqua, “FatPipe’s unparalleled SD-WAN with an integrated modem further simplifies the ease of deployment and creates a cost-effective solution for our customers, especially in retail. We are pleased that FatPipe is very responsive to market needs; FatPipe makes it easy for us to offer our customers the best in class solutions.”

About FatPipe Networks

FatPipe Networks invented the concept of software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) and hybrid WANs that eliminate the need for hardware and software, or cooperation from ISPs and allows companies and service providers to control multi-link network traffic. FatPipe currently has 11 U.S. patents and more than 180 technology claims related to multipath, software-defined networking and selective encryption of broadband networks. FatPipe technology provides the world’s best intra-corporate wide area network solutions that transcend Internet and other network failures to maintain business continuity and high transmission security. FatPipe, with several thousand customers, has offices in the United States and around the world, and more than 700 resellers worldwide including almost all national resellers in the US. For more information, visit www.fatpipe.com.