SD-WAN
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SD-WAN: A Smarter Way to Connect Your Business
Bigger Pipes. Smarter Traffic. Better Connectivity.
Today’s businesses are moving more data than ever.
Cloud applications, Voice over IP, video meetings, AI applications, security systems, POS platforms, remote users and critical business applications are all competing for network resources.
Simply buying more bandwidth isn’t always the answer.
SD-WAN—Software-Defined Wide Area Networking—helps businesses intelligently manage how that bandwidth is used.
Strategic Technology Team can help design the complete solution—from the internet connections at each location to the SD-WAN technology that intelligently manages the traffic across them.
What Is SD-WAN?
Think of traditional internet connectivity as building a bigger highway.
More bandwidth gives you more lanes.
SD-WAN adds the intelligence that helps decide which traffic should use those lanes, which traffic gets priority, and which available connection provides the best path.
Instead of treating every application and every data packet exactly the same, SD-WAN can recognize different types of network traffic and apply policies based on what’s most important to your business.
A voice call, for example, is extremely sensitive to latency, jitter and packet loss. A routine software update isn’t.
Why should they receive the same priority?
With the right SD-WAN architecture, they don’t have to.
Prioritize What Matters
SD-WAN can help businesses establish policies that prioritize critical applications and intelligently use available bandwidth.
Depending on the platform and network design, that can include:
- Voice over IP
- Video conferencing
- Cloud applications
- Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace
- POS and payment applications
- CRM and business applications
- Security systems
- AI applications
- File transfers and backups
- Guest Wi-Fi and general internet traffic
Your network can be designed to understand which applications matter most and make intelligent decisions about how traffic should move.
It’s not just more bandwidth. It’s smarter bandwidth.
Put Multiple Connections to Work
This is where SD-WAN becomes especially powerful.
A location might have fiber from one provider, broadband from another, and potentially cellular, fixed wireless or satellite connectivity as an additional path.
Rather than allowing those connections to simply sit independently, an SD-WAN solution can be designed to monitor available network paths and intelligently use them based on performance and business policies.
If one connection experiences problems, properly configured SD-WAN can redirect traffic to another available path.
If an application requires low latency or high priority, policies can determine how that traffic should be handled.
And when larger bandwidth connections are available, businesses can take advantage of that capacity while maintaining greater control over how it’s being used.
From Traditional WAN to Software-Defined Networking
Businesses once depended heavily on private networks such as Frame Relay and MPLS to connect multiple locations.
Those technologies served businesses well, but today’s environment has changed.
Applications have moved to the cloud. Employees work from more places. Bandwidth requirements have increased dramatically. Businesses rely on SaaS, video, voice and AI applications that frequently communicate directly with resources outside the traditional corporate network.
SD-WAN gives organizations a more flexible way to build their wide-area network using the connectivity that makes the most sense at each location.
That could include:
Fiber + Broadband + Wireless + SD-WAN
instead of depending entirely on a single traditional private network architecture.
We Don’t Represent Just One SD-WAN Solution
This is an important difference.
Strategic Technology Team isn’t limited to one carrier or one SD-WAN platform.
Through our technology-provider relationships, we have access to leading SD-WAN, networking, connectivity and security providers.
That means we can start with your requirements instead of starting with a particular product.
Tell us:
Where are your locations?
What applications are important?
What connectivity do you have today?
What level of redundancy and performance do you need?
What are you trying to improve?
Then let us go to work.
We can evaluate available providers, technologies and architectures and help determine the solution that provides the right combination of performance, reliability, simplicity and cost.
One Location or Hundreds
SD-WAN can be valuable for a growing organization with several offices or a large enterprise managing hundreds of locations.
Restaurants, franchises, retail organizations, healthcare groups, professional offices and distributed businesses can be especially good candidates because every location needs connectivity—but managing dozens or hundreds of individual internet connections can become a major administrative burden.
Strategic Technology Team can help standardize the approach while still selecting the best available connectivity for individual locations.
One site might have one fiber provider.
Another might have a different carrier.
A third may require broadband or wireless connectivity.
The underlying connections can be different while the SD-WAN architecture creates a consistent way to manage the network.
Simplify Multiple Providers and Multiple Locations
Managing a distributed network shouldn’t require your accounting or IT department to chase dozens of providers, contracts, invoices and support numbers.
Depending on the solution and providers selected, Strategic Technology Team can explore options that can help simplify administration, including:
- Multi-location network design
- Multiple carrier sourcing
- Consolidated or simplified billing options
- White-label solutions where appropriate
- Centralized network management
- Standardized deployments
- Installation coordination
- Project management
- Ongoing provider support and escalation
Instead of trying to assemble the pieces yourself, we can help coordinate the entire solution.
Connectivity + SD-WAN + Security
Modern networking doesn’t stop with SD-WAN.
Strategic Technology Team can also help organizations evaluate solutions that combine connectivity with cloud-managed networking and security technologies such as SASE and other secure networking architectures.
The objective is to create a network that supports the way your organization actually works today—and can grow as your requirements change.
Give Us the Locations. We’ll Help Design the Network.
You don’t need to know which SD-WAN provider to choose.
You don’t need to determine which carrier belongs at every location.
And you don’t need to call multiple providers trying to assemble the solution yourself.
That’s our job.
Give Strategic Technology Team your locations, current environment and business requirements.
We’ll help research available connectivity, compare leading SD-WAN solutions, evaluate pricing and architecture, and put together options designed around your organization.
One Network. Multiple Locations. Smarter Connectivity.
Tell us where you need to connect. We’ll help build the solution.