How can SD-WAN help UK businesses?

All over the world, businesses are exploring ways in which they can move their IT into the cloud. This trend has gathered pace to the point that, according to Forbes, as much as 80% of enterprise IT will be in the cloud by 2025.

One popular method of embracing the possibilities of cloud is SD-WAN (Software-Defined WAN), where software and the cloud combine to deliver wireless connectivity to a range of locations. The global SD-WAN market is expected to be worth as much as £30billion by 2030 - but the implementation and benefits of it aren’t as clear-cut as they might seem.

In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at how SD-WAN works, what UK-based businesses can get out of it, and why SD-WAN on its own doesn’t represent a catch-all solution for network management.

SD-WAN: the basics.

In a nutshell, SD-WAN relieves the burden of network management and functionality duties from the branch routers a business will host on-premise, and moves it into virtualised software that operates in the cloud. Using software to optimise connectivity and resiliency, networks operate in a simpler, more reliable way.

The benefits that businesses can enjoy when deploying SD-WAN include (but are not necessarily limited to):

• Stronger architecture: connections between branch and cloud are more secure and perform better when run through the Internet
• Easier management: software-based management functionality, allied to a simplified network, makes network oversight clearer and less stressful
• Distributed business support: when businesses operate a network with offices and workers in different locations, SD-WAN supports more resilient and reliable connectivity