ADTRAN recently announced a new SD-WAN solution designed to help small to medium businesses (SMBs) and distributed enterprises take advantage of cloud-based networking while keeping existing voice and security solutions in place to make the transition easier, faster, and more affordable.
“The benefits of SD-WAN are now available to more than just the large enterprise,” said Rajesh Ghai, IDC’s carrier network infrastructure research director. “With this move toward mainstream within the distributed enterprise and the SMB market, service providers now have lower costs, quicker installations and will lessen the real business impacts of the migration to SD-WAN. This market presents a compelling business opportunity for service providers that hasn’t been fully addressed yet but needs to be as more companies look for SD-WAN solutions to move their companies forward.”
The ADTRAN SD-WAN platform provides outbound and inbound quality of service (QoS), seamless connectivity and control of cloud applications as well as voice services, the company said. “The solution automatically detects business-critical and performance-sensitive traffic without having to manually set up policies as with first-generation SD-WAN solutions. This capability enables all future cloud applications to integrate into the business without manual intervention. Additionally, the SD-WAN solution delivers end-to-end visibility, measuring each connection from any location on the network, all along its path, to ADTRAN gateways at any other location. Further, by identifying application traffic in real time, it can detect and automatically adjust based on the performance needs of the applications currently in use.”
The company emphasizes that its solution is not like many edge-based or firewall-based SD-WAN solutions: “This improved SD-WAN cloud supports active-active WAN links, inbound QoS, single IP failover and a cloud gateway component for control of cloud-based content. It also includes multiple gateways across the continental U.S. and has its own redundant backbone between gateways, upstream feeds at each gateway, and connections for each customer location to two gateways for failover protection. Additionally, service providers have the option to move the cloud software to their data centers when they are ready—providing flexibility to roll out SD-WAN quickly by leveraging the new ADTRAN SD-WAN cloud solution.”
Chris Thompson, ADTRAN’s director of software products and solutions, added that the company’s “software expertise and long history partnering with service providers to serve SMBs and distributed enterprises enables us to make networking and connectivity far beyond the limitations of legacy hardware-based solutions. By enabling businesses to realize the benefits of cloud networking while maintaining their existing voice and security services, we’re empowering service providers to quickly expand and grow their SD-WAN footprint. Businesses can now make the move to a cloud-based service offering with less cost, risk and disruption.”