Why financial and service organizations choose SD-WAN over MPLS
The struggle is real: Traffic levels surge. The network strains to keep up.
As more employees, customers, devices and applications compete for shared network resources, legacy wide-area network (WAN) technologies have been slow to adapt. Prioritizing data at the application level is difficult and requires highly technical expertise, making them increasingly expensive to manage and maintain.
Enter software-defined wide-area networking. SD-WAN puts the power of total network visibility and centralized control in IT leaders’ hands with a virtualized network overlay that makes bandwidth more reliable. It allows you to manage, scale and rapidly adjust your network to meet changing business needs and growing customer expectations.
How can SD-WAN restore the balance of network power for your organization? Read on.
Cloud-First, Future-Forward
SD-WAN transfers control of your network from traditional hardware to a centralized, cloud-based software. Its architecture is transport agnostic, meaning your network will be able to carry traffic over all kinds of links: broadband Internet, Ethernet, 4G, LTE and MPLS, and more. That flexibility also lets you cost-effectively and efficiently mix and match according to the type and priority of traffic moving on your network. Even better, SD-WAN’s centralized management gives you end-to-end control over your WAN—and that results in greater resiliency.
But for industries like financial and professional services, one of the biggest benefits is SD-WAN’s built-in (not bolted-on) security measures, like VPN connections and encryptions. With full visibility into every endpoint, threats are detected and prevented faster, security patches and updates are deployed remotely, and you’re able to more easily meet increasing data compliance requirements.
Identify the Right Network Link
To capitalize on all of the efficiency gains you’ll get with SD-WAN, the next step is choosing the right underlying transport links to move your data securely and efficiently.
Multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) is a popular routing technique for enterprise-level WANs. Developed in the 1990s, it sends information via a private network partitioned from the public Internet. MPLS:
- Is a secure and reliable way to transmit packets, but also a pricey one. With Internet users increasingly interested in bandwidth-hogging applications like video streaming and virtual reality, its high per-megabit cost can be prohibitive.
- Is well suited to traditional hardware-based networks, but expensive and inflexible in the face of dynamic high-bandwidth demands and rapid cloud adoption.
- Has long, manually intensive deployment times that can affect your ability to scale.
SD-WAN combined with Ethernet virtual private line (EVPL) is a compelling alternative to MPLS. Here’s why:
- EVPL provides private point-to-multipoint connectivity between locations over an MPLS network.
- It offers low latency, high throughput and private connectivity. And with shared network infrastructure and limited distance costs, EVPL’s SLA comes at a much lower cost per megabit than MPLS.
- It delivers the power of Ethernet along with the agility, end-to-end visibility and control of software-defined networking.
Choose Your Network Migration Strategy
Whether you’re migrating from MPLS to EVPL, or choosing a different connectivity link for SD-WAN, you have three options to get there.
- Augment your MPLS with EVPL and public Internet. With this option, you can increase bandwidth without blowing your budget. Many IT managers will opt to route sensitive traffic over MPLS’s secure tunnel while letting the rest run over the less expensive public Internet link, combatting both cost and security concerns.
- “Rip and replace” MPLS with EVPL and public Internet. Like so many technologies before it, MPLS was once the “next big thing” in networking. But replacing your entire network architecture for each “next big thing” is inefficient, time-consuming and costly. Instead, integrate. When designed correctly, newer technologies like EVPL and SD-WAN can coexist with your legacy systems. That’s where an experienced IT partner like Frontier comes in.
- Most companies prefer to phase migration from MPLS to EVPL and public Internet as budget allows. This lets you and your IT partner evaluate and design your WAN transformation, accounting for all the things on your must-have list: branch security, connections to cloud applications, IaaS and even mobile access in various stages of your migration. The beauty of SD-WAN is that your IT team gains a single-pane-of-glass view into your entire network ecosystem.
Whichever option you choose, your network will take a big step forward from your current MPLS.
The Bottom Line
The truth is, it just isn’t cost effective or efficient to rely on traditional MPLS networks for today’s exploding bandwidth demands. With SD-WAN, your organization can manage, scale and rapidly adjust to changing business conditions, improve network performance and reduce overall infrastructure costs. And SD-WAN can aggregate both an MPLS and Internet connection, meaning you get a robust, redundant and lower-cost solution that doesn’t compromise on security, reliability or performance.
Simplify the way you network with Managed SD-WAN
Call 888.575.9198 to learn more about Frontier’s IT solutions for service firms or request a live demo of Frontier Managed SD-WAN.
