by Erik Knight, CEO, SimpleWAN
Real SD-WAN is about cyber security and management of the LANs. Anyone who says otherwise is probably unfamiliar with the technology or is from one of those hybrid WAN providers who likes to pretend that WAN optimization is the same thing as SD-WAN.
Real SD-WAN provides a firewall. There is lots of talk out there about how various SD-WANs provide a firewall solution, but most of them are just augmenting existing firewalls. They aren’t delivering the complete package and they make it seem like they are. SD-WAN solutions that don’t deliver a firewall simply optimize the WAN and sit in front of the existing firewall so they have no visibility into the LAN.
OK, but what’s wrong with that?
The problem is that these hybrid WAN solutions masked as true SD-WAN are fine for right now. They do what you need today. But businesses will be ripping their systems apart in a few years when they realize that they need a long-term solution for intelligent security. In a few years, businesses will want the full package of a solution like SimpleWAN’s SD-WAN 2.0, but they’ll have realized that they opted for the short-term band aid. The parallel to hosted VoIP works here, again, to understand how we’ve all seen this before:
When hosted VoIP came out, it was the pure solution for cloud-based voice. Providers emerged offering SIP trunks with existing PBXs as a workaround so businesses didn’t have to go full hosted VoIP. Many businesses opted for that workaround and realized their mistake later on down the road when SIP trunks weren’t able to provide everything pure hosted VoIP could. The long-term play was hosted VoIP. Today’s long-term play is real SD-WAN – SD-WAN 2.0.
SimpleWAN’s SD-WAN 2.0 is the solution that encompasses the full package: cyber security, firewall, managed Wifi, compliance, and more. If you aren’t getting all the network tools you need for visibility into the LANs and the industry’s most advanced security, you aren’t getting real SD-WAN.
Contact SimpleWAN today to make sure you’re getting the real thing.
