Why SD-WAN Managed Services Are a Smart Investment
Today, many organizations need to be cautious when it comes to technology.
Not only can adopting a new technology cause confusion (employee training) and disruption (costly downtime), but most companies are being a little more careful about their spending and their pocketbook.
But SD-WAN technology is different. It’s a proven technology that, for nearly every application, is simply better than MPLS. And the companies that want to manage their own SD-WAN are limited in number.
Managed SD-WAN providers can be a solid investment. Let’s take a look at why you may want to allocate some of your budget toward SD-WAN managed services.
1. You can improve the overall speed, reliability and latency of your network.
SD-WAN is faster. Through SD-WAN technology, you have complete control over your internal network. It can be configured, analyzed and optimized for the best performance. And your managed services provider is going to be able to go over all the nuts and bolts of your network to regularly audit its performance and bring it in line with what you need. The enhanced visibility through SD-WAN provides for optimization that would never be possible under an older technology.
2. You can reduce the amount of work your internal IT team has to do to keep your services running.
With managed SD-WAN providers, your internal IT team really doesn’t have to do anything at all. Your MSP can handle any networking-related trouble tickets (or even take over your help desk entirely). Any changes to the configuration you need, the MSP can handle. And, if your system goes down or is in trouble, it’s your MSP who is going to notice first and address the problem. Altogether, SD-WAN services can free your internal IT team up for other activities.
3. You can easily scale your organization and adopt new technologies.
SD-WAN makes it easier to integrate new technology. It also futureproofs your system; SD-WAN is the way of the future, so rather than investing in a system that you will need to replace eventually, you can invest in a system that can be continually upgraded with ease. Your organization will be able to scale up swiftly, simply by configuring new utilities.
Once you’ve developed your main infrastructure, it’s easy to drop in new components to your SD-WAN network. For an MPLS network, this is much more difficult, both in terms of the initial configuration and integration and in terms of the continued costs.
4. You will reduce the total cost of your networking system and your system maintenance.
In general, an SD-WAN system is cheaper to maintain and cheaper to upgrade and update, even if it does have a cost associated with the adoption and the transition. By using managed SD-WAN providers, you can save even more money; you’ll be able to reduce the load on your internal IT team or even remove your internal team altogether. If you can an MSP who can handle absolutely everything for you, you may not need to worry about internal IT at all.
5. Your customers and your employees will see measurable improvements in your business.
Your system is going to be faster and more reliable. This is something both customers and employees will see. Customers will benefit from consistent service; from always being able to get what they need from your company and from seeing that your company is reliable and with limited downtime. This is especially important for any company that delivers services through the cloud, such as document management.
Employees will be less frustrated and more empowered. They won’t spend their time bogged down in slow data transfer rates or otherwise fighting with the system. When employees are able to get their job done more effectively, they are more productive. They are also less likely to look up self-service solutions (such as their own cloud server or Dropbox) that could potentially mitigate security efforts.
SD-WAN Managed Services vs. SD-WAN-as-a-Service: What is Managed SD-WAN?
When you choose SD-WAN, you can acquire it through SD-WAN Managed Services (or Managed SD-WAN) or SD-WAN-as-a-Service.
It may sound similar, but it’s an important distinction to make. SD-WAN-as-a-Service provides you with the software-defined infrastructure to manage your own network. While they will provide very basic troubleshooting services (if the system is down altogether), they aren’t going to help you with things like installation, configuration, management or monitoring. That all falls on you.
So, when we talk about managed SD-WAN providers, we’re talking about SD-WAN managed services — not SD-WAN-as-a-Service. SD-WAN-a-a-S is more affordable but also more internally resource-intensive.
The bottom line: SD-WAN is the newest and most stable technology. While there are still some applications for MPLS, it’s largely defunct.
Not convinced? Want to learn more? You can learn everything you need to know about SD-WAN managed services through the expert consultants at Red River. Contact us today to find out more.
