Many in the industry are buzzing about the emergence of SD-WAN. While the concept is really exciting in that it can dramatically increase internet uptime, not all implementations of it are created equal.
First, let's cover the benefits. Having worked with internet service providers (ISP) for decades, we at Solve iT are excited about the ability we have with this technology to now hold them accountable for their Service Level Agreements. If they promise a certain amount of uptime, then they should live up to that. When the SD-WAN appliance checks on circuit availability 5 times every second, it can then provide meaningful reports to help with ISP management.
But, that is only the start. What is even more important is that now we can provide Quality of Service (QoS) over the internet and prioritize voice and cloud application traffic. This provides a huge benefit when implementing any sort of cloud technology. In fact it removes the primary reason for not adopting cloud. Choppy voice calls are thing of the past.
The technology Solve iT has adopted removes dependence on a single carrier by aggregating multiple carriers into a single connection outside of the firewall. Further, Big Leaf overcomes another traditional problem by supplying it's own IP addresses. This means that no matter the inbound carrier, internally hosted applications (email, web sites, etc.) are fully functional even in the event of an outage.
To take this one step further, all sessions are maintained during an outage. Basically, you can continue your hosted voice conversation along with VPN connections because they transfer from carrier to carrier seamlessly. It's truyly amazing stuff.
If you'd like to learn more, please join Solve iT, Big Leaf, and Spectrum for a Lunch-N-Learn event on September 20th, at Upstream in Charlotte. Click here to view a short video or Register for the event.