Business Imperative
May 2015
Prepared by:
Zeus Kerravala
A Software-Defined WAN Is a Business Imperative
by Zeus Kerravala
May 2015
Almost every IT and business leader today is focused on creating a more agile
business. The ability to adapt immediately to business climate changes is now
the basis for competitive advantage, and it will determine which companies will
thrive and leapfrog their competitors and which ones will face becoming
irrelevant. However, business agility cannot be achieved without having an agile
IT infrastructure to enable it. This is one of the reasons why businesses have
spent billions of dollars on technology to make IT more agile.
In the data center, virtualization has become the norm and has raised the level of
agility at the compute layer. Flash storage is now being used to enable
businesses to migrate data at unprecedented speeds. Some organizations have
deployed network virtualization as a way to increase the agility of the data center.
zeus@zkresearch.com
ZK Research estimates that businesses have spent $12 billion on infrastructure
used to make the data center more agile.
Cell: 301-775-7447
However, one part of IT that has yet to evolve and lacks flexibility is the Office: 978-252-5314
enterprise wide-area network (WAN). Evolving the WAN must be at the top of
every IT and business leader’s priority list because organizations can only be as
agile as their least agile IT component—which, today, is the WAN. In addition,
several other factors are driving the evolution of the WAN, including the following:
The cloud is becoming the norm. More applications and workloads are
moving to the cloud. The cloud is now the fastest-growing segment of
enterprise software, and ZK Research predicts that cloud computing services
will grow from about $46 billion in 2014 to more than $116 billion in 2019
(Exhibit 1). The surge in cloud traffic will drive significantly different traffic
patterns over the wide-area network.
Unified communications (UC) is business critical. Competitive advantage
is based on a company’s ability to make decisions quickly while involving the Influence and insight
right people, regardless of where they are located. The rise in virtual teams through social media
and mobile workers has made unified communications a mission-critical
application for businesses of all sizes. The ZK Research 2014 Unified
Communications Purchase Intention Study indicates that 87% of
organizations have at least partially deployed UC in their organizations. The
multimedia applications in UC such as voice and video are now driving up
bandwidth requirements.
Computing has become network centric. The cloud, mobile computing, the
Internet of Things (IoT) and big data are at the top of almost every business
and IT leader’s priority list today. These new compute paradigms are all
network centric. The success of these initiatives is largely dependent on the
quality of the network, particularly the WAN.
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A Software-Defined WAN Is a Business Imperative 3
During the past five years, significant advancements significantly different traffic patterns compared to the
have increased the level of agility and flexibility in legacy compute models. The evolving business
the data center through software-defined networking climate is putting new demands on the WAN that
(SDN). However, the benefits of SDN have yet to cannot be met because of the following challenges:
improve the WAN, and they are also required to
support the more agile data centers. For businesses Inefficient network design: The concept of
to reach the level of agility required to compete in moving away from a hub-and-spoke design to a
today’s digital world, the WAN must evolve into a partially or fully meshed network is certainly not
software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) now. new. However, running a network that is even
partially meshed involves a high level of
This shift must be made in a way that lowers the complexity—too high to make it practical for most
complexity of running the network and simplifies the organizations to migrate away from the hub-and-
management tasks so the WAN can be run with spoke design. Also, the redundancy of WAN links
fewer IT resources. is based on an active–passive model, whereby
the backup connection only becomes active when
Section II: Challenges with the Legacy the primary link fails. This means businesses are
Wide-Area Network paying for up to twice the amount of bandwidth
that they are actually using.
The existing architecture used to build WANs has Poor use of network bandwidth: With the hub-
been in place for several decades. The traditional and-spoke architecture, Internet traffic is passed
“hub and spoke” design was implemented for the down a WAN link and through the hub before
efficient delivery of client/server computing and best- accessing cloud data centers and software-as-a-
effort Internet traffic. In that era, data that moved service (SaaS) applications. This “trombone”
from the data center to the branches constituted the effect (Exhibit 2) can saturate WAN links and
majority of network traffic. Today, however, cloud, degrade the performance of both the backhauled
mobile computing and multimedia traffic are the applications and other applications on the WAN
fastest-growing application types, and they drive link. The rise of mobile and cloud computing
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A Software-Defined WAN Is a Business Imperative 4
Exhibit 2: The WAN Trombone Effect Inhibits Rapid Traffic Growth to the Cloud
means more and more of an organization’s Long lead times for new network services:
network traffic will be traveling to and from the The ZK Research 2014 Network Purchase
Internet, which means the performance problems Intention Study revealed that the average time
created by the trombone of traffic will be taken to start implementing new network services
magnified in the future. is four months. The long lead time is due to the
High cost of bandwidth: With legacy networks, fact that changing network settings requires a
the only way to ensure available bandwidth for highly skilled engineer, so only a handful of
applications is by using expensive private engineers in organizations can implement these
network services such as MPLS or leased lines. changes. Also, most configuration changes need
Lower-cost Internet connections do not offer any to be done on a box-by-box or even port-by-port
kind of service-level agreements (SLAs) or the basis, meaning modifications to large networks
assurances necessary for bandwidth to be used can often take months to complete.
as business-class circuits.
Network agility is no longer something companies
Difficulty in optimizing the user experience: can simply aspire to have in the future—it is
Despite the high cost of private networking business critical today. Organizations must shed
services, it is still difficult for most network their legacy thinking regarding network design and
managers to optimize the quality of the user deploy a network that offers the same level of agility
experience for applications. Consequently, as exists at the compute and application tiers. To
network managers are constantly changing QoS accomplish this, a new, agile WAN architecture is
settings, creating alternative paths or changing required. It’s time for the SD-WAN.
other network parameters. The constant tweaking
of the network is often done “ad hoc” when users Section III: Introducing the Software-
are complaining about problems and,
consequently, IT is working under pressure. This
Defined WAN
is one reason why the largest cause of network An SD-WAN is a WAN that is defined by business
outages today is human error (Exhibit 3).
and IT policies through software. Traditional network
Security and performance are overlay operations have no visibility into the business, but an
technologies: Securing a legacy network is SD-WAN is tightly coupled to the business through
typically accomplished by layering on additional policies. The policies are then used to automate the
physical or virtual appliances to add the new configuration changes, move traffic flows or enact
functionality required. The overlay approach, other changes to ensure the network is continually
which is built on multiple appliances, can further meeting the needs of the organization.
increase the complexity of the WAN.
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A Software-Defined WAN Is a Business Imperative 5
In a traditional network, the transport functions and Hybrid network architecture: As stated
controller layer are resident in each device. This is previously, traditional WANs were built primarily
why any kind of configuration or change must be on expensive, private IP network services. If
done on a box-by-box basis. In a software-defined Internet connections were used, they were
network, the control layer is abstracted up above the deployed exclusively as backup connections. An
infrastructure and transport layer. Because the SD-WAN is composed of a hybrid of network
control has been decoupled from the physical layer services including but not limited to MPLS,
and runs in software, services can be virtualized and private line, broadband Internet or even 3G/4G
delivered from the cloud to any point on the network wireless. With an SD-WAN, a hybrid configuration
almost instantly. Above this control, or service becomes the norm.
delivery, layer resides the service orchestration Internet connections for critical business
layer. Here, business applications and policies applications: In a traditional WAN configuration,
determine network changes (Exhibit 4). These the Internet would never be used for applications
changes are communicated to the service layer via such as VoIP, video, big data or other business-
APIs, enabling administrative tasks to be fully critical applications. However, in a software-
automated. defined configuration, the virtual services layer
can quickly switch among multiple Internet
The SD-WAN enables the network to become a
connections, ensuring the fastest and highest-
strategic, agile business resource that can adapt to
quality path is always being used. No single
changes as determined by business policy.
Internet connection can match the performance
The term “software defined” is used to mean characteristics of an MPLS network. However,
different things in the various parts of IT and can be with an SD-WAN, when the best path is always
confusing to business and technology executives. chosen dynamically from multiple Internet
The following characteristics can be used to define connections, the network can have equivalent or
an SD-WAN and better explain why this technology better performance than MPLS at a fraction of the
shift is of the utmost importance to businesses of all price. ZK Research estimates that this can
sizes: equate to anywhere from a 10x to 100x savings
depending on link length and bandwidth capacity.
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A Software-Defined WAN Is a Business Imperative 6
Multiple active paths become the norm: The the higher the degree of meshing, the more
previous section highlighted how legacy WANs complicated managing the network becomes due
use active–passive connections where the to the exponential growth in network links. An
backup (passive) connection only becomes active SD-WAN can dynamically mesh connections—in
when the primary one fails. This is highly other words, a connection would be created
inefficient, as every connection must be sized to between two locations only when needed and
handle all corporate traffic. This is akin to building when business policy dictates. Then the
a highway system where all cars must take the connection just as easily can be dynamically
same route, and alternative routes can be used turned down. This gives all of the benefits of a
only in the event the main road is unavailable. fully meshed network without the associated
Each road would have to be built large enough to management overhead.
accommodate all traffic. Although this may seem Optimized for cloud computing: Legacy WANs
ridiculous to a civil engineer, it has been the norm are ineffective for cloud because all Internet
with network engineers. With SD-WAN, multipath traffic goes through a single choke point and then
networks (active–active) are the norm, where is distributed over the WAN to the remote
automated and dynamic path selection is used to location. An SD-WAN offers secure and high-
optimize application performance and security. performance direct Internet access so cloud and
Dynamic meshing: Meshing has always been mobile applications can be optimized and the
challenging for network managers. A mesh entire network can be used more efficiently.
network is much more efficient than a hub-and- Automation of configuration processes: The
spoke design, as it allows traffic to go from business policy layer can be used to fully
location to location over a single hop. However, automate configuration changes. For example, if
© 2015 ZK Research
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A Software-Defined WAN Is a Business Imperative 7
© 2015 ZK Research
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A Software-Defined WAN Is a Business Imperative 8