When selecting an SD-WAN vendor, the customer and vendor become partners. Managing a network is not a simple task. User service levels need to be maintained, cybersecurity is critical, and costs must be predictable. The customer relies on the SD-WAN vendor’s experience and knowledge to design, implement, and manage the SD-WAN. The benefits of working with a highly experienced SD-WAN vendor include:

• Quickly understanding the existing infrastructure and business processes to ensure a complete and efficient SD-WAN implementation.
• Selecting the optimum combination of technologies to deliver cybersecurity and performance while reducing costs.
• Eliminating potential network degradation and security vulnerabilities before they occur.
• Ensuring the SD-WAN is Cloud-first ready and able to manage unpredictable network loads and urgent requirements.
• Partnering with the customer to plan for new applications, capabilities, and expansion
• Evaluating, recommending, and implementing new technologies to address upcoming business imperatives.

It’s difficult to predict where and how your network will evolve. IT professionals need to implement SD-WAN technologies that address existing business imperatives; they need to be prepared for whatever the future has in store. When evaluating any SD-WAN vendor, they must provide complete end-to-end solutions with a cloud-based, agnostic platform. Technologies need to be seamless and operate in unison. Select a world-class SD-WAN vendor that has developed and integrated much of their own technology and avoid those with poorly stitched together third party solutions and disparate systems.

SD-WAN technologies should include:

• An agnostic and adaptive service platform to support any hybrid network connection, application, or cloud.
• All-inclusive and uniformed services to avoid unforeseen costs and unnecessary complexity.
• An agile, unified, and extendable SD-WAN solution with a simple and intuitive ‘single pane of glass’ management console.
• Network traffic and application monitoring with automatic traffic routing, loading balancing, and failover to ensure user service levels are met while maintaining complete cost-control.
• Core – to cloud – to edge global AI-driven and layered cybersecurity threat analysis, detection, and response to identify network vulnerabilities and deter attacks.
• EDR – Endpoint threat detection and response to protect the attack surface of remote users and identify threats early in the kill chain.
• XDR cross-layered detection and response to collect and automatically correlate data across multiple security layers, including deep packet inspection, email, endpoint, server, cloud workloads, and networks.
• Global reach – if required, services must span counties, continents, and oceans to ensure your SD-WAN can securely support any point on the globe.

SD-WAN vendors manage the day-to-day administrative tasks of the SD-WAN. Customers are free to be heavily involved or not at all. Either way, the customer and SD-WAN provider are partners in managing the SD-WAN. IT teams need seamless customer service to manage daily tasks and ensure optimum network operation. Customer service also includes developing strategies to address future business imperatives, network expansion, new sites, additional clouds, and changes to user requirements. The attributes of world-class customer service include:

• Customer advocates to provide assistance in all areas of the business relationship.
• Having in-depth knowledge of the customer’s expectations, infrastructure, and business practices ensure the SD-WAN is designed and well managed to meet or exceed customer requirements.
• 24 x 7 x 365 continuous NOC/SOC (Security Operations Center) -as-a-Service monitored by network and security experts detect and deter cyber threats and optimize network performance.
• DevOps support, which includes level-3 engineers to quickly and completely resolve open issues.
• Application performance and network traffic monitoring to ensure user service levels are met.
• Shared, centralized, and unified single-pane-of-glass management console provides comprehensive end-to-end situational awareness and mechanisms for a quick resolution.
• Proactive communication regarding incidents, programs, plans, updates, or new technologies makes sure that the customer is well informed and confident that the network is robust, secure, optimized, and evolving as planned.