Advancing with SD-WAN: A Smart Move for Your Business
What Your Business Needs to Stay Ahead in this Technological Era
The rapid changes in the world impact all aspects of life, from entertainment to communication, and ultimately, to businesses. With the advancement of technology, it is essential that your business evolves with time and incorporates these advancements to stay ahead of others. The constant development and evolving technologies may not be easy to keep up with, so it is crucial that you understand what you need the most for your company.
More than ever before, it is important to stay relevant in this cloud-based era. Many businesses have already incorporated cloud services into their day-to-day operations. Integrating cloud services enables remote access to cloud services for branch offices, improving connectivity across your business; it also prioritises business-critical applications, enhancing the performance of cloud applications.
In the post-pandemic era, it is important for businesses to offer flexible working arrangements for their employees. This can include remote, hybrid, and on-site options, which can boost employee performance and contribute to overall team success. Stakeholders, including vendors, contractors, partners, and guests will also benefit by having improved communication with your business. The different arrangements call for flexibility, efficiency, and scalability, all combined with maximum security, to keep costs manageable and maximise results. For a successful implementation, you will certainly need fast connectivity, especially when remote locations are added to the network.
As you apply advanced technologies to your business, it’s crucial to prioritise cybersecurity to safeguard against threats such as malware and hacking. Reliable cybersecurity measures are essential to prevent data breaches and ensure the security and privacy of your information. As businesses become more reliant on technology, the risk of cyber threats increases. By implementing strong cybersecurity measures, you can protect your business and recover quickly from unwanted events.
SD-WAN
SD-WAN Solutions: Scale up business efficiencies with agile and secure network infrastructure
Uncovering Traditional WAN
WAN, short for Wide-Area Network, is the technology that enables you to connect your main office to your branch offices, data centers, cloud storage, and all the way to your cloud applications. The system may be customised to spread across various areas, and even all across the world beyond a building or a limited geographical area. Due to its features, WAN is commonly used by international companies with overseas branches. This way, businesses can connect their branch offices together within the same network.
The WAN technology ultimately works by connecting multiple Local Area Networks (LAN) from various locations. The connection can be made through VPN and routers, allowing remote users to access the same network. To complete the networks as a whole, multiple hardware are installed to maintain the network operation. To further ensure security and smooth connectivity, an MPLS circuit can be integrated into the system.
Limitations of Traditional WAN
However, the traditional WAN has been known to have lower bandwidth efficiency and thus, hinder the expected efficient application performances. This reduces the optimum capacity of the network and eventually, the output of work. To keep it effective, proper advanced planning is constantly needed along with logistics resources and infrastructures for the system to run. This alone becomes a scalability issue due to its difficulty to set up.
Upon setting up, the traditional WAN requires more thorough maintenance. The IT team needs to constantly put effort to maintain and manage the network. This is because of the many layers of the underlying hardware, making the entire system more complex and harder to manage. To ensure the safety and security of the system from malicious traffic, traditional WAN constantly requires proper planning and management.
Another issue that a traditional WAN system may face is its limitation to each branch and data center. This is caused by the need to use additional equipment in each branch office and remote location, which will burden the business’ operating costs.
Advancing from Traditional WAN
SD-WAN Solutions Video
SD-WAN Solutions: Scale up business efficiencies with agile and secure network infrastructure
The Next Generation Virtual WAN: SD-WAN
Software-Defined WAN, or commonly known as SD-WAN, is a network running on top of a network. It uses software to manage services in the network and control the connectivity between offices, without the help of hardware. It essentially simplifies the traditional WAN system by delivering the WAN infrastructure virtually via the internet.
To work properly, SD-WAN infrastructure overlays the traditional WAN by creating a tunnel to differentiate the two networks. This overlay is equipped with the centralised control to allow better security and simplify the system management. The system then sends the network traffic directly to cloud service providers, Software as a Service (known as SaaS), and Infrastructures as a Service (known as ‘IaaS’). This will enhance the performance of the applications, as well as the business productivity and final output. This feature also allows for better security since each application receives a private routing across the WAN.
SD-WAN Architecture
While traditional WAN is based on conventional routers, SD-WAN is designed to fully function even when the applications are hosted in SaaS, clouds, and data centers. This removes the step of backhauling network traffic from the branch offices, and eventually improves the productivity of the applications and the users.
China Telecom’s SD-WAN Architecture is made out of the control plane and the data plane. The control plane, the brain of the network, is made of the orchestrator and the controller. While the orchestrator is responsible for system docking in China Telecom’s global cloud, the controller controls the network system and gives the necessary command to the Cloud Gateway (CGW) and Cloud Anchor Equipment (CAE) in each site.
Why and How Businesses Can Adopt China Telecom SD-WAN
SD-WAN presents an opportunity for enterprises and midmarket businesses with multiple branches or locations to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and deliver greater reliability. However, businesses undertaking this route cannot afford to turn a blind eye to security. It must be a core consideration of the business strategy. As businesses become increasingly reliant on cloud-based technologies, the need for a reliable and secure network infrastructure becomes even more critical.
This is where Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) enters the picture, providing a robust and flexible way to integrate networks across multiple locations while also providing secure and reliable connectivity to cloud-based applications. While businesses are now using SaaS and cloud services, SD-WAN is a worthy alternative when it comes to integrating your networks, perfect for businesses with distributed locations. China Telecom’s SD-WAN offers business agility, a simplified system, more effective application as well as efficient bandwidth, while combined with better security and privacy protection.
China Telecom’s SD-WAN is equipped with 10 key features:
Use Cases for China Telecom’s SD-WAN
China Telecom’s SD-WAN service is a popular choice for businesses seeking advanced networking capabilities that can help optimise their WAN performance, while also providing security and flexibility. China Telecom’s SD-WAN is especially suited to delivering the following use cases:
Scalable and Reliable SD-WAN Solution by China Telecom
As a well-established global network service provider, China Telecom understands you and your business. Staying up-to-date with technology is a shared challenge faced by many companies in today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, fortunately China Telecom is here to solve your connectivity problems. China Telecom’s SD-WAN has several advantages compared to other SD-WANs out there, including:
Seamless Global Connectivity
Directly connected to China Telecom’s 28 global cloud hubs, China Telecom SD-WAN connects your business to your branches, clients, and partners.
Improve Business Agility
With the newfound ease of upgrading software, changing bandwidths, and adding new sites into the infrastructure, China Telecom can help you and your business grow across the globe.
Reliable Assurance
With high-speed connectivity, China Telecom will fulfil your demands and ensure that you can seamlessly deliver your workloads effectively all the time.
Better Visibility and Management
With centralised control, you can easily monitor and manage your applications and data securely.
Traditional WAN vs. SD-WAN
Aspect | Traditional WAN | SD-WAN |
Network Architecture | A hub-and-spoke model with traffic being backhauled to a central location | A distributed architecture that allows traffic to be routed over multiple paths |
Bandwidth | Limited bandwidth and increased latency due to backhauling traffic | Greater bandwidth utilisation and reduced latency due to traffic being routed directly to the destination |
Security | Requires separate security solutions and manual configuration at each location | Provides centralised security policy management and built-in encryption for data in transit |
Scalability | Limited scalability due to manual configuration and hardware limitations | Provides greater scalability and flexibility through centralised management and cloud-based deployment |
Cost | High cost due to hardware, maintenance, and manual configuration | Lower cost due to software-based architecture, reduced hardware, and centralised management |
Quality of Service | Limited control over network traffic and application performance | Provides better control over network traffic and application performance through policy-based routing and application-aware networking |
Does Your Business Require SD-WAN?
Looking for increased network performance and reliability to protect against network failures? Seeking to save costs by pivoting away from expensive private links across multiple branch locations? Want to scale your business’ needs quickly and easily? These are all signs that you should be looking into SD-WAN for your company.
China Telecom’s SD-WAN provides a distributed architecture that allows traffic to be routed over multiple paths, reducing latency and improving bandwidth utilisation. With centralised security policy management and built-in encryption, your business will enjoy greater security and protection against cyber threats. Plus, China Telecom’s solution offers scalability and flexibility through centralised management and cloud-based deployment, all while reducing costs.
Don’t let your network hold your business back. Contact us today to learn more about how China Telecom’s SD-WAN solution can transform your network and propel your business forward.
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