INSIGHT Jason Howells - Barracuda MSP
“For clients with multiple locations and those who are looking to increase the use of cloud-based
applications, SD-WAN represents an essential source of future business”
Jason Howells, Director, International MSP Business, Barracuda MSP
Are You Overlooking Hidden
SD-WAN Opportunities?
While more companies
are shifting to cloudbased
applications,
legacy wide area
networks (WAN) are struggling
to provide the required levels of
service that customers need to
support multiple locations, and
remote workers.
e answer is simple:
Software-dened WAN (SDWAN)
technologies allow
companies to build lowercost
WANs using broadband
resources. is improves the
speed and eciency of moving
data to the cloud and between
dierent locations. Barracuda
recently issued a report on
the opportunities (and some
challenges) that SD-WANs
present for MSPs that want
to help their clients improve
the performance of their
applications and their networks.
According to IDC, the SDWAN
market is growing at a
70% CAGR and should reach
$8 billion (£6.4 billion) within
the next three years. However,
most companies don’t fully
understand the technology.
Addressing Network Pain
Points
Recently, Barracuda teamed up
with Vanson Bourne to survey
more than 900 global IT leaders
about SD-WAN usage. Almost
all of the respondents (98%)
had networking challenges
with their current WAN
set-up. Complexity (48%),
cloud performance (47%) and
performance between locations
(46%) were the most signicant
problems encountered by MSPs.
SD-WAN can address these
pain points as it eectively
decouples the networking
MSPs play a key role in transitioning customers to software-defined WAN
technologies, which enable lower-cost WANs using broadband resources. Jason
Howells, Director of International MSP Business at Barracuda MSP, explains
hardware from the means of
controlling it and virtualising
the WAN to make it easier to
congure and to route trac.
Further, SD-WAN makes
it easier to manage security
policies and bandwidth from a
central location, while making it
possible to monitor and prioritise
trac for specic applications.
ere are also some clear
benets in terms of both
performance and cost when
it comes to SD-WAN. Nearly
half of respondents said they’d
reduced overall costs using
SD-WAN, while more than one
third (36%) had reduced costs
specically for MPLS services.
Organisations in the survey
estimate they could save more
than $1.3 million (£1 million)
on MPLS networking costs
within the rst 12 months of
using SD-WAN.
And, according to the
survey, one-third of IT leaders
have already deployed SDWAN
at the majority of their
sites, and half are in the process
of doing so, or will do so within
the next year.
Security Is a Top Investment
Priority
When it comes to selecting an
SD-WAN solution, security is
top of mind. In fact, 92% of
respondents agreed that security
should be the top priority
when considering an SDWAN
solution. Additionally,
a secure SD-WAN was one
of the three most invested in
security measures over the past
12 months for 25 percent of
respondents.
Organisations leveraging
an SD-WAN solution should
install security devices at each
location. ere are a variety of
congurations available, and
many end users are unsure
which types of devices to deploy.
According to Barracuda’s
data, just under a third of
respondents are using a pureplay
SD-WAN with basic
security on top of their existing
protection. A roughly equal
number replaced existing
solutions with a pure-play SDWAN
and security solution,
but this approach is costly
and requires more labor and
management. Further, 18%
have switched to a cloud-only
security and SD-WAN solution,
while a quarter have replaced
their existing solution with
a single system combining
advanced security and SDWAN
in one appliance at each
gateway edge. is last option
is precisely what Barracuda
Networks has designed in its
CloudGen Firewall product.
Barracuda also found that
42% of respondents favoured
an easier-to-administer singlebox
solution that provides
the best possible security and
SD-WAN connectivity. e
single-box solution was also
the most popular option for
those planning to deploy or
considering SD-WAN (31%).
Additionally, 81% of
respondents said advanced
threat protection and centralised
management was very important
or crucial to their SD-WAN
purchase. A single-box approach
can lower costs, increase
exibility and make it easier to
deploy the SD-WAN solution.
The Role of the MSP in
Transitioning to SD-WAN
MSPs can help companies in
transitioning to SD-WAN,
and it is clear that those who
are interested in deploying
SD-WAN need help: 43% of
respondents to the survey said
they have knowledge gaps
when it comes to SD-WAN
technology.
SD-WAN provides intrinsic
benets over legacy networks
by improving performance,
reducing costs, and providing
built-in security. Trac is
encrypted from end-to-end
by default, and security
can be easily integrated
into connectivity using this
approach. But these companies
need guidance, and the right
security model to be successful.
Single-box solutions can
oer both advanced threat
protection and advanced SDWAN
capabilities that increase
network availability and
application performance. For
clients with multiple locations
and those who are looking
to increase the use of cloudbased
applications, SD-WAN
represents an essential source of
future business.
46 | Comms Business Magazine | October 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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