The past few years have seen unprecedented cloud adoption across enterprises of all sizes. Multi-cloud strategies have become standard, with many organizations now prioritizing cloud-first approaches for new workloads and applications. Yet despite this migration of resources from on-premises infrastructure to the cloud, the corporate network remains essential.  

Even in the cloud era, the purpose of the corporate network remains the same: connect users to the applications and resources they depend on. What has changed is where those applications live and existing networks must adapt to it. In fact, the network is effectively working harder than ever to deliver consistent, high quality user experiences over a far more dispersed and dynamic environment. The truth is that the traditional hub and spoke WAN that was designed for backhauling traffic to a central site is no longer sufficient for today’s mission critical, cloud-based workloads and their real time performance demands.  

The Need for SD-WAN 

Things were simpler when all network traffic simply went to the central datacenter. Today, your application workloads must be directed over optimized paths to multiple cloud destinations. As a result, businesses must intelligently route traffic across multiple transport links such as MPLS, broadband and 5G while also considering application requirements and real-time network conditions. This is exactly the challenge that  SD-WAN is designed to solve. 

SD-WAN goes beyond interictally routing traffic to its appropriate destination. SD-WAN helps simplify, secure and scale your network at the same time.  

• Simplify: Make network management easier through the use of a centralized controller that allows you to create template driven policies and push them to your sites. 

• Secure: Built-in segmentation, zero-trust principles, traffic encryption, and consistent policy enforcement minimize risk and limit the impact of potential attacks. 

• Scale: Easily add new sites, increase bandwidth, and apply policies globally with centralized orchestration, real-time analytics, and full network visibility. 

Cisco SD-WAN Provides an On-Ramp 

Your users don’t have the time to traverse the usual highway and wait for the next exit when using latency sensitive cloud applications. Branch users need fast, direct access to the cloud when they need it, and that is what Cisco SD-WAN provides. No unnecessary stops or diversions means better performance as these on-ramps are optimized for the cloud. This optimization comes in multiple forms: 

• Cloud On Ramp for SaaS continuously monitors real-time network conditions and dynamically steers traffic over the best available path to cloud applications such as Microsoft 365, Salesforce, and other SaaS platforms. This application-aware traffic steering can deliver up to 40% faster performance for Microsoft 365. 

• Cloud On Ramp for IaaS simplifies and automates connectivity to major public cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Automated workflows and unified policies ensure secure, high-performance connectivity without manual configuration or lengthy deployment cycles. 

• Cloud On Ramp for Colocation aggregates branch traffic through regional colocation facilities that shorten paths to multicloud, SaaS, and data centers for better performance, lower latency, and circuit cost savings.  

The result is a modern, agile network that is faster, more reliable, significantly less expensive, and far easier to manage. With Cisco SD-WAN you get nothing less than direct-to-cloud connectivity because it is purpose built and optimized for the cloud. 

Optimize Everything from the Cloud 

If your business is aware of the benefits of cloud applications, then why not have your SD-WAN solution in the cloud too? Cisco offers a clouddelivered option where Cisco hosts and operates the SD-WAN control plane for you. You can choose a fully cloud-delivered Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN, where you only manage your edge devices, or select your preferred cloud region (AWS or Azure) for hosting. Beyond these popular choices, Cisco also gives you the freedom to deploy SD-WAN on-premises or in your private cloud. This flexibility ensures your network architecture aligns perfectly with your business needs, whether you prioritize simplicity, control, or hybrid strategies. 

Providing Insight and Evidence 

Face it. Whenever anything is running slow, your users and outside vendors blame the network. While the geographical proximity of your workload traffic may have shifted away from the network, your network team is still held accountable for its performance. Imagine having the ability to either root out the true cause or determine the innocence of the network from time to time.  

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN makes use of ThousandEyes agents that provide you the visibility within your strategic vantage points inside your branches, data centers, and even user devices to monitor paths across ISPs, cloud providers, and SaaS services. Now your teams can see whether a user’s poor experience stems from the local LAN, the SD-WAN overlay, an ISP segment, or the cloud/SaaS provider itself. 

Of course, no discussion on intelligence-based products would be complete without incorporating analytics. Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Analytics adds intelligence to raw telemetry by linking app behavior and user experience with network conditions like loss, latency, jitter, and path changes. This removes the guess work from troubleshooting, as network teams receive actionable insights using drill-down dashboards that make it easy to spot issues and begin addressing them. Now your team can know which applications are used the most, which paths they take, and how security and routing policies impact the user experience.  

Reduced Costs 

The benefits of implementing Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN are more than just technical in nature. They can be realized in the bottom line of your business as well. Organizations typically realize cost savings in these key areas: 

• Operational Efficiency: Application-aware routing and the use of multiple transport links improve performance and productivity.  

• Structural Savings: Identify and eliminate costly, underutilized private circuits to reduce unnecessary spend.  

• Management Savings: Software-defined automation and centralized control reduce the time and resources needed for configuration, updates, and troubleshooting across sites.  

• Business Continuity: Greater resiliency and minimized downtime reduce disruptions and their associated costs. 

In fact, an IDC study found that Catalyst SD-WAN customers cut 5year operational costs by 38% and realized a 402% ROI over the same period 15.6 months to payback. 

Conclusion  

While technology continues to evolve, the need for a reliable, efficient, and secure network remains constant. Cisco has maintained its market leadership by proactively delivering solutions that help customers adopt new technologies and succeed at scale. Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN can connect your users to their applications over the ideal transport to ensure a predictable, fast experience, enabling your business to move faster with greater confidence. The result is a future-ready network designed to support today’s demands and tomorrow’s innovations. Contact WEI to get started.

Next Steps: As businesses undergo digital transformation, the need for updated corporate networks and IT architectures becomes critical. Cisco ACI aids this shift by providing a network foundation that integrates with cloud environments and adapts to changing business needs.

Download this free WEI white paper below to find out more about this proven solution.