Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) solutions are being increasingly adopted by businesses in order to replace their outdated traditional WAN networks. However, when trying to improve their business network, IT decision makers often find it difficult to differentiate the benefits of using SD-WAN managed services, when compared to DIY (or managed in-house) SD-WAN.
It’s clear why SD-WAN has become so sought-after, given that SD-WAN can replace typical WAN routers with a software counterpart and support multiple network underlays (MPLS, internet and cellular), as well as offering integrated security components. To give an insight into just how in-demand managed SD-WAN is, in 2023 the market size for SD-WAN was valued at $4.99 billion USD and is projected to reach $44.38 billion USD by 2031 according to Databridge Market Research.
Where businesses do not possess in-house expertise or have complex network requirements, by utilising Managed SD-WAN through a Managed Service Provider (MSP), organisations can simplify network management processes. Managed services pass off the bulk of tasks to an external source, rather than relying solely on internal administrators to manage the network.
When considering a managed SD-WAN solution, organisations typically pay a service provider for installing and delivering connectivity and network services such as software monitoring and maintenance services. For service providers, managed SD-WAN can be used by the provider to offer value-added services, including SD-WAN security improvements. These services often include service level agreements (SLA) guaranteeing a minimum service level.
However, choosing the appropriate MSP to use can still be quite the task, so to help with this, this article covers different SD-WAN managed services in order to aid the selection process.
Table of Contents
Checklist for Buying Managed SD-WAN Services
Managed vs Co-Managed
Managed SD-WAN Solutions
Fully Managed SD-WAN services pass all of the network administration and management to an MSP. These tasks typically include:
24/7 Network Monitoring and Management
Enforcing Security
Performance Optimisations
Troubleshooting and Support
Configuration Management
Detailed Reporting and Analytics.
Co-Managed
With a co-managed SD-WAN network, organisations retain greater control over their network, whilst offloading the majority of daily tasks to an MSP. This typically leaves control of the strategic decisions for the network, application prioritisation and setting of security configurations for the organisation. In effect, this hybrid approach allows businesses to leverage the expertise and resources of the MSP whilst still allowing in-house control, enabling the organisation to meet specific requirements.
Due to the differences in responsibilities, there are specific use cases for both managed and co-managed SD-WAN.
Managed SD-WAN Solution Case Study
One example of managed SD-WAN is Element Solutions Inc. (ESI) which had accumulated multiple routing platforms, hardware and data centres across over 200 global sites. By implementing Aryaka’s managed SD-WAN services, ESI were able to consolidate the various platforms and edges in order to better standardise and enforce policies. By choosing managed network services over co-managed, ESI were able to hand over the difficulty of integrating all the platforms and edges into the managed SD-WAN infrastructure and internal IT resources could be used to focus on strategic business priorities rather than SD-WAN integrations.
Co-Managed SD-WAN Solution Case Study
Co-Managed SD-WAN is more ideal for organisations that require flexibility and customisation merged with professional support. An example of this is Argenta, who implemented co-managed SD-WAN to allow their internal IT team to manage the network whilst benefitting from a 24/7 service desk. This joint management strategy improved Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) performance improved by 80%, interconnectivity issues reduced by 90% and applications saw a 40% improvement in performance.
Adds, Moves, and Changes (AMCs)
One of the most important features for organisation networks is the ability to add, move and change branches/new sites. Managed SD-WAN allows an expert to take over these processes in order to expedite bringing new edges online and oversee management. Particularly helpful for organisations with many remote offices, managed SD-WAN services support efficient management by reducing recurring network costs and providing easy network-wide data control and visibility. The capabilities of a software defined approach make network management more efficient compared to traditional WAN by supporting these capabilities:
100-percent centralised management – MSPs (and internal administrators with co-managed solutions) can easily make near-real-time changes to several sites by assigning multiple locations to a policy template.
Web-based consoles – Managed SD-WAN simplifies network routing and provisioning tasks by using web-based consoles. IT professionals can reduce the time and effort of management tasks by detecting network changes and coordinating new or modified network configurations.
Performance-based policy routing – IT leaders can simplify network management by creating application-specific, performance-based policy routes (application aware routing) for network traffic. Or the software can make effective decisions on the fly.
Quick setups for secure communication – Managed SD-WANs also reduce the time required to set up secure communications services. Network administrators can create secure connections in minutes, not days or longer.
NOC services – Centralised, automated managed SD-WAN operations streamline operations processes at an organisation’s network operations centre (NOC). IT admins can use network monitoring to discover and remediate problems and reduce operations costs.
Deployment and Zero-Touch Provisioning (ZTP)
When connecting multiple sites, one of the biggest challenges that businesses face is the difficulty of integrating new branches and the timeframe it takes to do so.
One of the ways that managed SD-WAN can quickly deploy new sites is through Zero-Touch Provisioning (ZTP) capabilities. As the name suggests, ZTP is designed to remove the hands-on elements of SD-WAN deployment, enabling organisations to send new edge devices to remote locations without the need for on-site expertise. These edge devices then automatically connect to the network and apply templates/configurations in order to match already running network edges, easing the process of SD-WAN deployment.
ZTP is therefore especially important for managed service providers as this enables edge devices to be preconfigured by the MSP, sent to the organisations new location and then brought online purely from being plugged in.
SASE/SSE Integration
Managed SD-WAN capabilities combined with cloud-based security services deliver uniform policy enforcement and network access control for devices, applications, and users.
With Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution, SD-WAN forms just part of a cloud-based solution and works alongside SASE security functions to extend into physical networks. SASE solutions include SD-WAN software to manage, control, and monitor connectivity between data centres, branch locations and network edges.
SASE Components
Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) – Ensures secure access to cloud applications, applying security policies for cloud resources.
Secure Web Gateway (SWG) – Protects against web-based threats and applies internet use policies.
Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) – Provides secure, segmented access where users have to continuously authenticate themselves prior to gaining authorisation to resources.
Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) – Inspects traffic at the application level to detect and block potential threats.
Endpoint Security – Protects user devices from threats and ensures these devices meet security policy requirements.
Real-Time and Historical Reporting
Data-driven network strategies can be essential for organisations to find potential system bottlenecks and underlay issues. One way that SD-WAN network management platforms alleviate these issues is by providing automation and centralised coordination capabilities. In the event of a link underperforming, automation can dynamically switch paths in order to maintain performance.
However, platforms also include performance dashboards, which give network managers complete visibility into how applications perform on a network. This allows both MSPs and network administrators to view where issues are arising in order to correct them at the source.
Further to this, application usage details can be tracked, alongside customisable dashboards which can be used to create audit trails for regulatory compliance and security monitoring.
SLA and Performance Metrics
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are a key part of managed SD-WAN networks, they guarantee key performance metrics.
SLA metrics
Uptime: Guaranteed availability of the network, ensuring business operations experience minimal downtime.
Latency: Reduced spikes in the time it takes for data to travel across the network, which impacts real-time applications (e.g: VoIP).
Packet Loss: The proportion of packets lost during transmission, affecting application performance.
Jitter: Variability in packet arrival times, which can degrade the quality of applications.
When evaluating SLA offerings, IT teams should ensure that SLAs cover response time requirements, incident escalation procedures, 24/7 monitoring and provide businesses with alerts to interruptions.
Through 24/7 monitoring and incident escalation, MSPs can rectify issues in real-time, maximising SLAs and protecting against downtime of important applications. In the event that issues are outside of the MSPs remit, alerts enable organisations to take action, therefore resolving issues that otherwise may have gone undiagnosed.
Change Management and Support
It’s important that, when leveraging managed SD-WAN services, organisations have a clearly defined manner in which they can submit and track change requests. Through the use of a portal, MSPs can provide status updates, as well as a history of previous change requests, which resembles an overview (or roadmap) as to how aligned your network is with current requirements and objectives.
Further to this, arguably the most important factor of managed offerings is the support capabilities that the MSP provides. Support can either be proactive or reactive, with both being essential for ensuring optimal network performance and security.
Proactive monitoring enables MSPs to identify and address issues before they can have an impact on the network, whereas reactive support focuses on resolving issues after they occur. By selecting an MSP that balances both, organisations can rest assured that they are best prepared for threats and issues to the network.
Multi-Cloud and SaaS Optimisation
Given organisations are increasingly adopting cloud resources and applications for greater scalability, cloud significance has increased, which has also emphasised the importance of multi-cloud connectivity.
Cloud implementations within managed SD-WAN
Direct Cloud Connectivity: Enables direct connections to common cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, for improved performance of cloud services and minimised latency.
Traffic Optimisation for SaaS Applications: By optimising traffic for commonly used Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, such as Microsoft 365 and Salesforce, organisations can improve the end user experience (UX) for their workforce.
Regional Cloud Gateways: Regional gateways are access points located across geographical locations in order to reduce latency, improve the performance of cloud-hosted applications and meet regulatory requirements.
Inventory and Asset Management
For businesses with many edges, keeping track of and maintaining network inventory and assets can be a difficult tasks. By centralising inventory management, SD-WAN offers visibility into all deployed devices and their health. By leveraging a managed SD-WAN infrastructure, organisations can allow external expertise to manage hardware lifecycles, which includes replacements for end-of-life devices and seamless integrations into IT service management (ITSM) solutions for asset tracking.
Security and Compliance
For so many organisations, industry regulations typically impose a range of regulations that affect network architectures and data management. Industry standards change the way that sensitive data has to be stored and protected within network transport, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA for US healthcare) and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS for worldwide retail, financial services and sales transactions).
By utilising a managed SD-WAN solution, MSPs provide organisations in regulated industries with round-the-clock monitoring and real-time analysis of network traffic in order to detect and respond to ongoing security threats. These responses often follow pre-determined playbooks, allowing for the appropriate responses to be used depending on the type of threat being faced and the depth of the breach (e.g: containment, mitigation and recovery).
Following any security incident, MSPs should then open post-incident investigations. By leveraging the aforementioned real-time and historical reporting capabilities, MSPs can identify the root cause of the breach and put measures in place to prevent future occurrences.
Further to this, MSPs will begin to discuss details of the breach with organisations, its implications and steps that have been taken to resolve it. This can include providing guidance on best practices for regulatory compliance and general support.
Scalability and Growth Support
In marketing materials, you’ll often see references to SD-WAN technology enabling “connect-from-anywhere” communications. Recently, this claim has become more than hype. When combined with global network backbones and point of presence (PoP) technologies, SD-WAN can improve network reliability, as well as offer centralised, easy-to-manage connectivity to anywhere with reliable broadband or fiber connection. So, now it’s possible to build global SD-WAN capabilities for improved scalability.
Why bother?
By running an SD-WAN on top of your existing network infrastructure, you can significantly improve network performance while you expand network capabilities. Benefits include:
Network performance enables consistent service quality and application performance throughout the network.
Efficient data and application management helps you manage all applications and data running in the global SD-WAN from a centralised management panel.
More flexible operations enable you to use several internet services or switch or add services easily.
Greater scalability allows organisations to grow rapidly without concerns over lengthy integrations of new sites.
With Change Management portals, organisations can easily add, remove or change requirements and have MSPs handle this without further complication for the organisation.
Ordering and Vendor Management
One of the main benefits of utilising a managed service provider is that they handle the relationship with the SD-WAN vendor. MSPs utilise this to become experts in that vendor’s product lines and gain greater insights into unique capabilities. By handing the responsibility to the MSP, the process for ordering new services or making changes to existing ones is simplified, with improved delivery and support to mitigate deployment issues.
Further to this, especially when utilising multiple services, the MSP should offer centralised billing for all services and locations. This simplifies financial management for organisations, when compared to Do It Yourself (DIY) network management.
Cost Transparency and ROI
Whilst Managed SD-WAN can provide consolidated billing options, organisations may still wish to have cost transparency. MSPs often offer itemised billing, which can lend itself to predictable ongoing service costs and therefore fits businesses using an operating expense (OPEX) model as there are typically less upfront costs. This clearly outlines the costs of services such as installations and monthly service fees and helps to avoid potentially unexpected costs.
Due to this cost transparency, organisations can clearly see what they are getting for their money and therefore can assess the value provided against cost savings in order to determine a return on investment (ROI).
Vendor Expertise and Certifications
It’s important to ensure that an MSP has expertise in the SD-WAN solution they are offering to manage for your business – without it, support may be lacklustre or significantly delayed.
The best way to determine this is to evaluate the provider’s track record and certifications (for example: Cisco Gold Partner, Fortinet Expert Partner), which demonstrate expertise for specific solutions.
To accompany these accreditations, another factor to consider is customer references and case studies, which provide real-world insights into the quality of MSP offerings.
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
One of the reasons to need such vendor expertise is that MSPs are responsible for disaster recovery and business continuity. By handing over the reins, organisations rely on the MSP to cover performance and security to ensure uninterrupted operations.
General Business Continuity
For performance maintenance, managed SD-WAN solutions should include failover capabilities. To achieve this, dynamic path selection and application aware routing capabilities are used to connect over backup link options (MPLS, Broadband, LTE, 5G). The latter two link types can be particularly useful for organisations leveraging remote or mobile workforces.
Disaster Recovery
As previously mentioned, MSPs also need to respond in the event of a security breach, especially where regulatory considerations are involved.
Therefore, by choosing an MSP that has a proven record for their disaster recovery capabilities can ensure that your organisation faces minimised downtime and security issues.
Conclusion
When selecting a managed SD-WAN service provider, organisations must choose an MSP that meets organisation objectives, with network operations, security and cost requirements all upheld. By following this checklist, organisations can make informed decisions that support their needs, drive efficiency and facilitate growth for a smarter network.
