Enterprises are investing heavily in digitalising their operations. Still, one element that they overlook while creating a digital transformation strategy is the role of the company’s Wide-Area Network (WAN) in reducing operational costs, increasing network performance, and, most of all, providing end-to-end encryption for security purposes. As organisations grow and expand to new markets, WAN is the technology that allows the sharing of data among branches, outlets, employees, partners, and other stakeholders.

While traditional networks like Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) have proven to be reliable and highly scalable for decades, enterprises are now looking for solutions to optimise all network resources with enhanced visibility and control. Thanks to the new normal, many employees are either working remotely or adopting a hybrid working model. The use of mobile devices and real-time conferencing applications has also grown significantly, and so has the need to unify networks that can combine different sources of data such as cloud applications, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Internet of Things (IoT).

Fortunately, filling the need of the new normal is made easy thanks to the Managed Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN), known for being flexible, scalable, agile and more secure than its counterparts. Instead of complex hardware setups and dedicated lines, SD-WAN software controls the connectivity and access to the data centres, remote branches, and applications in the cloud.

As a result, the adoption of this technology has seen immense growth as it becomes more accessible in many regional and global markets, requiring more capacity in their network. It has also been successfully implemented across industry verticals such as banking, manufacturing and distribution. The adoption has increased competitiveness and directly impacted the pricing, bringing costs down by almost 15 percent annually since 2018, according to industry statistics.

Moreover, research conducted by Analysys Mason indicates that operators now see the potential to create higher-margin value-added services that facilitate the faster deployment of Service Level Agreement (SLA) by building expertise around security, analytics and AI and adding on a bundled professional service offering. While the revenue from such value-added services represents a small percentage of the overall business revenue, high-value managed network service operators are beginning to see improved growth by adopting technologies like SD-WAN.

The SD-WAN pricing is complex, given the variety of commercial models offered by vendors today. For this reason, when we decided to create Service on Demand by e& (formerly known as Etisalat Group) for this technology, we kept in mind the varied enterprise business needs. We offered SDWAN with enhanced technological sophistication, particularly with evolved competitive pricing models. We focused on five key parameters when designing the service: robust security, performance enhancement, lower complexity, enabler for cloud platform and reduced cost.

Here’s an example. Purchasing an appliance from a vendor instead of buying SD-WAN as a managed service tends to be about 1.9 times more expensive. However, e& Service on Demand offers SD-WAN technology implementation that can bring savings up to 50 percent to an organisation compared to traditional WANs.

As a result, enterprises can benefit from our connectivity services at a reasonable price by lowering upfront capital expenses and operating costs. The value-added factor is leveraging economies of scale with a multi-tenant, centrally managed and orchestrated network of local and regional ISPs.

Know more : https://www.etisalat.ae/en/carrier-and-wholesale/services/data-services/sd-wan.html

Learn more about how e& “Service On Demand” can help your business or email us at intlsales-c&ws@eand.com