How is SD-WAN stirring the hybrid working world?

The world faced the worst of its fears in the last two years, with a pandemic hitting hard on everything. And the only thing it taught businesses and organizations in a previous couple of years is the need for flexibility. The working scenarios changed overnight, and most organizations converted to a work from home model, all thanks to Covid-19. The most significant change is the concept of 'new hybrid workspaces,' which has redesigned the whole 'office' notion for the employees.

Organizations have made heavy investments in digital transformation processes to offer high-quality digital experiences for employees, customers, and partners. Day-to-day interactions moved to video conferencing in no time and fundamentally changed the interaction process in the office environment. With the adaption to the remote working environment, migration of network infrastructure and applications to the cloud has become more trivial.

Organizations move to the cloud to stabilize and enhance their hybrid work from home models. Leaders need to understand the solutions and benefits offered by software-defined wide area networks (SD-WAN) in this dynamic business requirement. SD-WAN provides consistent, secure, high-speed connectivity and empowers IT teams to provide greater visibility and flexibility than the traditional network.

Here are some of the advantages of the SD-WAN in the hybrid working environment are:

Digital transformation through SD-WAN

SD-WAN has the potential to deliver changes in today's fast-paced enterprise networks and provide customer satisfaction by driving digital transformation. It links devices to business applications through high-speed connectivity and security. SD-WAN uses software to control the connectivity between data centers, workforces, and the cloud. It offers a deeper understanding of what is happening within each application and session in real-time, allowing organizations to identify bottlenecks and react faster to network demands delivering agility and digital transformation for businesses.

Providing flexibility and empowering hybrid work environment

To meet the changing employee's needs for work from anywhere, organizations need to approach their networks and security differently. They need solutions that can adapt to any hybrid work model with flexibility and security. This opportunity has helped organizations invest heavily in modern technologies like SD-WAN and maintain a robust hybrid workforce meeting all the challenges and future obstacles.

Security as a prime concern

Pandemic saw a rise in cybercrime drastically as remote working presented new complications in identifying security breaches. According to Garter, 40% of boards of directors will have a dedicated cybersecurity committee overseen by a qualified board member by 2025. SD-WAN allows granular insight into network security and gives better visibility into the network by enabling the user to see what kind of traffic is passing across the wide-area network. Next-generation firewalls are deployed in the WAN to enhance performance and security, thus making the business network more secure, robust, and accessible to all.

The above pointers will help build businesses with a flexible and robust platform. They are establishing and maintaining a hybrid workplace that delivers connectivity and performance, thus allowing people to work during their peak productivity.

The article has been written by Sanjeev Chhabra, MD and CEO, Beetel Teletech Limited