The Hybrid WAN: Transition at Your Own Pace

Begin by Augmenting MPLS with Broadband

As more applications move to the cloud, companies are finding MPLS is no longer sufficient to address today’s WAN requirements. There is a desire to operate at "cloud speed," but many IT organizations may be reluctant to transition to a broadband WAN (often referred to as an SD-WAN) overnight.

While the ultimate goal may be a software-defined WAN, enterprises can begin their journey with a hybrid WAN. As MPLS upgrades arise, businesses can explore lower-cost broadband Internet services as an alternative for connecting to Cloud applications. This provides an opportunity to downsize MPLS bandwidth and only use that connectivity for remaining data center applications. Enterprises can begin to slowly migrate additional applications from the data center to the cloud as desired.

EdgeConnect

Unity EdgeConnect

Creates an SD-WAN that enables customers to move to a broadband WAN at their own pace, whether site-by-site, or via a hybrid WAN approach that leverages both MPLS and broadband Internet connectivity.
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Transitioning to this new WAN model requires minimal disruption or cost.Internet services can be introduced into the WAN without impact on application performance or the MPLS network. A Silver Peak-enabled SD-WAN automatically selects the optimum path for every application. This can restrict business-critical traffic to MPLS networks, while directing less critical traffic across the Internet VPN. Given industry averages for bandwidth costs, payback for a SD-WAN investment starts immediately.

Silver Peak gives enterprises and service providers the flexibility to securely connect their users to their applications via the most cost-effective source of connectivity available

SD-WAN

Resources

  • This data sheet highlights the features and capabilities of Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect.
  • How quick can you deploy an SD-WAN? With Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect, you can connect a branch to broadband, MPLS or a combination of the two in minutes.
  • This is a demonstration of Silver Peak Dynamic Path Control capabilities as part of an SD-WAN deployment. In this demonstration, we show a hybrid WAN environment with MPLS and Internet connectivity. The demo shows how different forms of traffic can be dynamically directed over each of the connections, and how Dynamic Path Control can load balance between the two links.
  • This e-book, published by networking industry analyst Jim Metzler, describes a hypothetical company, referred to as NeedToChange, which has a traditional approach to WAN design. It then presents Silver Peak's response to how NeedToChange should evolve to a software-defined WAN (SD-WAN).