Are you like the (approximately) half of our survey respondents who have not yet adopted SD-WAN? Or perhaps you're in the midst of deployment and want to know what to look out for. Or maybe you're working out whether or not to keep MPLS?
Today we'll share some perspective on these questions with another case study, this time with Mark Williams, Sr. Manager of Global Networks at BorgWarner.
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Key Takeaways
Adoption of a Virtualized Architecture
BorgWarner chose a virtualized customer premises equipment solution using AT&T's FlexWare. This involved replacing physical routers and firewalls at each site with a single x86 appliance running virtualized network functions (VNFs), specifically a virtual router and a virtual firewall.
This approach was selected because it simplified deployment across over 100 global plants that are not staffed with network experts. It allowed for consistent replication of effort site by site and eliminated the complexity of wiring multiple physical boxes. The virtualized firewalls could also be dynamically sized via software based on site needs, offering cost efficiency and agility for future growth without requiring hardware replacements.
Enhanced Network Resilience Through Diverse Connectivity and Seamless Failover
A significant benefit of the SD-WAN solution was the provision of a robust secondary failover solution.
Unlike their previous setup where failover relied on VPN tunnels hubbed back to data centers, the new architecture allows for any-to-any connectivity into the MPLS network via an internet overlay when the primary connection fails.
BorgWarner prioritized diverse last-mile providers and technologies for their connections, often sourcing internet circuits from local cable providers like Comcast or Charter alongside their MPLS links, ensuring resilience even in factory locations typically built on the "edge of cornfields" where infrastructure might be less developed. The seamless failover was so effective that sites typically wouldn't notice the switch between primary and secondary connections.
Integration of Cloud Adoption and Security (SASE) for Agility and M&A
The SD-WAN journey was partly driven by the need to support cloud adoption for critical business applications.
Recognizing the limitations of traditional VPNs, especially highlighted during the pandemic when users were sent home, BorgWarner embarked on a SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) journey with Palo Alto's Prisma.
SASE provides full visibility into all network traffic and enables advanced security functions like SSL/HTTPS inspection, filtering, DLP, and inline antivirus for both internal and remote users. The SASE offering facilitates quick and efficient integration during mergers and acquisitions by allowing new sites to build IPSec tunnels to a globally diverse cloud firewall instead of deploying physical firewalls at each location, providing a more nimble approach to joining large organizations.
Greg Bryan
Greg is Senior Manager, Enterprise Research at TeleGeography. He's spent the last decade and a half at TeleGeography developing many of our pricing products and reports about enterprise networks. He is a frequent speaker at conferences about corporate wide area networks and enterprise telecom services. He also hosts our podcast, TeleGeography Explains the Internet.
