Faced with the one-two punch of growing bandwidth demand and restricted network budgets, corporate wide area network (WAN) managers are constantly looking to optimize WAN design without sacrificing performance.
Enter SD-WAN.
While the potential benefits of incorporating software defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) are clear, there is no single migration path. At the WAN Summit New York, Intuit Principal Network Architect Manish Gupta offers lessons from his organization's experiences adopting SD-WAN and how they transformed their network architecture. Or in Gupta's own words: “I think we know why we’re moving there... But the question is: How are we getting there?”
Sensata Technologies is one of those ultra successful, market leading companies you seldom hear much about. With annual revenues topping $3 billion, Sensata manufactures sensor products which go into cars, aircraft, air-conditioning systems, mobile phones and more. Sensata began updating its wide area network across its 50 plus sites around the world about 18 months ago, in order to maximize the gains from the introduction of technologies like unified communications services. Mark DeLorenzo, Sensata’s senior director of technology services, was on hand at the WAN Summit New York earlier this year to explain the company’s approach.
BorgWarner is one of the world’s leading automotive parts manufacturers, supplying just about every car maker you can think of: Ford, Audi, BMW, they’re all there. The company, which reported sales of over $8 billion in 2015, has aggressive plans for growth over the next few years, and needed a corporate network that was up to the job.
Kris Kline from Kaiser Permanente was one of many network planners at the New York WAN Summit to talk about their migration to the cloud and implementing software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN). As a nonprofit, Kaiser's goals for its network were not just about reducing costs. In fact, its latest WAN evolution highlights some familiar objectives common to many organizations moving to a hybrid WAN.
Looking back on a couple of intensive days at the New York WAN Summit, one of the highlights for me was a presentation from airline services multinational Gate Group. In it, Garth Gray, the VP of Infrastructure Services, shared his unique business challenges and experience moving from MPLS to a hybrid WAN.
There has been much discussion lately about developments in WAN design–but what can you expect to pay to procure a robust network for your business? Understanding how to get the most out of each dollar of network spend is vital.
The WAN Summit New York brought together buyers and sellers of enterprise network services on April 5-6, 2016. Through case studies, panel sessions and roundtable discussions, the conference addressed some of the most pressing questions for those working in international enterprise networks. With these discussions fresh in his mind, Ciaran Roche, Co-Founder and CTO of Coevolve, who moderated the panel "After MPLS — Experiences and Lessons from Moving Traffic to the Internet," highlighted his top five takeaways from the WAN Summit New York.
What is the WAN Summit?
The WAN Summit is an event designed to bring sellers and buyers of corporate network services together to discuss the latest WAN design strategies and how they apply to real life network implementations. The inaugural London WAN Summit in 2013 was followed by the New York event the next year and by a third event in Singapore coming Fall 2016.
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