lessons learned from sd-wan deployments on six … learned from sd-wan deployments on six continents...

Lessons Learned from SD-WAN Deployments on Six Continents

21 September 2016 Tim Sullivan – Co-founder & CEO

2|CONFIDENTIALCoevolve Pty Limited | © Copyright 2016

Coevolve’s perspective on SD-WAN

Our services:

• Professional services and ongoing management services in a range of network-related practice areas

• Trusted advisor defining future state architecture and plan the integration of best of breed vendors, with optional managed services for our clients

Our target market:

• Mid-sized multinational enterprises (typically 500-30,000 employees)

• Presence in 5+ countries, 15-1,000 branch office locations

• Key industry verticals: Manufacturing, Retail, Technology, Engineering, Construction, Mining, Logistics, Professional Services, Not for Profit

Our team:

• Experienced team based in US, Australia, Singapore & Malaysia

• Extensive global contractor network covering all global regions

• Enterprise network experience gained at global service providers, integrators, consulting firms, vendors, analysts

WAN OptimizationNetwork & Application

Performance

SD-WAN

Internet ofThings

Unified Communications

Security

Cloud Services Integration

Global Vendor Management

Mobility

Our Next-Generation WAN Practice Areas

Coevolve was established in 2014 to drive enterprise adoption of next-generation networking technologies such as SD-WAN. We currently provide services to global enterprises in more than 30 countries on six continents


• Scalable as bandwidth needs grow • Agile • Step change in $/Mbps gains• Better model for the modern hybrid application environment

The Enterprise WAN

• Capex-heavy appliances • Maintenance contracts • Expensive • Bandwidth not scalable • Slow installs

Old world New world


Our role in the SD-WAN market

Underlay (network transport layer)

SD-WAN overlay products

Value-added service layers

Nex

t-G

ener

atio

n W

AN

ser

vice

sta

ck

Assess Deploy Manage Optimize

• Growing ecosystem of value-added partners• Service chaining to integrate with SD-WAN layer• Billing and operational integration

• Unrivaled SD-WAN market and multi-vendor product knowledge for assessment projects

• Managed service overlay model (including resale)

• Full life cycle management of network underlay• Provider research, pricing, implementation, ongoing

vendor management services

Partner ecosystem examples

Service life cycle

Relationships with 14+SD-WAN vendors

Strategic partnerships with 2-3

Our objective is to provide unmatched expertise across the entire service stack and life cycle for SD-WAN solutions


What’s working well? Five common SD-WAN Use Cases

Each industry vertical is deriving benefit from SD-WAN in different ways. In some cases the entire business case is based on savings resulting from the use of low-cost network transport. In others, the value comes from service chaining and performance optimization to deliver an end to end cloud-ready network for the enterprise

Complex DM-VPN / Hybrid WAN replacement

MPLS replacement or augmentation to use all available bandwidth

Service Chaining for enhanced services such as Security

Cloud gateways extending SD-WAN to public cloud

Ensure voice and video performance over internet WAN links

1

2

3

4

5


Applicability across all markets – developed and emerging

Our experience in enhancing Internet circuit performance spans markets with abundant, robust bandwidth and emerging markets where we mitigate poor infrastructure and thin bandwidth. Our managed services incorporate MPLS and 3/4G services as transport options to provide a pool of available capacity for each application type

What we’ve seen:

• SD-WAN plus dual broadband is a compelling alternative to MPLS in many APAC markets

• Logistics activities need to be carefully planned and managed in emerging markets

• Some clients have removed WAN Optimization appliances during rollout due to significant increase in bandwidth

SD-WAN deployments in 30+ countries on 6 continents


Real-world SD-WAN experience: overcoming poor Internet performance

Some of the greatest benefits we have achieved using SD-WAN in the field relate to mitigating poor Internet circuit performance. Most of our managed service clients connect 2 or more links to the SD-WAN edge (including 4G services) to allow the solution to deliver a reliable connectivity path using the available capacity

What we’ve seen:

• Even with a single circuit, measureable improvements in real-time and transactional application quality

• With 2 or more links, greater benefits can be seen

• Opens up the possibility of deliberately selecting extremely low cost providers, even knowing that an individual circuit may perform poorly at times –significant TCO benefits

• In many markets MPLS isn’t a commercially viable offering so we are delivering good-quality connectivity to offices for the first time

Before:

After:

Site with dual broadband connections, each exhibiting periods of extremely poor

performance


Real-world SD-WAN experience: application visibility out of the box

Within minutes of deploying an SD-WAN edge at a client site we can show real-time reports of the applications and devices in use on the network. We provide self-service access to this reporting data to our clients, who then use it as a troubleshooting and analysis tool in their service desk. No customer-specific configuration is required

What we’ve seen:

• Portal-based reporting is a real strength of the new breed of SD-WAN vendors

• Application-level visibility that is at least comparable to a well-configured Netflow system (better in many cases)

• All reporting data is collected using deep packet inspection and application fingerprinting on the edge devices, then collated at the orchestrator

• Easy to view top talkers, source / destinations for specific application flows, trends over time

• Potential to further extend this set of capabilities using API calls to extract and interpret data


Six Lessons learned – what should enterprises be aware of?

1. There is considerable difference in what is meant by “SD-WAN” – some vendors are re-branding existing network solutions as SD-WAN without any real change

2. Even within some true SD-WAN solutions there is a real gap in feature availability between marketing slideware and experience in the field – enterprises often only find this out during Proof of Concepts

3. Enterprises should pay attention to solution architecture – don’t be feature led. Focus on how the solution would apply to your specific application mix and traffic engineering requirements

4. Some ISPs are not ready for this technology – unusual behavior seen in the field including UDP rate limiting, accidental overlay tunnel traffic blocking and persistent packet loss issues

5. Global logistics cannot be taken for granted – there is still a lot of hardware involved! Enterprises will need to participate in the process and have a real awareness of how equipment is going to get to their remote sites

6. A change in operational tools, processes and mindsets is often required for a successful adoption. Some enterprises find it difficult to move away from local CLIs and device-level configurations

Although our SD-WAN experience to date has been very positive, there are aspects of the solutions that enterprises should focus on to ensure success. This ranges from choosing the right vendor and architecture up front, to working with ISPs to resolve unexpected transport issues and adapting operational processes


How to build the business case for the adoption of this technology

While it varies by SD-WAN vendor, substantial savings on bandwidth, equipment and people can be realized, even during a pilot or partial deployment. Cost savings range from 30-50% vs. existing WAN spend. When required upgraded requirements are accounted for, savings in the range of 50-80% vs. upgraded WAN spend can be seen

Circuit infrastructure savings

• 2-100x bandwidth increase - with savings

• Reduce or remove MPLS spend

• No more Active : Passive and (largely) wasted circuits

Equipment CAPEX and maintenance savings

• No one time or leased CPE cost

• No ongoing maintenance fees

• Often no longer need WANOp devices (& maintenance)

Operational resource savings

• No truck roll required

• Less engineering resources at every stage – design, configure, test, install, manage, report

• DIY Moves & Changes – no MAC fees from managed provider

321

Extra Vendor Management overhead: • Great number of relevant technology vendors • Increased number of circuit vendors in scope


Seven things we will we see next with SD-WAN?

1. Awareness is rising and demand from end users is growing exponentially, driving momentum as enterprises focus on understanding, gaining experience and obtaining reference points

2. Simple or discrete use cases prevailed early, but we will see more adoption for increasingly sophisticated deployments as the technology matures and vendor product completeness grows

3. There will be greater use of internet bandwidth in each market, and a corresponding decrease in MPLS

4. More vendors will announce SD-WAN capabilities within their portfolio and emerge with the skills and resources in the ecosystem for resale, global delivery, and managed services

5. Inevitably the increasingly crowded SD-WAN space will see some vendor consolidation

6. More adoption by larger enterprises will lead to better integration with existing operational systems

7. More Service Providers will launch genuine SD-WAN services augmenting their geographic reach, adding lower cost options and increasing service offerings

The rapid SD-WAN market development requires an agile approach to adopting and iterating solutions. Rapid macro-level changes as well as iteration at a product level should be expected. With benefits spanning technical, commercial and operational areas we see this moving from hype to productive deployments very quickly


Conclusion: longer term perspective

• The SD-WAN market is projected to grow to a $6-7Bn industry in the next four years, with much of this growth derived from displacing MPLS spend

• Enterprises continue to look for well-structured mechanisms to adopt the technology, aligned with measurable business benefits

• Increasing adoption of public cloud services in the enterprise will add to the pressure to move away from traditional network solutions, which will frequently be seen as not fit for purpose

• Vendor consolidation is likely as the offerings mature and startups look at options to achieve the level of global scale that enterprises require

We will see even greater change and disruption in this market in the coming years. Most industry analysts project SD-WAN displacing up to 30% of MPLS spend by 2019, as enterprises continue their move to the public cloud.

Thank you

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

www.coevolve.com

@coevolvetech

[email protected]

Read Coevolve CTO Ciaran Roche’s Network World blog: networkworld.com/author/Ciaran-Roche

lessons learned from sd-wan deployments on six … learned from sd-wan deployments on six continents...

Documents