Articles about SD-WAN

According to a new study, 81 percent of IT professionals say hybrid work is driving demand for technologies like SASE and zero-trust networking.

The report from Aryaka surveyed over 200 IT, security and network professionals and finds SASE and SD-WAN are no longer seen as niche solutions. 84 percent of respondents believe SASE is either 'mature' or 'somewhat mature', with an even higher number (91 percent) saying the same about SD-WAN.

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The cybersecurity landscape is no stranger to change. Security strategies must adapt to the onslaught of new threats and the increasing sophistication of cyber-attacks. The emergence of 5G as a primary WAN technology creates new opportunities and corresponding security challenges for businesses. As 5G technology delivers faster and more flexible connectivity capabilities, enterprises can expand their networks and provide additional connectivity in more places and for a broader range of devices. With this comes a need for comprehensive, customizable security to handle this growth.   

A major area that 5G technology will affect is the expansion of IoT devices, as many will be added to 5G networks. Ericsson predicts the number of IoT-connected devices will reach 34.7 billion by 2028, up from 13.2 billion in 2022. As the number of IoT devices continues to grow, the attack surface also grows, increasing the risk of attack from bad actors. This is why we have seen a rise in cyber-attacks targeting IoT devices, with Techmonitor identifying a 98 percent spike in cyber-attacks on IoT devices within the last quarter of 2022.

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New use cases are breaking existing edge technologies, such as MPLS and SD-WAN, according to a survey from Graphiant.

Enterprise connectivity has changed a lot in recent years, with a surge in remote workers, remote offices, and IoT. This has exposed shortcomings with MPLS and SD-WAN, with network architects rating both technologies with Ds and Fs for metrics such as scalability, agility, and cost.

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Digital and cloud transformation has unlocked new business opportunities and operational efficiencies for organizations. But migration to the cloud also means our approach to deploying applications and services has radically changed, as enterprises move away from traditional data centers. Likewise, flexible working means users have also moved away from traditional offices and branches.

As a result, organizations that were once heavily dependent on MPLS (multi-protocol label switching) have either moved, or are moving, away and it has lost its dominance. Today, many organizations have either deployed, or are looking to deploy, SD-WAN over the internet. However, the move away from MPLS to an internet-based SD-WAN solution means that some global organizations are now struggling with the performance of their inter-region connectivity. Using the internet between regions – across longer distances and where applications are not locally hosted – can present issues.

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The past three years have been challenging in many ways for the retail industry and this uncertain reality isn’t going anywhere. The industry continues to face challenges; the cost-of-living and energy crisis, and expected period of economic downturn, are understandably unsettling for all sectors, with retail particularly hard hit in a recessionary period.

Retailers need to adapt to smarter technology that can not only support their in-store operations and ensure an excellent customer experience and guarantee secure customer payments and business data, but that can also help them to transition into a truly omnichannel offering: improving customer experience and operational efficiency -- all of which are crucial in these uncertain times. 

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When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in early 2020, businesses around the world pivoted quickly to respond to an event that had the potential to disrupt or ruin their markets and business models. In a matter of weeks and months, they sent their employees home to work. Some business functions shifted to mobile apps, other business applications to the cloud. Enterprises embraced new communication tools and technologies to stay connected to their suppliers, partners, customers and workers, no matter where they were located around the world.

Every key shift in business operations relied on dependable, secure and often global connectivity. Today, as the post-pandemic picture comes into focus, a key question arises: Are businesses ready for what’s next? 

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