Top 5 Essentials for a Global WAN
Article contributed by: Masergy and featured in the Dec. Partner Roundup.
With the increase in globalisation, virtualisation and an explosion in cloud computing, the challenges facing the modern enterprise continue to increase in complexity. These challenges have created an urgent need for a global wide area network (WAN) that has the reliability, scalability and flexibility to cope with adding global sites, fluctuating bandwidth requirements and supporting multiple remote data sites.
The global WAN is the vital infrastructure on which all mission-critical services rely - so underestimating its performance and availability requirements can be a dangerous route to take. If the infrastructure underperforms or worse, fails, the results can range from the difficult (a temporary loss of email, reduced video conferencing performance) to the catastrophic (no trading systems, no order processing). Therefore, an enterprise that places the WAN as the bedrock of its business is positioning itself strongly to cope with future IT demands.
It is imperative to look beyond a commodity WAN offering. Businesses should instead pursue a highly available, high performance global network platform that can adapt to evolving needs. Knowing what to look for in a network provider is challenging, but the following functionality should be considered crucial.
Reliability
The WAN must possess the global capacity to support a broad range of applications, irrespective of bandwidth requirements. Undeniably every enterprise desires a flawless network that functions reliably, but implementing a WAN with the guarantee of consistent global service can present barriers to cost and practicality.
That said, it is certainly achievable if an enterprise pursues a native IP MPLS network which delivers embedded services via the familiar technology of Ethernet. Implementing an Ethernet led network ensures network equipment is similar at every location. For IT workforces, this simplifies design and deployment, lowers costs and de-risks new services.
This is particularly important for a cost-conscious enterprise looking to receive the best return on investment (ROI). Finally there should be strict Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that guarantee the customer global access, performance and connectivity through a simple billing system.
Visibility
At a planning and operational level, a real-time insight into the network’s performance is critical. Visualising site-to-site services on a granular level, across the entire global WAN, improves the speed of decision making and yields an agile IT department that can shift the network to match demand.
A network which allows IT staff to understand the bandwidth requirements of every application provides a clear vision of how the network is evolving and what needs to be done to ensure future demand is met. This simultaneously reduces operational costs and ensures the network is future proofing itself dynamically, rather than struggling to catch up with the marketplace.
Bandwidth Elasticity and Control
The next step is for the WAN to provide a solution for combating the challenges the visibility has provided. If a video conference is suddenly impacting an enterprise’s CRM, the WAN should offer the capability to adjust bandwidth to match demand. However, pre-empting the bandwidth demands of intensive applications proves challenging because their impact is often sporadic.
One solution is to implement a global network platform that has elastic bandwidth capabilities for the real-time control of the network. Adjusting bandwidth on-demand is efficient network management and a more successful solution than simply adding bandwidth without any idea of the impact it is having.
Bandwidth elasticity ensures the network is constantly right-sizing itself to cater for the evolving needs of the business. This is truly next generation and should be considered an essential component of a global WAN.
Quality of Service (QoS)
Even if the ability to react to bandwidth requirements exists, the WAN should also include multiple classes of service for maximising application performance and ensuring network resources are being effectively deployed. The capability to prioritise applications according to their business importance (e.g. video, voice, CRM, ERP, office productivity or file transfer) is imperative.
Network performance is particularly critical for bandwidth intensive applications like voice and video. An unsatisfactory telepresence experience can have a negative impact on user satisfaction and reduce the ROI seen from the equipment. To overcome concerns like this, deploying a dedicated video or voice CoS level ensures network costs are reduced through intelligent bandwidth scaling and at the same time, removes the impact that video has on other critical services.
Security
One of the most pressing issues for enterprises is network security. The network must protect an enterprise from the constantly evolving threats to business operations. This is particularly important if the cloud features in a WAN deployment.
Both Layer 3 MPLS and Layer 2 VPLS WANs should be provisioned with the highest levels of assurance that an enterprise’s private traffic is kept just that – private from any other customer, the public Internet and over connections to external cloud service providers. WAN infrastructures based on a common operating platform and technology, which implement the same security solution in every location for every customer connecting, offer the most secure and lowest risk service in the market today.
Ensuring the global WAN offers this protection is key. Enterprises must seek a global platform that offers the management tools for increasing operational efficiency while simultaneously guaranteeing the security of a network and its data.
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