As society continues to evolve into a pervasive, interconnection of people, devices and content, networks become an important part of this new world. While the Internet has proven to be the global fabric that interconnects all things, networks need to provide more value than simply raw bandwidth.
As networks globally transform themselves into an on-demand and real-time set of programmable systems, many applications are moving to the cloud as an IT utility for a globalized and mobile workforce. While the advancements of Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) and Carrier Ethernet (CE) have proven to delivera business grade private Wide Area Network (WAN) for enterprises worldwide, challenges persist. The time it takes to bring up new sites and interconnecting sites or public or private clouds has increasingly become an issue.
Today it can take many months to enable a multi-national business to connect various sites globally to each other or to their public and private clouds. Additionally, services changes, even just bandwidthchanges, can often take weeks because they involve manual workflow-based processes that are unacceptable for a society now accustomed to on-demand cloud-based applications and services. Software-Defined WANs (SDWANs) have emerged as one such solution to address these issues.
This white paper first appeared on MEF website