Leveraging SD-WAN and LTE to Support Enterprise Expansion

The phrase "time is money" was made famous by Benjamin Franklin back in 1748, but its relevance in society has never been greater. Business is moving faster than ever. Innovation is at an all-time high, more and more data is created every day, and no matter what space an enterprise occupies – from retail to healthcare to manufacturing – failing to adapt is failing to survive.

Accelerating your speed of business while increasing data processing power has become essential. Software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) technology has emerged to deliver multiple performance and cost benefits – including higher-quality and faster data-transfer. But perhaps its most valuable feature is the ability to provision new branch or office networks rapidly. 

Provisioning of Enterprise Environments

To keep up with the global demands on today's businesses, enterprises must diversify, adapt, and grow.

Expanding into new markets can help spur development, but this often requires expansion into new offices or branches, which can be a drawn-out, resource-consuming process.

As enterprises face more pressure to be responsive and agile, it's increasingly obvious that parts of the network, like the wide area network (WAN), aren't keeping up with those demands. 

Today, multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) lines take anywhere from between 30 and 90 days to provision, with fiber lines taking even longer. 

10 years ago, businesses may have been able to compete by simply ensuring they had an email contact and a fixed-line telephone in operation. But in this era of digitization, constant connectivity is a must and even minimal downtime leads to reduced employee productivity, dissatisfied customers, and a negatively impacted bottom-line. You need a better alternative.

Enter SD-WAN and long-term evolution (LTE). 

SD-WAN and LTE: An Alternative to Leased Lines 

SD-WAN

SD-WAN can transform enterprise networks from slow and fractured to agile and optimized. More importantly, it can utilize overlay tunnels on top of available transport links to transfer data faster and to a higher quality. 

Additionally, because SD-WAN uses a centrally managed interface, it's possible to control and shape bandwidth at new enterprise sites effortlessly – reducing maintenance costs and minimizing provisioning times.  

But it's important to remember that SD-WAN isn't a form of connectivity in itself. Although the technology makes it possible to leverage all accessible network connections to their full capacity, if there are no connections available then it's virtually worthless.

LTE

LTE provides a wireless, low-latency connection to the internet.

As a result of its application throughout the mobile sector, LTE has become ubiquitous. Organizations can provision LTE networks far more easily and rapidly than waiting for cables to be connected, and time to capability and security of supply is also dramatically improved. 

The downside to LTE is that it's never been reliable enough to be used as a primary network connection, especially for larger organizations. While the technology has almost grown to become a cost-effective and viable alternative to expensive leased lines, LTE connections are subject to local coverage and performance restrictions and are too unreliable for enterprise-grade connectivity.

Combining SD-WAN and LTE 

Salvation is found by combining the availability and immediate provisioning of LTE with the inherent responsivity, flexibility, and security of SD-WAN. This results in an SD-WAN and LTE solution that provides a fast, reliable, and secure network connection and enables a new enterprise office or branch location to be provisioned almost instantly. 

For organizations requiring a more flexible means of connecting remote employees and new enterprise environments, LTE managed through SD-WAN will provide far better economics and capabilities than physical connections. It also greatly reduce the time it takes to implement an effective networking solution. 

SD-WAN and LTE: The Future of Networking

As the speed of business has increased, the value of an available, high-speed network connection has grown exponentially. Today, increasing amounts of data are transferred to data centers, cloud environments, branch offices, and other remote locations. To deal with the additional network reliance, many organizations will need to expand into new office or branch environments. 

To continue to compete in your marketplace, you must be able to provision new environments immediately. Physical links are unable to bridge the gap, but a solution exists in the form of SD-WAN. 

Combining SD-WAN and LTE will not only reduce the time it takes to provision a new enterprise environment from three months to just a few minutes, but the reduced downtime and increased productivity will also help to cut costs.

LTE is still not considered a reliable long-term alternative to leased line connectivity. However, provisioning LTE can rapidly increase new office functionality, then when the time comes to transition to a hard-line internet connection, you can keep the LTE connection as a backup connectivity source. 

It may have been Benjamin Franklin who said: "time is money", but even the inventor of the lightning rod could never have imagined a time when a solution existed that could save you both. This is the power of SD-WAN.