Professional Documents
Culture Documents
September 2015
Prepared by:
Zeus Kerravala
Cisco Intelligent WAN Is the Foundation for the Software-
Defined WAN
by Zeus Kerravala
September 2015
ZK Research
A Division of Kerravala
Consulting
Introduction: Digital Transformation Drives WAN Evolution
Digital transformation is reshaping the business landscape faster than at any time
in history. It used to take decades to disrupt a market, but natively digital
companies such as Uber and Airbnb have disrupted their industries in just half a
decade. Digitization is creating new winners and losers at an unprecedented rate.
Organizations that adopt a digital strategy will leapfrog the competition, while
those that do not will risk becoming irrelevant within five years.
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If businesses are to achieve the necessary levels of ongoing research, ZK Research estimates that video
agility required to compete in the digital era, the traffic consumes up to 90% of business traffic today,
WAN must now evolve to a software-defined model. a major shift from even a decade ago when video
However, the path to a software-defined WAN (SD- constituted less than 10% of network traffic.
WAN) involves many components, and
organizations should take an architectural approach. The evolving business climate is putting new
This paper discusses the challenges with todays demands on the WAN that cannot be met with
WAN, introduces the software-defined WAN and legacy deployment models because of the following
highlights how Ciscos Intelligent WAN (IWAN) can challenges:
enable a rapid, risk-free migration to this new
network model. Inefficient use of network bandwidth: Because
the WAN is so critical to business operations,
Section II: Challenges with the almost all organizations provision backup network
connections. In most cases, the dual network
Traditional WAN
connections are put in active/passive mode,
The current architecture used to design business where all traffic is sent down the primary
WANs has been in place for more than 30 years. connection and the backup link only becomes
The existing model was designed for predictable active when the primary fails. This is done to
traffic flows from client/server computing and best- avoid routing loops and other problems that can
effort Internet traffic. The centralized architecture is create network issues. An active/passive
optimized for manageability but lacks any kind of configuration means both network connections
dynamism or granular access control required for must be provisioned with enough bandwidth to
todays diverse and varied traffic types driven from pass all of a companys WAN traffic, causing
mobile users, extranets and telecommuters. organizations to pay for up to twice the amount of
bandwidth they are actually using.
Mobile applications and multimedia traffic are among
the fastest growing application types. Based on
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High cost of bandwidth: With traditional WANs, services, it is still difficult for most network
the only way to ensure the availability of managers to optimize the user experience of
bandwidth for applications is to use expensive WAN-based applications. Consequently, network
private IP network services such as Multiprotocol managers are often tuning quality-of-service
Label Switching (MPLS). Lower-cost Internet (QoS) settings, creating alternative paths or
connections do not offer any kind of service-level changing other network parameters. This
agreements (SLAs) or the assurances necessary tweaking of the network is often done ad hoc
to use them as business-class circuits. when users are complaining about problems,
Security and performance are overlay which is one reason why the largest cause of
technologies: Securing a legacy WAN is network outages today is human error, according
typically accomplished by layering on additional to the ZK Research 2015 Network Purchase
physical appliances to add the new functionality Intention Study (Exhibit 2). Improving the quality
required. The overlay approach, which is built on of experience for applications requires having
multiple appliances, can further increase the deep visibility into application behavior,
complexity of the network. identifying optimal paths and then automating
constant changes to QoS settings and other
Little to no automation capabilities: Traditional factors.
WANs have almost no ability to automate
network operations tasks. The provisioning of Network agility can no longer be an aspirational goal
new services and the implementation of because it is business critical today. Business
configuration changes are typically done leaders must shed their legacy thinking regarding
manually on a box-by-box basis, creating long network design and deploy a network that offers the
lead times for any kind of change to be made. In same level of agility that exists at the compute and
this era of network-centric IT, a network application tiers. To accomplish this, a new, agile
engineers time is extremely valuable and should WAN architecture is required. Its time for the
be spent working on strategic initiatives. software-defined WAN.
Difficulty optimizing the user experience:
Despite the high cost of private networking
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Cisco Intelligent WAN Is the Foundation for the Software-Defined WAN 7
Cisco has all the technical capabilities to enable any become more agile and rapidly respond to new
customer to partially or fully migrate to an SD-WAN. business opportunities.
However, Ciscos approach goes beyond just the Automation capabilities: The Cisco APIC-EM
technology. In addition to providing all of the controllers IWAN Application automates the
technical components, Cisco also offers its configuration and deployment of advanced IWAN
customers a number of additional benefits, including: features such as security, path optimization,
enhanced application visibility and QoS on
Full system validation: Deploying an SD-WAN Ciscos 4000 series Integrated Services Router.
can be a daunting task for most customers
because there are several factors to consider. To Cisco Services and large partner ecosystem:
help simplify deployment, Cisco has created a Ciscos network of resources assist customers
number of technology design guides, or Cisco with IWAN design, deployment and ongoing
Validated Designs (CVDs). With respect to SD- operational needs to support and accelerate
WANs, the CVDs can be thought of as a fully IWAN deployments.
tested, validated solution to minimize the Next-generation branch: Ciscos IWAN can help
deployment complexity of IWAN solutions such customers fulfill the any visionthat is, the
as QoS, performance routing and NetFlow ability to connect any user to any application with
monitoring. an uncompromised experiencethrough service
End-to-end solution: The ability to software virtualization. Cisco IWAN enables this vision by
define the WAN provides many benefits to the using network functions virtualization (NFV) to
customer. However, organizations should also deliver agility at the network service layer. NFV
consider bringing the benefits of software-defined abstracts services such as firewall, VPN and
networking to the campus edge (wired and WAN optimization from the hardware platform
wireless) and the data center. Cisco is the only and enables them to run as a pure software
network vendor that can deliver a seamless, end- workload. One benefit of this is that the service
to-end network from the data center to the WAN can be invoked when required through a
edge built on its ACI architecture. centralized management console or an
orchestration tool.
Single platform for features beyond the SD-
WAN: The Cisco Integrated Services Router Additionally, the Cisco ONE software licensing
(ISR) is a single platform that can deliver SD- model enables customers to get started immediately
WAN capabilities but also security, voice, but still be prepared for tomorrow. With Cisco ONE,
application optimization and caching services. the purchase of the software is decoupled from that
This delivers a significant and obvious cost of the underlying hardware. Customers can buy the
benefit over buying a dedicated platform for each hardware and software required to run the business
but also simplifies the operational challenge of today and then upgrade the hardware platform for
managing multiple boxes. more processing capabilities, move to a virtual
Open platform: As a company, Cisco has been platform or upgrade the software for more features
committed to developing standards-based, open in the future.
platforms, and the SD-WAN is no exception. The
open strategy enables a broad third-party The need for an SD-WAN is at an all-time high, and
ecosystem to interoperate with and enhance Ciscos IWAN enables customers to get started
Ciscos IWAN. This includes expert-system today, migrate to a full SD-WAN at a later time and
partners such as LiveAction, Glue Networks and then use IWAN as a foundation for future innovation.
Akamai.
Ability to extend Cisco Application Centric
Section V: Conclusion and
Infrastructure (ACI) to the WAN edge: The Recommendations
Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller
Enterprise Module (APIC-EM) extends ACI to the The digital era is here and is creating new market
WAN and the access edge. ACI provides leaders almost overnight. Business and IT leaders
centralized administration and policy-based must focus on building an IT foundation that is
automation of application prioritization on the dynamic, secure and agile to capitalize on
network. Through NB API programmability, digitization. Shifting the organizations WAN strategy
network control can be automated to help IT away from legacy architectures to a software-defined
WAN is a key step in building an agile IT foundation.
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Cisco Intelligent WAN Is the Foundation for the Software-Defined WAN 8
However, the SD-WAN market is still evolving, and application or service to all users, no matter
there is no industry-wide accepted definition for this where they are located.
technology. Consequently, its important to build a Consider real-time traffic when building an
flexible foundation on which services can be SD-WAN. Real-time traffic applications such as
deployed today but can then expand in the future as voice and video are among the most difficult to
the needs of the business change and as SD-WANs run over a WAN. The requirements of these types
continue to evolve. of applications must be considered when
architecting a next-generation WAN.
Any organization looking to harness the power of
digital transformation should make evolving to an Shed conventional thinking around network
SD-WAN a top priority. As next steps, ZK Research design. Many factors are involved in designing a
recommends the following: WAN, and IT leaders must be willing to think
differently today. For example, years ago,
Evaluate solution providers on their ability to organizations would never have considered using
enable SD-WAN services today, but ensure broadband Internet or cellular services for
the needs of the business will be met in the business connectivity. Today, its possible to use
future. For example, Ciscos IWAN takes an a combination of DSL, cable and 4G wireless to
architectural approach to building an SD-WAN connect branch offices. An SD-WAN isnt a
and enables businesses to start with network traditional WAN, and its important that IT leaders
automation; but then it allows them to move past not discount possible solutions because of
this phase, evolve the branch office and transition historical biases.
to a virtual services model to deliver any