The concept of software defined everything (SDX) has been put forward for more than ten years. The maturity of control theory and technology promotes the great progress of IT architecture. The objects of software defined storage, software defined data center, software defined security and software defined boundary, etc. are specific and clear subjects, while sd-wan completes the interconnection in a wider range. The objects to realize software definition include the whole Internet, cloud system and boundary equipment of branches, etc. How to effectively evaluate the changes of network cost brought by SD-WAN architecture, GoSDWAN tries to help customers make practical analysis with a more systematic method system.
If only the open price information is used, the connection price of MPLS VPN is much more expensive than that of DIA (Dedicated Internet Access), especially for the connection between developing regions and international cross regions. But in fact, in the actual project, the bidding price of MPLS VPN is highly competitive, and large discounts are common. In recent years, the decline in the unit price of MPLS VPN in the telecommunications industry has been recognized as an irresistible thing. According to an internal report, the price of 10Mbps MPLS VPN service in major cities around the world has decreased by 18%. For users, ordering a multi-year contract in advance is tantamount to purchasing a depreciating service. But even considering the discount factor, the maximum cost savings of MPLS VPN on the link come from uplink replacement. Only from the comparison of unit price, without adding additional value-added service applications, the port price of Internet is at least 85% lower than that of MPLS VPN. If the price gap of international traffic is considered, it will be widened. Especially with the current growth of network traffic without slowing down, you can get more broadband at less cost with SD-WAN.
The uplink of traditional enterprise networking usually separates the export of VPN network from Internet, and even different departments have their own independent Internet outlets. After adopting the SD-WAN architecture, in fact, multilevel traffic reused the same DIA line (Internet private line), and the improvement of utilization rate brought further optimization of Netops team operation cost. From the perspective of link reduction, the cost can be reduced by more than 55% on average. Even considering the redundant cost of dia line, the cost of this part can be reduced by more than 40%.
In the traditional MPLS VPN architecture, customer terminal equipment (CPE) has always appeared in the form of black box professional equipment, which is not only expensive, but also high maintenance cost. Most enterprises use leasing to obtain managed CPE to reduce OPEX expenses. The rise of SD-WAN enables the white box device (Whitebox) of the X86 architecture to replace the traditional CPE and provide richer functional features. As long as the bottleneck of forwarding rate is not reached, a model solves all functional requirements. The progress in equipment universality also enables service providers to prepare goods, establish inventory and logistics systems all over the world. Compared with the cost of equipment level, without introducing value-added function, the cost of equipment will be reduced by at least 75%. At the same time, as the SD-WAN architecture is extended to the cloud, the appearance of virtual CPE (Virtual CPE) is not just a comparison of price levels.
According to the global survey report at the beginning of Rightscale, in 2017, the proportion of enterprises using cloud computing exceeded 90%, and the cloud computing was mainly composed of mixed cloud, accounting for 58%, which was 3 percentage points higher than that in 2016. IDC predicts that the global future hybrid cloud will occupy 67% of the total cloud market share, while Gartner predicts that 90% of organizations will use hybrid cloud management infrastructure by 2020. In response to the cloud strategy of global enterprises, the operation planning of network architecture and data flow needs to consider the connection with cloud platform. If we connect with the cloud in the traditional MPLS VPN mode, we need a lot of Direct Connect architecture and Technology (GoSDWAN can provide a complete series of cloud direct link architecture solutions and technical advice). This scheme is expensive and needs to maintain a wide range of network segments in operation. There are mainly some financial industries, large multinational enterprises and safety compliance enterprises that must adopt this architecture. The evolution of SD-WAN has the characteristics of Cloud Native, that is, virtualization deployment of vCPE, and end to end construction of data flow. In this regard, it greatly reduces the cost of cloud integration, which can be described by an order of magnitude.
Due to the lack of unified end-to-end security protection from branches to cloudy, organizations are facing increasing risks. The opening of enterprises to the cloud has exposed various weak links on a larger scale. Providing the right level of network access to the right people at the right location in the network becomes critical. In fact, the software defines that the WAN provides multiple security protection components through network virtualization, providing a robust security architecture for end-to-end connections of customers. Users can be connected to various applications through a convenient and fast security deployment mode, so that the Branch edge and cloud edge are combined. Because threat prevention embedded many important positions in the SD-WAN architecture, from branch to cloud, there is no omission, so the key assets of enterprises are isolated and protected at any time. However, a large number of expensive and low-utilization security devices in the traditional architecture actually have a lot of waste. Customer-oriented integrated network management. In the traditional architecture, Netops team mainly relies on network element level management tools for local management. If it needs a set of business network management for its own internal business perspective, it needs a lot of investment. Especially if it also needs to build alarm, process, report and other modules, the cost is unlimited. The architecture of SD-WAN is embedded in the centralization and presentation of control information. It usually does not require any additional customization and development, and can open the network management view privileges of the tenants to get the expected functions. What is more valuable is that at present, the level of SD-WAN network management in the industry is very high, and it is user oriented rather than information from the perspective of telecom operators. From this perspective, we can save directly the proportion of Capex investment in network management projects.
In addition to the above-mentioned aspects, SD-WAN actually reduces the learning cost of the network operation and maintenance team due to the introduction of a large number of automatic control strategies and visual operation methods. In addition, in the process of delivery, SD-WAN generally opens its business through zero configuration delivery, which also greatly reduces the one-time cost of customers. To sum up, the network cost savings brought by SD-WAN to customers should be over 60%. For international interregional scenes, the scale of savings is more likely to be 90%. In addition to its advantages in capital costs, SD-WAN introduced a large number of indirect costs, such as management costs, labor costs and asset depreciation. No wonder SD-WAN can replace MPLS VPN products in large scale within a few years, and become the main force of enterprise networking.
