A fresh era of networking has arrived, introducing the hybrid framework and the hybrid office while reviving the Software-defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) capabilities. So, what does this mean for today’s business, and why is everyone talking about SD-WAN when just the other day, like the Mainframe, it was reported dead?

This is because the pandemic changed everything by redefining the need for remote working. Many organizations have since adopted new hybrid models that deliver remote work capabilities and office collaboration, with remote work proving to be a resounding success for employees and employers. The advantages of remote work, apparent in the initial couple of years, are now slowly waning away, but not due to a lack of technologies—instead, the reasons go beyond that. If anything, technology has only improved to facilitate remote working better.

Expanding Remote Work with SD-WAN

Consider technologies like SD-WAN and Cloud Adaptation that enable remote working for every organization to plan and deploy quickly. However, it is critical to ensure that planning is done correctly after considering all the factors that must be addressed before and during any network implementation for hybrid workspaces.

The shift towards remote work has led to the evolution of virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI) and the adoption of cloud-based enterprise applications. SD-WAN enables organizations to integrate these services seamlessly into their network while optimizing performance and security. By dynamically routing traffic and prioritizing business-critical applications, SD-WAN ensures minimal latency and improved user experience.

Challenging Working Conditions

Many organizations have planned and adapted to new ways of working, which are ably supported and enhanced through collaborative tools and remote application access. This makes it extremely necessary to ensure enterprise networks are quality-driven and capable of understanding, managing, and prioritizing various types of networks and application traffic, depending on user requirements and communication type. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools are equally critical for operations and must be accessed remotely and securely.

Enhanced Security for a Hybrid Workforce

More critical, however, is the requirement for security, as the risk of cyber breach is higher when resources no longer ‘sit’ behind an organization’s firewall when an employee is working from a remote, non-office location. With this in mind, network elements must be planned, designed, and implemented effectively, and SD-WAN can meet the needs of any kind of remote working. It combines advanced traffic engineering to provide policy-based performance with stringent security using zero-trust architecture.

The increasing number of remote endpoints also calls for immediate and robust endpoint security measures. SD-WAN solutions integrate with Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) frameworks, extending security policies across distributed locations. By leveraging threat intelligence, real-time monitoring, and AI-driven anomaly detection, SD-WAN significantly reduces the risk of cyber threats for hybrid workforces.

The New Hybrid Reality

In the last couple of years, many employees have split their time between working from home and being in the office. The new hybrid workforce model has been challenging for enterprise networks and infrastructure, requiring IT leaders to create new IT and security policies and make the right investments in technology to ensure continuous improvements in workforce productivity and efficiencies.

To this end, the three key network infrastructure priorities for powering an effective hybrid workforce have become an SD-WAN-driven network, a digital collaboration platform, and a flexible approach to security. A network infrastructure like SD-WAN allows organizations to centrally deploy and manage branches and remote users centrally centrally, providing advanced traffic engineering for policy-based network traffic prioritization to manage the changes and challenges of hybrid workforce network activity.

Aligning Security and Performance

While speed and performance are important, it’s crucial to remember that security is today’s most critical network infrastructure consideration. The rise of cybercrime and remote workers has pushed this need for most organizations. As transactions move to the cloud and the internet, networks are highly distributed, creating additional attack surfaces.

Zero Trust and SD-WAN for a Resilient Future

To counter this, most SD-WAN service providers operate from a Zero-Trust Security architecture, which assumes that there is no inside network and that every user and device is not to be trusted by default. Every user-access request and transaction must pass through strong authentication and authorization processes defined using zero-trust policies over the SD-WAN network.

Additionally, SD-WAN enhances security by integrating with next-generation firewalls (NGFW), intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS), and secure web gateways. These integrations provide deep packet inspection (DPI) and encrypted traffic analysis to mitigate advanced persistent threats (APT) and ransomware attacks.

Future-Proofing Hybrid Workspaces with AI and Automation

The need for collaboration tools is set to remain the new norm as we adjust to living in a socially distant world. This has led to the adoption of Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) based collaboration tools instead of app-driven tools, as these offer the flexibility of browser-based meetings without the need for an additional plugin. Here, SD-WAN-based networks prioritize specific cloud-based collaboration tools to ensure users have a low-latency unified communication experience.

Beyond traditional network optimizations, SD-WAN solutions increasingly integrate artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for predictive analytics and automation. AI-driven SD-WAN can proactively identify potential network failures and reroute traffic before issues arise. This level of automation significantly reduces downtime and ensures business continuity in hybrid work environments.

Amritesh Anand – Vice President & MD, Technology Services

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