MTN already has early adopters of the Software- Defined Wide area Network dubbed MTN SD- WAN, who have tested, proven and eventually rolled it out to their WAN in Kenya and East Africa. Below are 6 main reasons cited by the early adopters on why they made the move to SD-WAN:
1. MTN SD-WAN is less complex, flexible and easy to manage compared to legacy WANs. One of our clients with branches across East and Central Africa acknowledged that SD WAN has….
“…greatly simplified the management aspect of the network and in turn, improved our user experience.”
2. You don’t need to remove your existing MPLS network. SD-WAN can be combined with MPLS network to form a hybrid WAN. You can, over time, migrate traffic growth towards cost‐effective Internet bandwidth. One of our reference clients started by replacing all unmanaged legacy LAN switches which were making identification of faults very tedious. SD WAN changed everything in that now they have better visibility on the network while troubleshooting and implementation of network policies has become highly simplified. They have eventually rolled it out to their WAN.
3. Centralized Management portal. This feature enables you to automate routine tasks like configuring, troubleshooting, reporting, etc. With this you can prioritize traffic which favours your critical business applications and improves their performance. The portal has easy‐to‐use tools for setting priorities and features that automatically change traffic flows according to current network conditions. One of our current clients acknowledges that:
“… faults across the network are quickly identified and resolved by the click of a button on the user interface as compared to before where one had to log in to individual devices and troubleshoot…..our VoIP and CRM application performance have improved without the need to upgrade our WAN and internet bandwidth. Service availability is also better in that when MPLS link is down, traffic flows via internet link at the branch.”
4. Traditional MPLS can’t offer high-performance access to cloud applications compared to MTN SD-WAN. Given that the latest business applications like Microsoft Office 365 and several other solutions are cloud-based, this makes an SD-WAN the key to Digital Transformation in enterprises. It transforms your WAN architecture and makes it more agile.
5. Zero-touch deployment. MTN SD WAN is easier to adopt and manage as the centralized provisioning portal removes the need for IT personnel to physically go to sites to do actual implementation. It automates provisioning and applies requisite traffic policies on the branch routers and switches. This saves time and cost of setting up new sites or replacing aged equipment.
6. Experienced customer support and advisory from MTN Business Kenya certified engineers.
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