For both enterprises and small and midsize businesses, network evolution has been accelerated through the adoption of cloud-first strategies. This network expansion often happens slowly, without centralized control or secure oversight. In some cases, however, these networks develop quickly, driven by new cloud-enabled strategies such as bring-your-own-device (BYOD), the internet of things (IoT), and software as a service (SaaS). Such rapid expansion generally causes networks to suffer from less centralized control and secure oversight.

As employees seek out the tools and services necessary to stay competitive in the modern digital economy, the rate at which these technologies are being added to your customers’ networks is noteworthy. With this new technology, network traffic increases can be significant, and oftentimes the legacy architectures that exist within the network simply cannot handle the new need for bandwidth. To account for modern, latency-sensitive systems, traditional strategies for handling traffic–ike multiprotocol label switching (MPLS)–must be revised to deliver the performance that today’s digital business environments demand.

How SD-WAN and SD-Branch Aid in Network Evolution

As they face network expansion, your customers must not underestimate the role of software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) and SD-branch solutions. It is expensive to upgrade traditional MPLS systems, and, even when upgraded, these devices do little to simplify operations. For this reason, your customers need an affordable way to update and secure their evolving and distributed networks while also streamlining operations, visibility and control. Your customers need SD-WAN.

Partners and MSSPs have the opportunity to help customers enhance their networks and direct traffic to remote locations and branch offices. With secure SD-WAN solutions, network monitoring becomes centralized, providing network security teams with a more effective way to manage their WAN architecture. SD-branch solutions additionally allow organizations to simplify remote office infrastructure and push security to the edge.

As partners and MSSPs expand their offerings to meet customer needs, it is important to account for the fact that not all SD-WAN solutions offer the same level of performance. In fact, 80% of organizations surveyed report that their SD-WAN solution is difficult to manage, time-consuming and over-complicated.

Seeking out service providers who can facilitate SD-WAN-as-a-service can be a fundamental starting point for businesses looking to adopt new technologies. Fortinet partners and MSSPs can simplify this process by offering a consolidated networking solution as a value-added service to help customers enhance their networks and, further, their business offerings.

Seven Aspects to Consider When Offering SD-WAN and SD-Branch Solutions

More than half of businesses claim to have sought out managed security service providers to assist in the implementation and management of their networks. Below, we’ve provided a checklist to reference when offering these managed services to your customers:

Final Thoughts

MSSPs and partners who offer SD-WAN-as-a-solution services can help their customers leverage new technology and enhance business operations. As organizations watch their networks evolve, it is up to partners and MSSPs to guide their customers and optimize the deployment of SD-WAN and SD-Branch solutions. Fortinet makes it easy for partners to provide the unique, customized solution customers need across branch and remote locations.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.