The 2025 switch-off poses a challenge to businesses of all sizes. As the UK prepares to close the legacy ISDN and PSTN networks, some may assume that global enterprises can take these technological advances in their stride. But as organisations grow, managing a broader WAN becomes increasingly challenging.
That doesn’t have to be the case. A truly converged SD-WAN and SASE solution, especially one that puts zero trust at its foundations, presents enterprises with a plethora of benefits, especially in three key areas: business agility, data security and employee productivity.
Embracing the cloud has been a key enabler in enhancing an operation’s agility, reducing CapEx costs and providing access from anywhere. However, in the multi-cloud environment that enterprises require, network management becomes fractured without a single system to provide a bird’s-eye view and central management.
Adopting new technologies to replace legacy connectivity, opening new sites and entering new geographic markets all present challenges. Network admins are forced to juggle multiple last-mile providers, technologies and compliance requirements, reducing the clarity of insights and ability to control traffic behaviour.
Managing complexity
A fully managed SD-WAN and SASE platform enables massive in-country, regional, and global optimisations across all cloud environments, effectively managing all that complexity in a single-pane-of-glass.
Not only does this remove many of the transitional challenges brought by the upcoming switch-off, but a managed solution frees up more time for an enterprise’s in-house team to spend on more urgent projects, or what’s being planned for the future.
The hybrid world is here to stay, further increasing the network edge. This requires residential internet services to access enterprise WANs which creates significant vulnerabilities.
Given that the security features of business-grade internet services aren’t part of residential connections, further safeguards must be put in place to ensure the most robust data protections.
Employees may even adopt cloud services for their own use, which admins would not be aware of, creating more security gaps that haven’t even been identified.
Therefore, a zero trust strategy is essential to ensure every action, file, application and data pipe is interrogated at each stage of the data journey.
Incorporating zero trust policies into a platform that manages the entire global network ensures broad protections and visibility across the threat environment, so that further safeguards can be put in place in areas where unusual behaviour or target attacks are being surfaced.
Bandwidth may be less consistent for hybrid workers too, given the shared nature of broadband services. Applications may also show vastly differing performance depending on location, all of which have a knock-on effect on productivity.
Adapting to requirements
If teams don’t have the tools and reliable connections to complete their tasks, the results can be lethal. Frustrated staff, increased churn, more negative customer and partner reactions – and their impact on revenue – are all symptoms of staff hindered by technology.
SD-WAN helps to remove these challenges. While planning is of course required, the deployment timeframe for SD-WAN is far faster than an MPLS equivalent. Having broad insights across application performance enable admins to better identify pinch points in order to redirect and reprioritise traffic.
Furthermore, those insights remove the challenges around complexity allowing for central management through a single portal, no matter the applications or connectivity technologies leveraged.
In summary, the right SD-WAN can ensure enterprises can realise their digital transformation dreams with confidence, even while juggling the challenges of upgrading connectivity from legacy ISDN and ADSL technologies.
Companies can be sure in the fact that data is protected, that applications will perform at their best, and that operations can better flex to the immediate needs of the time, no matter what the future holds.