As OEMs continue to invest in WAN optimization, what differentiates vendors’ capabilities so that enterprises seek to scale their infrastructure? In this blog, we’ve created a matrix defining functionalities that help enterprises save money, manage their application performance, and secure their network. The matrix displays the strengths and benefits of each SD-WAN vendor and how they can evolve their WAN ecosystem.
| Functionality | Area | Viptela | VeloCloud | Silver Peak |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delay metrics | Client delay |  | ||
| Delay metrics | Server delay | | ||
| Performance metrics (network performance | Jitter by interface | | ||
| Performance metrics (network performance | Round trip time | | | |
| Performance metrics (network performance | Packet loss | | | |
| Performance metrics (network performance | Latency | | | |
| Performance metrics (network performance | Bandwidth consumption | | | |
| Carrier visibility (transport-agnostic and path selection) | MPLS, cellular, and broadband | | | |
| Carrier visibility (transport-agnostic and path selection) | Dynamic path selection | | | |
| Application awareness | Layer 4 visibility | | | |
| Application awareness | Traffic identification | | | |
| Application awareness | Application prioritization | | | |
| Application awareness | QoS policies | | | |
| Compliance | PCI DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR | | | |
| SLA | – | | | |
| Deployment type | SaaS | | | |
| Deployment type | On-premise | | | |
| Deployment type | Multi-tenant | | | |
| Configuration | Extensible via RESTful API | | | |
| Configuration | Scalability | | | |
| Configuration | High performance | | | |
| Security data encryption | IPsec (AES-256) | | | |
| End-to-end encryption | SSL/TLS | | | |
| Real-time threat intelligence | – | | | |
| NetFlow support | v5 | | | |
| NetFlow support | v9 | | | |
| NetFlow support | IPFIX/cflowd | | | |
Let’s use remote monitoring as an example. COVID-19 has had a huge impact upon the economy and enterprises need to rethink how to manage workers remotely. If an enterprise is seeking to evaluate an SD-WAN vendor, what feature set aligns with their current infrastructure?
Enterprises will need to factor in cost, extensibility, carrier visibility, application awareness, deployment schemas, scalability, and security. These are key characteristics in WAN optimization and the matrix highlights 3 vendors’ attributes, from Plixer’s perspective, in the SD-WAN market space. Plixer has collaborated with those SD-WAN vendors to develop the metadata so that Scrutinizer has greater visibility into enterprise branch offices and edge routers. . There are also unique features from each SD-WAN provider when exporting NetFlow.
SD-WAN providers export v5, v8, v9, and cflowd/IPFIX. The three key areas that our SD-WAN vendors’ flow exports excel within Scrutinizer is return on investment, application performance, and threat detection.
Return on investment (ROI)
SD-WAN’s software-centric approach provides scalability, improves branch agility, optimizes application performance, and provides a significant reduction in capital and operational expenditure. This technology was driven by the value proposition in simplifying the WAN and branch networks, improvement in WAN and application performance, reduced capital and operational expenditure, improved extensibility of WAN management, enhanced network visibility and security, and quick ROI. Studies show that the global SD-WAN market is expected to grow from an estimated market size of $1.36 billion in 2018 to reach over $17.92 billion by 2024.
Application performance monitoring
As applications traverse the SD-WAN ecosystem, end-to-end visibility is critical in contextualizing what business-critical applications need more resources. VeloCloud, Viptela, and Silver Peakhave developed flow exports to provide real time visibility into the metadata from branch offices. Using Scrutinizer to evaluate SD-WAN vendor flow exports provides an insight for NetOps to concentrate on keys areas such as remote monitoring, lateral movement, and data exfiltration.
Applications like Teams or Zoom, which use VoIP, video, and unified communications (UC), are examples of application performance which WAN infrastructure. SD-WAN vendors need visibility of network behavior, data transmission, and application connectivity. The complete visibility and rich context provided by Scrutinizer helps NetOps ensure that remote employees have a good user experience with the day-to-day applications they need.
Threat detection
Each of these SD-WAN vendors require a 3rd-party solution like Scrutinizer to detect malware, botnets, and persistent threats. Using Scrutinizer’s flow analytics enables faster anomaly detection and deeper investigation of both internal and external threats.
Conclusion
As you evaluate the SD WAN vendor matrix, Plixer will continue to add feature sets and vendors to manage the SD-WAN ecosystem. Again, enterprises are driven by performance indicators and the use of Scrutinizer allows NetOPS to track SD-WAN functionality at branch sites or edge routers within your network, configure NetFlow and download Scrutinizer, and become network-aware.