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The growth in cloud adoption has risen at an astronomical rate. Gartner predicts that the worldwide public cloud services market will grow 18% in 2017 t0 $246.8B up from $209.2B in 2016 with Cloud computing projected to increase from $67B in 2015 to $162B in 2020.

SD-WAN has been making the news for quite some time now and it looks like it’s here to stay. According to a recent IDC report, SD-WAN adoption is growing and fast. With 70% of surveyed organisations planning to adopt SD-WAN in the next 18 months. This shift to SD-WAN is of little surprise with so many benefits including cost savings, consistent security and reduced complexity, according to IDC. However, there seem to be many unanswered questions still out there about SD-WAN and it is high time the record is set straight. Fortunately for you, we have answered the six most common questions asked by enterprises: 1) What is SD-WAN? “What is it?” is the most common question asked by organisations we speak to even today, so let’s start with the basics and define exactly what SD-WAN is. Software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) is an alternative approach to the traditional WAN connections. Instead of hardware, SD-WAN uses software and virtual network overlays to take advantage of available WAN connections to connect enterprise networks over multiple sites in different locations. SD-WAN offers compelling advantages including reduction of both hardware and software costs, network operating expenses, increased reliability, availability and flexibility, faster provisioning and improved application performance. 2) Can we really use internet bandwidth for an enterprise network? The answer is quite simply absolutely! The rapid development of technology and especially the growth of optical fibre communication has enabled the rapid improvement of bandwidth speed and performance in the past few years. Business-class high-speed Internet bandwidths with speed at even 1Gbps are available and can be used for enterprise networks. 3) How does SD-WAN save you money? SD-WAN reduces a company’s dependency on MPLS so effectively lowers the operating costs by relying less on expensive private links and using inexpensive public connections instead. The cost of MPLS per Mbps can be up to 100 times the cost of bandwidth, depending on geography; and even with MPLS costs dropping down, the price of broadband Internet is still much cheaper with the price gap between MPLS and enterprise-class Internet being as high as 30%, Gartner estimates. Additionally, Gartner predicts that enterprises will need 28% additional bandwidth in order to meet the demands of modern application usage (compounded annual growth rate); so on top of the cost-savings described above, companies will be able to afford more bandwidth than they currently can relying on MPLS. Furthermore, the increased flexibility, visibility and control with SD-WAN mean that the network becomes easier to manage, operate and maintain. SD-WAN helps mitigate costs in provisioning remote sites, lowers the expenses associated with scaling or adapting network resources and also cuts time spent on ongoing network management. 4) Can we fully replace our MPLS network with SD-WAN? Yes, you can, this comes down to choice and what you think is best for your business. SD-WAN can fully or partially replace the existing MPLS connections. The MPLS replacement doesn’t need to be done all at once, a phased transitional approach is often the way most organisations go. Since SD-WAN is a disruptive technology and with many stakeholders relying on MPLS for decades, some IT Managers prefer to create a hybrid architecture by keeping some of their MPLS connections, replacing 50% to 80% of them in order to validate SD-WAN’s performance and reliability. There are Enterprises which are more familiar with the technology and are happy to completely replace all of their existing MPLS connections with SD-WAN to maximise the benefits. If you are interested to hear more about these organisations and exactly how we helped them with this transition please contact us for further insight. 5) How easy is it to test the platform in your environment? At RDC we understand that it is essential to rigorously test an SD-WAN solution in your own environment before committing to it. A POC (Proof of Concept) is not a complicated exercise and is the best approach. With a large number of successful global POCs and installations of our recommended solution Silver Peak, we can help you execute a successful POC so you can fully grasp the benefits of SD-WAN adoption. If you are interested or need more convincing, please contact us by clicking here. 6) Do I need to wait for my network contract to end before looking at SD-WAN? There is no need to wait. As SD-WAN acts as a virtual overlay on top of your existing MPLS network you don’t need to wait until the end of your contract to deploy it. SD-WAN can be adopted without uprooting your entire network or ripping out the old MPLS connections. In this situation, SD-WAN is simply going to improve and enhance your MPLS infrastructure until the contract expires. We hope this article has been of interest, if you are considering SD-WAN adoption or there are any questions you often hear about SD-WAN that are not in our top 5 please do get in touch.

Unified Communications & Collaboration (UCC) deployments are increasing with organisations now becoming conscious of the advantages it can bring their business. UCC can help businesses boost productivity, increase revenues, reduce costs and enhance customer relationships together with other tangible benefits such as increased responsiveness and accelerated collaboration. UCC aggregates the communication services that people use into a single interface, including instant messaging, voice, presence, video conferencing, desktop sharing, apps and so on. In the modern business environment, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all voice & UC solution. The tangible benefits of UCC will differ from organisation to organisation, depending and based on individual communication and collaboration needs within the company. Hence why deploying UCC successfully requires a plan aligned with the company strategy. Below are our top 4 tips for a successful UCC deployment: Users come first Almost every business, and every vertical within it, has communication bottlenecks and inefficiencies which slow the workflow. As already mentioned, each organisation has different communication needs and the easiest way to identify them is to look at the end users. If you trace back these inefficiencies and the communication activities of your employees, you can easily pinpoint which tools they are using including devices, individual applications for different tasks and which tools will be most useful to adopt. Also, it is extremely important to take into account individual usage profiles - each department or group within your company such as customer service, sales reps, marketing and so on are involved in different work processes and therefore have different communication needs. For example, marketing, design and other departments with similar functions are likely to benefit from a collaboration platform where they can communicate quickly and efficiently to make decisions, using instant messaging whilst sharing their screens to present to a customer or colleague. On the other hand, sales reps are constantly on the move and need to be able to join a conference call from any place with a click of a button from their mobile device, as opposed to using lengthy dial in numbers to join a bridge. A way to ensure that sales reps will never miss a call from a customer or prospect is a term used in the industry ‘find me, follow me’ which involves integration of your mobile and voice environment. It is crucial to plan out the different communication needs of the various departments within your organisation and having a user-focused strategy prior to any deployment. Choose your deployment method carefully An on-site solution is no longer the only option for organisations when they come to review their UC strategy. It is time to consider the right deployment method for your business in terms of your resource, DR, growth plans, budgets etc. The question to ask yourself is: Is on-premise, hosted or a hybrid platform best for you? Each of these solutions has its own benefits as well as its potential drawbacks according to what is important to you (upfront costs and costs of maintenance, DR strategy, resources to run the system internally, current bandwidth etc.), and in each case you will have to ensure that not only the provider is the right one to accompany you and fulfil your needs in the long term, but also that the product/technology they are putting forward is exactly matching your needs and is in accordance with your company strategy. At Solar we work with ShoreTel, which is an award winning industry leading provider of telephony and UC solutions. Their phone system is based on an open architecture which enables the integration with other leading solutions including Salesforce, Skype for Business and NetSuite among many others. The platform has various other features including CRM integrations, call recording, prioritisation of queues together with other smart telephony functions. Try before you make the final decision We speak to too many IT managers who feel the pressure of making their decision the final one and therefore delay the decision-making process by fear of choosing the wrong solution and wrong provider. It is likely that you will keep this new solution for the next 10 years and making a decision for such a long-term commitment can become difficult especially if you have multiple sites and a large number of users. When it comes to telephony and UCC, most IT managers tend not to consider doing a POC, fearing it a waste of their time. Paradoxically, the IT managers we speak to who are trialling different solutions on different sites - or with different groups of users - appear to be the most serene. Why? Because they get the opportunity to trial the solutions, test the service and relationship with the provider, but also gain valuable feedback from the users. It might seem laborious to install a new system for the sake of a POC, but consider how much time (and money) you will have saved yourself in the long run by keeping the best provider and solution - by simply trialling, comparing and potentially getting rid of an incompetent provider, inadequate solution, or both! Train the users Another crucial but often neglected aspect of a successful Unified Communications and Collaboration deployment is getting the employees excited and familiar with the new technology. In order to take full advantage and explore all the benefits of UCC, all users need to understand how to use it, which requires training or a familiarisation session. Even if your employees already have experience using some UCC applications such as IM and video conferencing, training is helpful to ensure that all users are confident with the solutions, make the most of it and help with a faster adoption rate, and therefore faster ROI. Alternatively, if there are too many changes and unfamiliar applications and processes, or your employees are just not very tech-savvy, a phased deployment can be implemented. Let the users adopt and experience each UC component for a time before moving on to the next one. We hope this article has been of interest. If you need additional information about successful deployment of Unified Communications and Collaboration solutions, please contact us and we will be happy to help you.

Today, the majority of Enterprise WAN’s are based on MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) connections. However, with the growing number of applications being delivered from the cloud combined with the need to enable direct-to-cloud communications, MPLS is no longer sufficiently performant or cost-effective. The need to increase streamline WAN infrastructure, combined with the interest for cheaper and simpler WAN, is driving SD-WAN adoption. The SD-WAN market is set to at least double in the next 3 years with 70% of companies interviewed planning to adopt SD-WAN in some form in the next 18 months, IDC reports. SD-WAN over DIA (Direct Internet Access) can fully replace existing MPLS, or a hybrid of MPLS and DIA can be leveraged. The leading motives cited driving the adoption for enterprises are price, security, visibility and reduced complexity. Couple these advantages with the other benefits SD-WAN can bring to your business and it becomes clear why MPLS networks are in decline year on year. Here are the top 4 reasons why SD-WAN will replace legacy MPLS connections: SD-WAN improves application and network performance Before the advent of the cloud, organisations needed only to be concerned with the performance of the applications hosted on their private networks and centralised data centres. Now that applications are moving to the cloud and are relying on the Internet to carry them to offices, MPLS can no longer deliver, which is turning businesses away. The Internet is a much better scaled network than it was a decade or even 5 years ago. Business-class high-speed Internet bandwidth with speeds up to and beyond 1Gbps are available and can be used for enterprise networks. Leveraging broadband Internet as an alternative to MPLS ensures network-wide predictable performance regardless of where the applications are hosted. SD-WAN ensures high availability with minimum downtime. When running over pure Internet bandwidth, the best way to maintain 99.99% availability is to utilise 2 links from 2 different providers in case of link failure. Additionally, SD-WAN enables you to measure jitter, latency and packet loss, routeing traffic to the best path available with the least amount of loss. If loss is still present on both links, solutions such as Silver Peak’s Path Conditioning will address the problem, ensuring exceptional performance, reliability and private-line-like performance over the public Internet. MPLS has a complex infrastructure It’s the management and orchestration of SD-WAN which gives it its competitive edge and differentiates it from other solutions. Legacy MPLS has a multitude of single-function devices and appliances connecting via different WAN links. This complex infrastructure proved to be prohibitively expensive and complex, both to implement and maintain. In contrast, broadband internet links are much quicker to provision and deploy. The plug-n-play concept and point-and-click provisioning of SD-WAN are its biggest unique selling points. Additionally, everything is GUI based which means that large and complex WAN’s can be managed more simply the ever before. Savings are substantial One of the biggest drivers of SD-WAN adoption, which accounts for 35% of all deployments, is the cost savings that can be derived. MPLS circuits are not only expensive to install and scale, but the cost of MPLS per Mbps can be up to 100 times the cost of Internet bandwidth. MPLS is priced anywhere between £30 and £60 per megabit per month compared to as little as £2 for broadband Internet. Companies surveyed in a recent IDC survey reported an estimate of at least 20% cost savings with SD-WAN. Security is improved Another motive accounting for a big part of SD-WAN deployments is the network security it provides. Historically MPLS has been considered a secure form of network connectivity as it uses private links and does not require encryption. However, the data travelling through the node is exposed and if anyone gains access to the wire outside the building, the data can be tapped. Similarly, recent events have called MPLS security into question and revealed that governments can easily tap and monitor these networks. On the other hand, SD-WAN predominantly uses DIA and since the Internet is a public and shared medium it represents an opportunity for attackers. However, security across the Internet can be ensured by utilising encryption and firewall level packet inspection used for security, reporting, and traffic prioritisation. Conclusion Substantial cost savings, improved performance, full network visibility, simplified management and consistent security are the top drivers for enterprises considering SD-WAN. Aside from these advantages there are other smaller benefits that SD-WAN has over MPLS including wider geographic availability, unmatched QoS as well as the fact that it is not datacentre-dependent. Due to the myriad of benefits it provides to businesses, SD-WAN has started to replace legacy MPLS networks and the trend is set to scale dramatically over the next few years. We hope this article has been of interest. If your company is considering ripping out and replacing your current MPLS network architecture, contact Solar Communications to find out more about how SD-WAN can support your needs.

With so much information coming out about the cloud and hosted business telephony it is easy to get inundated, but with the market showing the move is inevitable it is understandable for you to be asking yourself “How do I get on to the cloud?”

What is a disaster?

Disaster can strike in a number of ways: