SD-WAN Vendors: 5 Questions to Narrow Your Comparison – A Broker’s Perspective

Your company is in the market for SD-WAN vendors, but not sure where to start. In this video, I explain the best 5 questions to narrow your comparison options.

Want my recommendations on the best SD-WAN solutions that your company should quote? Click the button below and ask me today.

About Me

Mike Smith has been helping companies select the best telecom, WAN, security, and cloud services since 1999. He founded AeroCom in 2003, and has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards, including being recognized as one of the top 40 business people in tech-heavy Orange County, CA. Follow Mike on YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit and SpiceWorks.

Transcript

Hey there. Thanks for watching another episode. So today we’re going to talk about SD WAN? So your company is in the market for SD WAN. But as you probably have seen, there are hundreds, if not thousands of options when it comes to SD, WAN service providers are SD, WAN vendors. So where do you start? Which vendors should you start taking a look at?

Which SD-WAN Solutions should your company quote?

Well, I’m a broker for all the major SD WAN service providers, so I have a pretty good idea of where to start because this is my job. Every day I’m like, okay, well, there’s hundreds of options. Which ones are the best fit for this? Said customer? So I have some different ways that I kind of filter through the SD WAN service providers and narrow them down.

And so today I’m going to tell you five quick ways to narrow down your search in terms of comparing SD WAN vendors. But before I get too far ahead of myself. A couple of quick plugs. If you want my recommendations on the best SD WAN vendors for your company and you’d like help getting quotes, things like that, reach out, email me or call me (714.593.0011). That’s my job. I’m a broker for all these service providers. I’ll make sure you get paired up with the right vendors, get the best pricing from them, talk to the best reps at each vendor in. The nice thing is, is my service is free to you. You don’t have to pay me a thing. So absolutely no reason not to at least reach out and give it a try. More information on that at the end of the video.

3 Types of SD-WAN Architecture

So SD WAN five ways to narrow all the different vendors that are out there near them, down to something that’s more palatable to look at. But before I even get to that, one quick thing that you definitely want to do is take a look at the video I made a couple of years back on the different types of SD WAN architecture.

I listed three different types of SD WAN architecture in a video on prem only cloud enabled and cloud enabled plus backbone. Now, since I made that video, there’s been some some expansion of those categories, but I’d say that’s still the same. It’s still those main three categories. But there’s been kind of expansion within those categories. Like, for instance, cloud enabled, there’s now cloud enabled with security and then with cybersecurity, there’s different types of cyber cybersecurity, stuff like that. So but take a look at that video, too. That’ll kind of help you understand some of the things I’m talking about in this one

1 Are your most critical applications in the Cloud?

The first thing you want to do is decide, are your most critical applications on prem or up in the cloud. Like, for instance, do you have a server that’s running some really critical application that’s specific to your company and that’s the most critical application that you’re doing, and it’s really sensitive to real time data or is everything is up in the cloud.

So what that’s going to do is it’s going to narrow down the types of vendors that you want to look at. So if you’re critical applications are in the cloud, then you really want to optimize your site to cloud connectivity, which means you’re going to want to look at cloud enabled solutions. You’re going to want to look at those solutions that give you an onsite appliance that connects up to a cloud gateway instead of just an onsite appliance.

Because when you’re connected to a cloud gateway, it opens up a bunch of different things that optimizes with the cloud Again, reference that video would tell you more about it. That is question number one or way number one that you want to narrow things down is ask yourself, are your most critical applications based on premises or are they up in the cloud?

2 Bundling SD-WAN with Cybersecurity

Okay. The second thing that you want to do is you want to ask, does your company want to include cyber security services with SD WAN? So your first reaction might be, Oh, man, that’s just more stuff we’ve got to do. I don’t feel like doing that. You know, just just ask the question. But hold it right there. Don’t make any quick decisions.

So when you think about security, you might be thinking, okay, we have firewalls at every site were handled. We’re good to go. But a big thing going on in this industry is consolidation. They’re really consolidating all these different technologies down. That’s happening all throughout tech, right? You have all these great technologies and all of these different silos. But the problem is it makes your life really difficult because you’re having to do all these different things and all these different silos.

Well, it’s better when you get them all packaged in one technology. So you have one vendor that’s handling all that stuff. And when it comes to cybersecurity, it’s definitely smart to put that into your sd-wan services because where does the trouble come from? It’s coming from outside of your organization through the wide area network, through the Internet. Right?

Security Filtering

And that’s what SD WAN is handling for you. So it makes sense to bundle those things together. So maybe the timing of your SD WAN decision should be, you know, maybe you need it now, but maybe you should plan on adding security when you’re when your firewalls are going to be end of life. Or maybe you want to add it now, But that’s definitely something that you want to think of because what that’s going to do is it’s going to help you determine, do we want to use a in SD WAN vendor that can include security or does that matter at all To us, that’s not anywhere in the near future

That’s ten years out. Maybe we’re going to be thinking about that. Then you don’t have to worry about that. And to take that a little step further, if you do want to package your firewall or security with your SD WAN vendor, how far do you want to go? Do you just need a stateful firewall type solution at every single site, or do you need like next gen firewall that includes email filtering, content filtering, spam filter and stuff like that?

Or do you need to take it a step further and include things like MDR, Sims, SOC, threat hunting, incident response, cybersecurity, risk management, things like that? How far down into cybersecurity do you want to go? Because there are vendors out there who can do all of it and there are vendors out there who can do some, and there are vendors out there who can do none.

So asking yourself those questions upfront will really help you narrow the field of SD WAN vendors in terms of which ones that you want to look at.

3 Local or Global Coverage

The third big thing that you want to think about when it comes to SD WAN is does your company need global coverage for the SD WAN or is it just in the United States or maybe just in Canada or something like that?

So anywhere outside of the United States is what I consider global. I’m in the United States, so I consider domestic anything in the United States global, anything outside of the United States. So that’s kind of where I’m coming from when I’m talking about global. But ask yourself that question because that’s going to narrow down the vendors. There’s most.

SD WAN vendors are based in United States, most of their network and facilities are in the United States. So globally, do you have locations in China? That’s a big one. Australia, the UK, South America. Where are your locations located? Are they global? Are they just domestic? In the United States, that’s obviously going to narrow the vendors quite a bit.

Some vendors specialize in global networks, some vendors specialize in domestic something else that you need to ask.

4 Having WAN Latency Issues Today?

Number four, are you having issues today on your WAN latency network is the thing that’s driving you to SD WAN that you’re having latency across your backbone or across your wider network? Is that what’s driving you? Dusty Well, if so, especially if you have global sites or sites, they’re really far apart, like on one side of the United States and the other side like California in New York, and you’re having latency today, decide that up front because that’s going to push you towards if you’re having latency and you’re trying to fix latency with SD WAN you should probably

focus on SD, WAN vendors that can provide a global backbone network along with the SD WAN services. So what that means, as soon as you hop on the near SD WAN pop from that SD WAN vendor you hop on to their global private backbone. So you’re not your traffic is not touching the public internet very much as it travels globally.

So it’s going to reduce your latency packet loss and jitter.

5 Is your Bandwidth over 500M?

Lastly, something you probably won’t hear from many people unless they’re really experienced in quoting SD WAN like I am. Do your locations have over 500 megs of internet bandwidth and do you need that bandwidth for sure. So if you haven’t quoted SD WAN in the past, you may not know this, but some SD WAN service providers charge for bandwidth, they charge buy the bandwidth that you need.

So the more bandwidth that you need, the more expensive it gets. While other SD WAN service providers, those vendors charge by number of circuits or something along those lines. So if your company has a lot of bandwidth, especially at multiple sites, SD WAN going to get pretty pricey. And I’d say the cutoff is about 500 megs. So if you have if your company needs four or 500 megs or more of bandwidth at the sites, you don’t want to have to throttle that because of your SD.

One solution, It’s kind of a bummer, right? You get all this bandwidth, it’s really cheap, it’s really cool. But oh, by the way, when you put an SD WAN, you’re never going to get it because you’re SD WAN throttling it at 200 meg because your company can’t pay for more than that for the SD WAN service. So you don’t want to do that.

Ideally, if you have five megs or more multiple sites, it might I say it might make sense for you to look at a service provider that charges by the circuit or by some other method, not by bandwidth, because they’re charging about by bandwidth. It gets Once you hit about 500 megs to a gig, those SD WAN sites get pretty pricey.

Conclusion

So just something else that you want to know that might help you narrow down your options there. I hope that was helpful information. Those are five ways to narrow down your SD WAN service provider options, your vendor options when it comes to SC win.

I’ve been a broker for this type of stuff for over 20 years, so I know the whole landscape of SD WAN vendors. I know all of your options out there and I’ll ask you some questions about your companies requirements and based on your answers to those questions, all narrowed down the landscape for you and tell you, Hey, if I were you, I’d quote these 2 to 3 service providers for SD WAN.

And not only that, I’ll introduce you to them or introduce you to the right reps to talk to you with those service providers that I’ve worked with before that I trust that I think will do a good job or I’ll be on the calls with you as they explain their solution. Also oversee the whole quoting process to make sure your company gets the best pricing.

And the nice thing is, is you don’t have to pay me anything. The service providers, the vendors themselves pay me my broker fee. So there’s absolutely no excuse not to at least reach out, give me a call, send me an email, you know, give me a try and it won’t cost anything and see what I have to come up with.

I can definitely help you and hopefully you’ll reach out, email me or call me (714.593.0011) for some quotes. And I’d love to help.