Reliability is something that is expected when it comes to technology. When we unlock our phones, we expect the phone to perform the way it’s supposed to. When we open our laptops to begin work for the day, we expect our laptop to function. When you say, “Alexa, play Workout Playlist,” you expect to hear Ariana Grande almost instantaneously.
With that being said, it’s easy to understand why so many businesses still rely on tried and true network connectivity mediums such as MPLS and VPNs. Both connectivity methods have proven to be incredibly reliable. However, in today’s wireless world, aside from being reliable, the benefits of traditional connectivity are steadily waning.
In fact, some are being as bold to declare that VPNs will be obsolete within 2 years or less. While we aren’t exactly aligning ourselves with this declaration, it’s worth exploring.
Can VPN Performance Meet Today’s Standards?
VPNs are known for being incredibly secure and dependable. However, on the downside, VPNs can slow down your connection speed, the connection can suddenly drop, and they are tricky to set up.
Additionally, VPN tunnels and remote user VPNs are not well suited for connecting to the cloud because both tend to be rigid, complex, error prone, and costly to operate. Remote user VPNs are at the mercy of the Internet and VPN tunnels simply do not scale.
Then we have to factor in the software-defined networking in a wide area network (SD-WAN) breakthrough. SD-WAN offers an automated and programmatic approach to network connectivity. With SD-WAN, enterprises no longer have to worry about setting up a tricky VPN connection. Additionally, with SD-WAN, management and security can be controlled centrally, operational complexity is dramatically reduced with centralized policy management, and the time to engineer, set up, and manage software defined networks is far less, particularly for new applications being introduced into enterprise environments.
So, it’s easy to see that SD-WAN fits very comfortably into the modern digital landscape. Enterprises don’t have to sacrifice security, performance, reliability, or scalability with SD-WAN.
We have to ask ourselves – do VPNs still have a place in today’s automated world?
Is SD-WAN Enough?
While SD-WAN has proven to be a natural transition for network connectivity, here at NetFoundry, we believe enterprises can literally go farther – extending their networks to the application edge, leveraging the Internet to broaden connectivity in ways that private networks have been unable to achieve, whether MPLS, VPN or SD-WAN.
How does our platform turn the Internet into the foundation for fully private, fully secure, high performance networks, including networks built to support the exploding IoT industry?
With our patent-pending Internet overlay software that treats data in motion in a very new way, protecting that data while at the same time improving the speed and reliability of each session.
But more exciting that the technology are the natural benefits associated with “spinning up” private networks over the biggest and most resilient network in the world – the Internet!
“The network” can no longer be an afterthought. Instead of “defaulting” to MPLS or VPNs to secure the connections, it’s now possible to embed the network with the applications which, done well, dramatically enhances the user experience and overall value of that application.
While traditional connectivity methods have served their purpose in a reliable manner, we have to face the facts and accept that old network approaches will not support modern solutions. Elevate your network with NetFoundry and experience security, agility, scalability, and performance like never before.
