Secure SD-WAN vs NFV: Unraveling the Hidden Costs of WAN Edge Technologies

Based on Gartner, enterprise use of WAN bandwidth is growing by as much as 30% yearly. It’s no question that enterprises are continually evaluating their WAN-edge deployment options and searching for alternatives that will these to meet their networking and bandwidth needs without equivalent increases in costs and complexity.

Lately, SD-WAN has generally end up being the best solution for this challenge - despite the fact that (since this is this type of new market) not every SD-WAN solutions are produced equal. In reaction, however, some vendors have began pushing Network Function Virtualization (NFV) services and products to promote instead of SD-WAN. Further contributing to the confusion are elaborate claims of financial savings coupled with clever packaging and bundles that obscure the real costs of the several possibilities.

Now you ask ,, how can you compare these choices to find out which is the best for your business?

This information will help highlight key factors when looking for WAN-edge technologies and solve various options that will help you make a good decisions for the organization.

A Fast Recap: SD-WAN versus NFV.

SD-WAN can run on the top of specific networking hardware, or be the wholly contained virtualized appliance that may enable deployments and extensions of services across both on-premises and cloud. Enterprises deploying SD-WAN take advantage of simpler management, more efficient bandwidth use, improved finish-consumer experience, and elevated security. And most importantly, additionally they realize lower deployment and processes costs.

NFV may also run SD-WAN, but achieves this using standard x86 server platforms running a number of virtual machines. These VMs, consequently, run various software and services to provide networking and infrastructure abilities, for example routing, next-gen firewalls (NGFW), SD-WAN, session border control, and WAN optimization, to mention a couple of.

The comparison appears pretty straight-forward. In writing-NFV seems like a much better deal. Who wouldn’t want so that you can run SD-WAN plus a number of additional services and capacity on low-cost, generic hardware? But, not too fast…this is how things start to falter:

1. Hidden Costs: Besides the hardware running an NFV solution, you can find more subscriptions and VMs for every functional capacity that should be purchased and licensed individually, including SD-WAN, routing, next-gen firewalls (NGFW), session border control, and WAN optimization. This could increase costs several-fold past the initial NFV hardware outlay.

A fast search shows bundled NFV solutions leveraging low-cost hardware that start just $1500. Obviously, SD-WAN for that box is licensed individually, and when you set the appropriate SD-WAN subscription and minimal critical security for example NGFW on the top, the expense not just work well past the initial price of this area-additionally they exceed the cost of other SD-WAN solutions on the market.

2. Integration: It is only as vital to acknowledge that down to integrating the different VMs, services, and solutions that may operate on an NFV platform rests entirely using the purchases, whereas as fully packaged SD-WAN solutions-such individuals from Fortinet-are pre-integrated through the vendor.

NFV was initially created by Providers, who have been searching to maximise their infrastructure investments by standardizing on generic hardware. Their business design already includes the overhead needed to integrate multiple, disparate solutions together, and they're staffed to handle complexities which come out of this approach.

For enterprises, however, this really is typically and not the situation. So additionally to some considerably greater TCO, you can find more deployment, operational, overhead, and support costs lurking nearby that enterprises have to take into account when thinking about NFV-type deployments. And don't forget forget, multiple products from multiple vendors means multiple management consoles for the limited staff to function, monitor, and configure, including attempting to correlate network and security policies together for highly dynamic SD-WAN connections.

Not Every SD-WAN Solutions are Produced Equal

Obviously, the choice isn’t just as easy as selecting between SD-WAN and NFV. SD-WAN itself can be purchased in essentially two versions: “pureplay” SD-WAN versus “secure” SD-WAN.

Pureplay SD-WAN is just that-just SD-WAN. But ironically, it’s really not so simple. Enterprises thinking about a pureplay SD-WAN option will still need buy and deploy security on the top from the SD-WAN solution. This adds costs and complexities like the hidden overhead from the NFV-based options that should be considered.

And, though you may think so, a pureplay SD-WAN solution isn’t always less expensive than one which includes fully integrated security and advanced SD-WAN networking options.  The above mentioned chart implies that the comparison of TCO spans all providers of SD-WAN solutions.

Secure SD-WAN, however, enables organizations to deploy, manage, and orchestrate both security and SD-WAN abilities in one solution-and single console-to assist companies truly implement security-driven networking across their organization.

This can be a critical point, since operations and security have to operate hands-in-hands like a best practice. Furthermore, customers who go for secure SD-WAN solutions also save themselves in the added complexities of deploying, integrating, and managing disparate solutions from multiple vendors. And exterior support is simpler when there's just one vendor to.

A Thing about Speed

Like a final recommendation, performance is yet another critical element of an SD-WAN solution that should be considered. Cost-effective scalability is important when selecting secure SD-WAN solutions. And because of the IT industry’s constantly growing interest in reliable throughput, that demand will simply grow. Enterprises, therefore, should think twice about options that utilize custom ASICs and security processors for example individuals provided by Fortinet.

Custom processors designed particularly to accelerate SD-WAN functionality deliver better cost-to-performance points than solutions built using off-the-shelf processors, delivering a much better networking experience despite all security functions running concurrently. Fortinet’s custom SD-WAN ASICs for hardware appliances, combined with industry’s only SPU (Security Processing Unit) created for virtual appliances, deliver best-in-class security without having to sacrifice network performance.

This is among the a lot of reasons why Fortinet has the capacity to deliver a fantastic cost-to-performance reason for 749 Mbps of throughput just $5/Mbps.

Key Takeaways

To summarize, enterprises need to visit and comprehend the whole picture when looking for SD-WAN options to be able to pick the best solution for his or her organization. Once the challenges of integration and management are coupled with true TCO, it's obvious that NFV choices are truly not prepared for prime time because they harbor significant costs and complexities that lots of customers won’t come with an appetite for. Rather, organizations should think about a safe and secure SD-WAN solution-one which integrates all functionality right into a single solution and management console without all of the added and unnecessary complexity and overhead.