CMO at Aryaka Networks. Advisory Board member for the Fabric, Ushur, TrueLark, various startups. Former global marketing leader at Cisco. Recently, I was asked to share some thoughts on the wide-area network (WAN), and in particular, trends on software-defined WANs (SD-WANs) and emerging concepts like secure access service edge (SASE). While this may appear like gobbledegook […]

Recently, Gartner published a foundational document on optimizing internet performance (How to Architect Your Network to Optimize Internet Performance and Reliability, Published 29 December 2020 – ID G00731192).  Many of you may have access to this.  Why I say foundational is that it ties together many of the themes that are top-of-mind for CIOs and […]

For network architects and engineers, the WAN experience is typically seen through the eyes of telco carrier relationships. In many cases, this experience isn’t necessarily a positive one. The process of working with a telco carrier to design an enterprise WAN requires negotiating contracts and rates, provisioning and installing new circuits, addressing performance issues and […]

How many moving parts do you think have to come together to put that shiny new iPhone in your palm? To give you a rough estimate — components from more than 200 suppliers cross multiple borders to reach the assembly line before the device is finally forged and supplied to your nearest stores. From China’s […]

How many branches does your company have? Maybe it’s a handful, or maybe it’s dozens of offices around the world. No matter what the answer is, chances are at least some of your users’ internet traffic is routed to a central data center before being passed onto the Internet. This practice, also known as backhauling, […]

The SD-WAN market was always expected to become a major force in networking, and it’s been exceeding expectations in the best way possible. As Software-Defined WAN continues its successful march and enters the growth stage of the product lifecycle, let’s look at the predictions by key industry analysts, and what the numbers have to say. […]

If your company is beginning to embark on a digital transformation journey, ultimately, you’ll have to confront the question of how to modernize the Wide Area Network (WAN) and ensure it is up to the task of supporting the transformation effort. Today, most organizations are concluding that Software Defined-WAN (SD-WAN) is the best way to […]

What are the key differentiators between traditional telecom network solutions and cloud-first WAN? Traditional networks were not built for rapid change and were meant primarily for static environments. Traditional WAN solutions with MPLS brought in predictable network engineering but were not designed for moves and changes due to changing business demands. A Cloud-First approach is […]

Our last post covered what a software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) is and what the market for them looks like moving forward. That leaves two big questions for you as an IT leader — “Is SD-WAN right for your organization?” and, if it is, “When should you make the switch?” Here, we’ll break down some of […]

It is often said that work is not a place you go to but what you do. The pandemic has put a spotlight on all forms of work that can be done from anywhere other than the traditional office environment and forced a rethink of hybrid workplaces. Almost no industry is immune from the change […]

Legacy WANs are unfit for the digital era. The public Internet continues to be plagued by congestion and reliability problems caused by exponential traffic growth, bandwidth-intensive applications, and expanding network complexities. MPLS was designed before the cloud and brings along with it high costs, inflexibility, and long deployment times. These deficiencies have given rise to […]

Enterprises migrating to Microsoft’s Office 365 cloud-based offerings are learning the hard way that application performance varies wildly when end users are dispersed around the globe. Microsoft reports that more than 50% of its commercial Office customers are now in the cloud, and the company expects that number to jump to two-thirds this year. But global […]