Welcome to class. Before we begin defining WAN as a service and its role in revolutionizing the channel, a few critical points in recent history must be addressed.
Indeed, let us consult lessons from the past to guide us into the future. You see, WAN as a service is only now a best-in-breed global cloud-based networking solution because today’s technology innovators, such as those at Aryaka, realized that earlier solutions weren’t adequately addressing the needs of the modern enterprise.
Connectivity quandaries of the past
Previously, organizations relied on the public Internet to connect global offices and were thereby subjected to several disadvantages. One being the growing congestion of the Internet as it became more ubiquitous. That is, there was simply too much traffic for enterprises to effectively deploy applications. Damaging effects from this congestion, such as packet loss, made it nearly impossible to successfully deploy mission-critical applications.
In an attempt to mitigate the problems enterprises faced when using the public Internet, MPLS was introduced as a new, more sophisticated method to deploying global connectivity. MPLS provides enterprises with a private network, which solved the traffic problem presented by the public Internet; it also provides increased bandwidth so that organizations can gain scalability. Yet, MPLS solutions are exorbitantly priced, and can take up to 60 to 90 days to deploy—leaving enterprises requiring fast implementation to complete a project high and dry.
Next in the evolution of connectivity came WAN optimization. This appliance-based solution compressed traffic and optimized application performance to increase throughput. The WAN addressed the most pressing shortcomings associated with public Internet and MPLS; however, it was still a premise-based solution that required maintenance and continuous upgrades by in-house IT professionals.
Stepping into the age of global innovation
Finally, in 2009, Aryaka created the first WAN-as-a-service model that successfully addressed previous global connectivity issues while simultaneously exceeding expectations. What exactly does WAN as a service mean? Simply, WAN as a service enables organizations to put an end to compromising performance for scale or cost efficiency. Instead, this solution embeds WAN optimization software into a private global network that is delivered as a cloud service model. In other words, this comprehensive WAN affords one-day deployment, instantly scalable bandwidth, pay-as-you-go pricing and supercharged application performance across global offices.
What’s more, Aryaka’s WAN Optimization as a service is made accessible through an Internet link with points of presence all over the world. And because regional Internet quality and speed have improved dramatically over the past decade, it leverages points of presence to avoid lost packets in the congested middle mile. With Aryaka’s WAN-as-a-service model, traffic is passed over the ocean to geographically disparate locations by skipping over the middle mile in under 30 milliseconds of latency to Aryaka’s points of presence. From there, traffic is directed over the private software-defined network. Finally, the traffic is uploaded at the receiving end … all the way across the world seamlessly, simply and almost immediately.
Future impact of WAN as a service in the channel
WAN as a service is emerging as a critical component to any partner’s portfolio. Without a fully managed, reliable and instantly deployable global solution under their belts, partners stand to lose customers and competitive edge as time and enterprise needs progress. After all, when the current cost of Internet downtime is $300,000 per hour and other solutions, such as MPLS, are similarly cost-prohibitive, partners can gain headway in the channel by providing enterprise customers with a truly reliable and cost-effective network provider, like Aryaka.
In the future, more organizations will require a holistic approach to WAN that affords built-in application performance that connects multiple offices globally by way of the cloud without relying on the Internet. WAN as a service provides enterprise-grade performance over a private network with agility and simplicity, which allows for rapid deployment. Future customers want visibility, security, scalability, application performance and more built into one central solution.
WAN as a service is that solution; indeed, it is the future.