Managed WAN Services

As businesses grow, they get distributed across the globe. So, managing an

extended enterprise network becomes a challenge. At the same time in the current

economic scenario, organizations want to do more with less without sacrificing

the performance of their applications. An organization having a centralized

environment would not want its branch offices in Europe or the US to be

experiencing slow application response time as it translates into productivity

loss.

There are technologies such as WAN optimization and acceleration available,

that give LAN like working experience over WANs. This not only requires

enterprises to spend on WAN technologies but also means they have to hire

experts to manage their WANs. This is where outsourcing the WAN infrastructure

comes in handy. With managed WAN services enterprises don't need to implement

and manage WAN management devices on their own. They can leverage existing

expertise of an MSP.

Such a strategy gives enterprises advantages such as having access to latest

WAN technologies, improved utilization of WAN, as well as improved network

availability. Another advantage is that with your WAN completely outsourced, you

just have a single point of contact, which reduces the time spent on

coordination in case of problems. When outsourcing is done, it is important to

have stringent SLAs with the service provider, ensuring the highest security

standard and QoS to be used by the service provider. Most managed service

providers provide additional services along with WAN services to give better

customer support. For instance, services such as Network Analysis and Enhanced

Reporting can be combined with Managed WAN Services and created to improve the

overall customer experience.

Managed WAN optimization



WAN optimization and application acceleration is gaining popularity among

enterprises, especially those that are distributed across the globe. In the

current economic situation, where enterprises are looking to consolidate and

optimize their existing infrastructure, enterprise's have invested in

technologies such SaaS, virtulization and are moving toward a centralized

architecture than a distributed one. This means they need to ensure they get the

best performance out of their WAN links, and this is where WAN optimization

comes in to the picture. Most organizations have implemented VoIP throughout

their company and in order to get most from it, they also need to move all voice

traffic from branch offices to WAN. For this, they would need to have QoS

policies, low latency, etc on the WAN links. Also with WAN optimization

enterprise can get most out from their current connections and refrain from

bandwidth upgrades.

With 'Managed WAN Services' enterprises don't have to deploy or manage their

own WAN appliance, as this will be taken care of by the service provider. Now

there are plenty of WAN optimization solutions available, including the likes of

Riverbed, Bluecoat, etc. While managed service providers have tie-ups than more

than one of the WAN optimization vendors, it's important that you do your own

internal assessment of applications currently running over WAN and see if the

offering from a particular vendor might suit your needs better than others. For

instance, for your enterprise an application response time might be more

important or your priority would be to provide faster file access to remote

branch offices. In Managed WAN optimization, costs can vary according to the

applications you wish to optimize, the number of employees using applications or

the number of remote offices which need to be optimized.

Managed VPN services



Managed VPNs give enterprises advantages like scalability, flexibility, 24x7

support, pro-active monitoring by the MSPs, etc. When going for managed VPN

service, most enterprises face the dilemma of which VPN service to choose, ie

IPSEC or SSL or MPLS. MPLS VPNs are considered to be fast as well as secure.

They offer benefits such as end-to-end QoS, Scalability, instant correction of

node or link failure, etc. Such a VPN is a good choice if you plan to converge

video, voice and data onto the VPN. Another advantage of MPLS VPNs is that it

can run multiple VPNs on the same network core, as are separated by route

distinguishers, to ensure security and isolation of VPNs. In MPLS, enterprises

generally have stringent SLAs regarding their performance, scalability,

bandwidth guaranteed, etc.

IPSEC can also be used over MPLS, which is considered to be the most secure

VPN around currently. Managed IPSec VPNs can be deployed on any existing IP

network, can be delivered as a network-based VPN directly through the MSP's

network or as a site-to-site VPN with a CPE. The core advantage provided by

IPSEC VPNs is low setup cost as compared to MPLS and it has strong security at

the same time. The advantage of SSL VPNs is that it does not require any client

software on a user machine; it only needs a web browser. This is a good choice

if a user needs to access specific company resources and not the entire network,

and remote access is required for only short durations.