LATEST INTELLIGENCE
SD-WAN IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION ACHIEVING
BUSINESS AGILITY WITHOUT
COMPLICATING NETWORK SECURITY
PRESENTED BY
Download whitepaper here
EExecutive Summary
Most organizations are in the midst of some form
of digital transformation (DX), transforming how
they bring products and services to the market –
and ultimately deliver value to their customers.
But DX initiatives also bring complexity for the
network operations team. With business-critical
services distributed across multiple clouds, this
leads to potential performance issues, especially
at branch locations. Given these realities, it is no
wonder that software-defined wide-area network
(SD-WAN) technology is rapidly going mainstream.
Unfortunately, SD-WAN is an example of the
paradox of DX: transformative technology can
potentially move the business to the next level, but
the expanded attack surface it creates can expose
the organization to significant risk. That is why an SD-
WAN deployment, like every other DX effort, should
be accompanied by a security transformation (SX)
that rethinks outdated principles, broadens protection
beyond the data center, and integrates the security
architecture for centralized visibility and control.
DX Sets the Agenda
DX is arguably the most important business trend
involving IT in organizations today. It empowers
businesses to operate with more agility and scale
more quickly – which is absolutely essential in
Digital transformation is driving more services to
the cloud, which are clogging traditional network
architectures and pushing organizations to embrace
SD-WAN. many industries.1 Moving beyond the
digital-enabled enterprise, DX creates fully digital
enterprises that “are hyper-connected, adaptive,
intelligent, and agile with technology highly
integrated into new operational processes, policies,
and organizations that unlock its transformative
capabilities.”2 DX looks a little different at each
organization, but it is almost always marked by
increasing reliance on hybrid cloud architecture. For
the network operations team, this means bringing
existing on-premises resources together with
multiple external cloud networks and ensuring their
availability and performance, no matter where a
user is located. •
16 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com