In my last blog, I mentioned the recent trend of merger and acquisition deals in the telecommunications industry. This M&A fever is one of the answers I give when, say at Thanksgiving dinner, people that have some form of understanding of my industry asks "So, what's the big new thing???"
Now, I've seen the adoption of MPLS to replace Frame Relay, I've seen token ring replaced by ethernet, I've seen Internet become the driver of a new economy, I've seen VoIP and SIP discussed for years (without much real adoption for the first decade of the discussion) but TDM is finally beginning to phase out (don't fret old-timers, I still have clients with hundreds of POTs lines...a few with pagers...and I'm not kidding about the pagers).
I've left the Cloud discussion for later. There is so much room to editorialize there, I'll leave that for its own entire blog.
At one point in time, the response to any of the above evolutions in technology would be "Ah, we will never leave (insert old technology here) it handles everything we need. No need for some bleeding-each sort of nonsense. We're good!"
It's said that if Edison and Ford actually listened to what their customers wanted, we'd have brighter candles and faster horses.
This brings me to SD-WAN. What is SD-WAN you ask? Wikipedia offers the below:
Now, I've seen the adoption of MPLS to replace Frame Relay, I've seen token ring replaced by ethernet, I've seen Internet become the driver of a new economy, I've seen VoIP and SIP discussed for years (without much real adoption for the first decade of the discussion) but TDM is finally beginning to phase out (don't fret old-timers, I still have clients with hundreds of POTs lines...a few with pagers...and I'm not kidding about the pagers).
I've left the Cloud discussion for later. There is so much room to editorialize there, I'll leave that for its own entire blog.
At one point in time, the response to any of the above evolutions in technology would be "Ah, we will never leave (insert old technology here) it handles everything we need. No need for some bleeding-each sort of nonsense. We're good!"
It's said that if Edison and Ford actually listened to what their customers wanted, we'd have brighter candles and faster horses.
This brings me to SD-WAN. What is SD-WAN you ask? Wikipedia offers the below:
SD-WAN is an acronym for software-defined networking in a wide area network (WAN). An SD-WAN simplifies the management and operation of a WAN by decoupling (separating) the networking hardware from its control mechanism. This concept is similar to how software-defined networking implements virtualization technology to improve data center management and operation.[1]
A key application of an SD-WAN is allowing companies to build higher performance WANs using lower cost leased lines, enabling businesses to partially or wholly replace more expensive private WAN connection technologies such as MPLS.[1]
That pretty much covers it, but the key to the true debate (in my opinion) is the part about using "lower cost leased lines". Here be dragons.
Every business-grade technology should answer the following question "What business problem am I solving?" This is an accepted adage. Often what isn't asked after that is "And what other problems am I now creating?"
The emergence of capable and reliable "lower cost leased lines" is a sticky one. Are we there? Yes. Sort...except when we aren't. Consistency is still an issue. This can impact your business drastically while solving nothing but "lower cost". Some of the worst business mistakes revolve around the search for "lower cost". That's why the term "total cost of ownership" has become a cliche. Anything that is completely true, so much so that it gets a term that is used ad-nauseam, becomes a cliche.
Also, when the ink is dry, and the new technology is moving from whiteboard to deployment, the client might look around and say "Let's go get those 'low cost leased lines' everybody talked about...wait...have we ever done that before?" The procurement process turns into a nightmare, the client spends the next few years learning how to consume this new need, and may or may not get good at it. Traditional networks allow for single-carrier deployment. SD-WAN may introduce the need to invest time in every regional broadband provider (nightmare) or go to an aggregator (who can absorb some of the nightmares, but possibly creating as many problems as they solve if you don't choose the right one).
So...just because you can, doesn't mean you should. When the trend drives the refinement of the solution (and I stress...SOLUTION), and the provider world gets it right, and the solution solves an actual problem without creating another problem that is worse, and the needs of the client seems to truly align with the solution and not just the trend.... then is when you should...maybe...unless you shouldn't.
So...just because you can, doesn't mean you should. When the trend drives the refinement of the solution (and I stress...SOLUTION), and the provider world gets it right, and the solution solves an actual problem without creating another problem that is worse, and the needs of the client seems to truly align with the solution and not just the trend.... then is when you should...maybe...unless you shouldn't.
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