Moving to SD-WAN offers potential benefits to enterprises with several branch locations that need to connect to a central hub office or cover multiple locations in a large campus. It is more flexible and available than a standard WAN, relying on four key components: edge connectivity abstraction, WAN virtualization, centralized management, and elastic traffic management. However, beyond the promise, what is the actual impact on organizations that have implemented SD-WAN? What are the challenges, and what are the best practices?

To help you plan your SD-WAN deployment, SDxCentral provides insight from users who have rolled out SD-WAN and have best practices to share.

SD-WAN brings new network tools to Fiskars

Based in Finland, Fiskars Group is one of the oldest continuously operating organizations in the world, having been in business since 1649.

Over the centuries, Fiskars Group has seen technologies come and go. Jesper Hjørland, global service manager for network and connectivity at Fiskars Group, told SDxCentral that before moving to SD-WAN, his organization had a series of networking technologies.

"We had MPLS, DMVPN (Dynamic Multipoint Virtual Private Network), VPN, and even small shops with their own internet and no connection to our network," Hjørland said.

Hjørland said that his team was looking for a solution that they could use anywhere. He noted that Fiskars Group has many different types of sites, from small shops to large offices and factories.

"We needed a solution that would work everywhere and be easily manageable," Hjørland said.

Hjørland ended up choosing a solution from Cato Networks for SD-WAN. The process that Fiskars went through to implement SD-WAN was basically to just replace site by site, one at a time.

Challenges: Subnets and firewalls

While the rollout was relatively painless, there were a few minor challenges.

"Challenges have been that it’s not recommended to have the same subnets on different sites, so that is one thing we have had to clean up," Hjørland said. "We also still haven’t removed all the old firewalls on the different sites, this is something we will concentrate to do in the next phase."

Measuring SD-WAN success at Fiskars

For Hjørland, a key measure of success for implementing a new technology is making sure it is a better solution for all employees globally. Behind the scenes, he noted that it is very important for the infrastructure team that Fiskars has added security and the ability to better support the users, as the network now has much more and better data available.

"We, of course, have also wanted to save costs with this process; we now have one firewall to look at for all employees," Hjørland said. "No matter if they work in China, Europe, or the U.S., if they are in or out of the office, as soon as a firewall rule is implemented, it will work anywhere, and we don’t have to implement different firewalls and firewall types in many different locations."

Why IHG Hotels & Resorts moved to SD-WAN

With properties around the world, IHG Hotel & Resorts has a lot of different locations that need to be connected.

Malvin Eanes, director of Hotel Security & Compliance, IHG Hotels & Resorts, told SDxCentral that prior to moving to SD-WAN, his organization was on a traditional MPLS hub-and-spoke network. It's a network that has been in place for the last 14 years, and when it was initially set up, the company had about 2,000 hotels. IHG Hotels and Resorts has now grown to more than 6,000 hotels and has plans to expand globally in the future.

"Back when that original architecture was built, it was designed to deliver network protocols and services," Eanes said. "It was never designed to deliver off-premises or hosted solutions like software as a service (SaaS) applications."

"Basically, we’ve outgrown our infrastructure and found ourselves chasing bandwidth," he added.

In moving to SD-WAN, one of the primary goals was to be able to have the bandwidth and quality of service that SD-WAN transport technology can provide. But beyond that, Eanes said it was also about uplifting the infrastructure to include security.  IHG Hotels & Resorts ended up choosing Fortinet to help build out its SD-WAN deployment.

Challenges: Defining requirements

There were a few challenges that IHG Hotels & Resorts worked through on the SD-WAN journey.

Eanes said his organization had to get clear on exactly why it wanted SD-WAN and then go through several proofs of concept to really understand what it entailed. In the process, Eanes admitted that his firm made the classic mistake of trying to turn on all the capabilities at once.

"This scope creep forced us to take a step back and bring in different business stakeholders to really determine what we truly needed in the near-term versus everything we initially thought we wanted," Eanes said.  "My primary job is to add value for our hotel owners and guests, so making sure we could do that was what led us to make good choices at the right cost point so we can continue to mature and add new capabilities in the future. The SD-WAN journey is a marathon, not a sprint."

SD-WAN success metrics are about more than just cost

For Eanes, reducing costs was one of his key criteria, and the convergence of networking and security as part of Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN really resonated for his team.

In addition to cost reduction,  IHG Hotels & Resorts has also seen improved transport performance, with a drop in round-trip latency. Another goal is to improve the deployment speed to our hotels.

"We’re tracking other business objectives that relate to security, like improving our overall security posture as we move out of our proof of concept and into the deployment phase," Eanes said.

Plan for SD-WAN success

Eanes has a few suggestions for organizations looking to adopt and deploy SD-WAN.

Understand needs. The first step is to understand the key strategic things the organization wants to get out of SD-WAN.

"You can’t solve all your problems at once, so you need to focus on your key business drivers, whether they’re related to performance, security, deployment, transport, cost, or something else," Eanes said. "That’s unique to every organization."

Define success criteria. Specifically defining the goals that will make an SD-WAN deployment a success is also critical.

"Once you ask the hard questions and fully understand what those key drivers are, you can focus on those areas and define your success criteria," Eanes said. "You also should look at the size of your operation and set up partnerships."