The managed services provider S-Net Communications is using Versa Networks’ software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) to help its business customers save money on expensive MPLS lines.

Chicago-based S-Net provides voice over IP (VoIP) and Internet services to enterprises.

“We support 500 customers and 30,000 phones,” said Alex Fayn, the founder and CEO of S-Net. The company’s customers include enterprises with mission-critical VoIP needs such as call centers and answering services. For example, one customer with a medical practice receives about 1,000 calls per hour.

With Versa’s technology, S-Net will deliver cloud voice services. S-Net is pitching it as a way to use SD-WAN to augment or replace expensive MPLS for its voice services.

To provide VoIP, S-Net has been using a variety of types of connections, whether dedicated fiber or copper connections or T-1s, said Fayn. “That’s worked,” he said. “Primarily, we’re using it because they deliver superior quality and versatility. But it’s really expensive.”

SD-WAN opens the scope of possibilities in terms of different types of connections. “Now, we can deliver the same quality by using multiple broadband connections or DSL, not dedicated fiber,” Fayn said.

The cheaper types of connections can provide a failover for dedicated circuits or for other cheaper connections, depending on the comfort level of the client. “If my primary circuit fails, it fails over to a secondary circuit,” said Fayn. “Some want mission-critical on primary such as MPLS and things of that nature. Others feel comfortable with broadband and a [4G] modem together after we show them how the failover operates.”

With the use of SD-WAN, S-Net plugs the connections into Versa’s device. And customers can come to S-Net with any problems, rather than dealing with the separate connection providers, directly. “Before, we would get MPLS circuits with dedicated connections for all these sites as a voice service,” said Fayn. “Now we can do it cheaper.”

S-Net has already deployed about 100 of Versa’s SD-WAN devices to about 15 customers. Some of these customers are now interested in other services, such as Versa’ built-in security.

S-Net deployed SD-WAN for a national dentist franchise with 47 offices. “Because of Versa’s tools for security, the next thing they want is to turn on their cloud firewall,” said Fayn. “It’s a layered service. They can start with SD-WAN and in the future turn on security.”