Masergy added a new set of features to its managed SD-WAN offering, extending its service control capabilities to its customers' networks.

Masergy launched its SD-WAN Go service last year. The vendor claims it's ideal for hybrid deployments and companies that don’t want to fully commit to an SD-WAN service but want some of the benefits. This complemented its SD-WAN Pro platform that integrates with Silver Peak technology that debuted in 2016. The pro platform is more robust than the Go platform. Its SD-WAN can be deployed as a hybrid service or as an internet-only service.

Now, its SD-WAN customers can leverage another one of its offerings in conjunction. Masergy’s Intelligent Services Portal allows enterprises to gain insight and deep analytics into network traffic. Using the portal, end-users can “slice and dice” the network in a number of ways for insight on applications, ports, or other network components as well as control access to each part all from the portal, said Paul Ruelas, director of network products at Masergy.

This way, customers can add routes or static IP addresses as well as IP services to their network, all from the portal. “Almost since our inception, we’ve had the ability for our customers to manipulate that,” Ruelas said, referring to accessing ports, ports in the cloud, the ability to increase or lower the bandwidth of certain circuits and increase the speed of the to an access group. “What we’re adding in is the ability to do that on the public side.”

Extending this control to SD-WAN increases the agility of the WAN by giving users control over segments of the network. One such feature that directly increases the network’s agility is something Masergy calls Bandwidth On-Demand, which can be used for data backup, multi-site video conferences, disaster recovery, or other use cases that require “atypical bandwidth.”

What this means is should enterprises know when extra bandwidth is needed, they can schedule increases in bandwidth, with transparency to the price of the increase. They can also schedule the subsequent reduction in bandwidth. The feature can be both scheduled or manipulated in real-time.

Masergy’s SD-WAN offering relies on its private and public global backbone, allowing customers to use a variety of links — including MPLS or other private links, broadband, direct to the internet links, 4G, and others. It offers WAN optimization, centralized policy, zero-touch provisioning, and can connect to most major public cloud services.

Ruelas said that while there can be immense cost savings in SD-WAN, the value of SD-WAN wasn’t anything new. Zero-touch provisioning, analytics, and WAN optimization, for example, were all functions of the WAN — now they’re just packaged into a singular product: SD-WAN. What it enables for enterprises is cost savings in the sense that it serves as an access loop between all of the connections. Masergy enables the ability to control your network, and “it makes it an easier conversation to deploy for customers,” said Ruelas.