Embracing Work From Anywhere with Hybrid WAN

Due to the novel Coronavirus, all businesses have adopted the remote work culture. And many companies are growing at a fast rate as information technology (IT) plays a massive role in the transition.

Businesses or organizations prefer cloud-based applications because they gain the ability to act quickly and respond faster, meeting the needs and requirements of the business. According to industry experts, more than half of the workload will be cloud-based by 2024.

Firms or organizations support this digital transformation and are looking to implement the hybrid WAN or hybrid wide area network approach. This approach is less expensive and comes with higher bandwidth broadband services in addition to MPLS links. Read further to know what it is and the reasons why businesses are embracing work from anywhere with it.

What is a hybrid wide area network?

A hybrid wide area network or hybrid WAN is a wide area network that delivers traffic to two or more connection types. It utilizes different connectivity options and makes the proper use of network resources by allowing dynamic traffic engineering for both public and private domains.

Basically, it utilizes plus carrier Ethernet, plus T3 links, and dedicated multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) circuits. It helps network engineers save a lot of money by maintaining dedicated lines for mission-critical traffic and delivering lower-priority traffic to a less costly connection or circuit.

Usually, this approach is beneficial for businesses or enterprises with several branch offices because the network engineers get to tap the bandwidth and decrease its impact depending upon the geographical distance and its performance on the application.

It is not similar to software-defined WAN or SD-WAN but somewhat aligned to it. So what does it do with the SD-WAN? It functions with the SD-WAN and it also depends upon the ability of the SD-WAN to scatter the traffic.

By adding SD-WAN technology to the hybrid WAN, it can easily be transformed into an SD-WAN. With this addition, you will be able to select certain strategies for controlling the pathway configuration. Furthermore, you will be able to reconfigure your branch office more rapidly and systematically.

Why does every enterprise require a hybrid wide area network for work from anywhere?

The hybrid wide area network makes it easy to control internet circuits and private MPLS for all businesses and their multiple locations. As mentioned earlier, due to the advancement of information technology, many enterprises are adopting cloud-based applications to meet the needs and requirements of the business.

Following are some reasons why enterprises are ready to embrace the hybrid wide-area network for work from anywhere.

1. Improves performance: The hybrid wide area network approach increases the performance of the enterprise or business by giving more bandwidth to essential data and authority to traffic. You can also use two bandwidth sources at the same time. For instance, you have internet connection number 1 along with internet connection number 2; then you can use both of them at the same time. It will increase not only your download speed but also your upload speed, which saves time allowing you to work efficiently.
2. Quick branch deployment: If you compare the deployment of the traditional WAN with the hybrid wide area network, the hybrid wide-area network is better because of the virtualized services of deployment and its rapid and efficient method.
3. Cost-effective model: Utilising a hybrid wide area network is better than the single-vendor MPLS due to its cost-effective model. The hybrid wide area network provides a specific percent reduction in costs and a tremendous increase in bandwidth.
4. Redundancy: Many enterprises work on cloud-based services, and there may be times when an outage will occur with no connection and redundant internet. With the help of the hybrid wide-area network or hybrid WAN, you can utilize tools that prioritize internet traffic to your various software as a service applications like Microsoft Azure, AWS, Office 365, and so on.