WAN Virtualization, an Emerging Technology

In the modern business world, the bandwidth demands facing IT managers running networks for enterprise-level business continues to grow. With the growing adaption of applications such as video-conferencing and streaming video, allowing end users to have reliable and cost-efficient access to the network is becoming increasingly difficult. For those who can afford it, MPLS is a reliable solution, but one that is not very scalable due to its very high cost. Furthermore, the price per bit of high-end networking technologies such as MPLS and Frame Relay has not seen nearly the same speed of decline as public broadband connectivity.

Out of this conundrum, a new technology known as WAN virtualization has emerged. This network virtualization process is based upon adaptive private networking appliances that leverage the cost efficiency and available bandwidth of broadband internet with the reliability of MPLS of Frame Relay. The end result is a simultaneous increase in bandwidth and application performance coupled with a reduction in monthly WAN spend, which is any IT manager's dream.

In today's business environment, with the proliferation and popularization of telecommuting, making it affordable for enterprises to create virtual desktop infrastructures with VOIP and other modern technologies enabled is a huge asset. WAN virtualization boasts a sub-second response time to congestion-related events, link failures, and other potential problems that are most commonly associated with damaging the end-user experience. For virtual conferences or meetings reliant on VOIP or video-conference network "jitters" or "drop-offs" can have tremendously negative impact. Ensuring that the network performs at the highest level is the standard of reliability that most enterprise organizations demand.

For almost any IT or data center manager, increasing network reliability, reducing spending, or adding bandwidth are likely upcoming goals and initiatives. While adding bandwidth to a wide area network is typically associated in cost increases, adaptive private networking and WAN virtualization actually reduce overall IT costs because they so effectively utilize cost-efficient public broadband bandwidth while ensuring the "four nines" reliability of MPLS. The up-front cost of an adaptive private networking appliance can pay for itself in less than a year depending on network requirements.

Beyond cost savings and bandwidth requirements, another benefit of WAN virtualization is what it can provide to IT managers who are seeking a means of moving a larger percentage of their servers and services to collocation facilities. Collocation facilities are quite common for public web applications and data/disaster recovery for enterprises, but it is rarer to see them utilized for internal applications. For any large business attempting to move to cloud computing, WAN virtualization, in concert with existing server virtualization and WAN optimization technologies makes a move to a collocation facility much more valuable. The reason for this is that collocation facilities offer almost limitless access to exceptionally affordable internet bandwidth. Typically the issue with this bandwidth has been it's less than reliable performance, however the application of WAN virtualization/adaptive private networking solves this problem to ensure affordable but reliable application performance.