Benefits of a Citrix SD-WAN solution

Citrix SD-WAN is a networking solution that grants businesses the ability to dynamically connect enterprise networks with branch offices or data centers over geographical distances.

As a Citrix Partner Service Provider, we empower our customers by leveraging Citrix Cloud services that help our customers stay connected.

For the first time in engineering, Citrix SD-WAN has a networking solution that is fast, cheap and reliable – and who doesn’t want all three?

If you haven’t been able to wrap your head around SD-WAN technology, you can read more about SD-WAN and why you need it here. Not all SD-WAN’s are created the same, and today’s post focuses specifically on Citrix SD-WAN as a networking solution and the main benefits behind the product.

What is Citrix SD-WAN?

Citrix SD-WAN is the next-generation networking tool that will positively impact businesses across the spectrum from enterprise accounts, to mid-markets and SMB’s.

Without a Citrix SD-WAN solution, branch employees suffer from networking issues such as:

• Extra logins
• Unresponsive apps
• Slow downloads
• Buffering videos
• Latency issues
• Poor Skype and audio quality
• Disconnected sessions

Compared to a traditional routing hardware deployment, Citrix SD-WAN provides the reliability and flexibility to control connection efficiency even during periods of high network demands.

It’s now time to tackle this “digital disconnect” through an SD-WAN product implementation like Citrix SD-WAN. Make sure your business accesses seamless connectivity and the other vast benefits associated with a Citrix SD-WAN solution which are thoroughly laid out below.

Benefits of a Citrix SD-WAN solution

Business agility & adaptability

Business agility has come down to network agility, which is exactly what Citrix SD-WAN delivers.

The one constant occurrence that we can guarantee to happen in business is change, especially in the IT space. Having the ability to adapt and rapidly respond to the today’s increasing networking demands in efficient and cost effective ways is critical for business performance and end-user expectations.

Upon implementing Citrix SD-WAN, the instant experience of greater adaptability and flexibility of the network is quickly realized.

Citrix’s solution removes the rigidness and outdated nature of a traditional WAN infrastructure through offering:

• Centralized control over the network
• Visibility into network resources
• Automation of tasks
• Configuration changes
• Maintenance and upgrades

Citrix SD-WAN’s unified provisioning over a remote organization’s network makes deployment and management much simpler, faster, and more effective.

More so, Citrix SD-WAN’s architecture is designed to adapt and support multiple types of connections across multiple types of technologies like:

• MPLS
• LTE
• Broadband

This gives organizations the ultimate control they need to manage and run all services and applications smoothly on a common interface, all on one line. If one of the connections experiences an overload, SD-WAN can take unused capacity from another link and use it to fill the void temporarily.

Citrix SD-WAN is in full force delivering a more adaptable network that can anticipate the changing demands and conditions on applications while leveraging the benefits of cloud-based resources.

Decreases overall costs

Citrix SD-WAN’s efficiency on all ends means lower total costs of ownership (TCO).

It’s easy to see how Citrix SD-WAN’s ability to provide businesses with application and network agility can translate into lower costs and more savings. The cost savings are apparent and businesses are increasingly taking notice.

It’s clear that today’s WAN’s are maxed to capacity due to the ever-growing use of critical and intensive business applications. Using MPLS to scale and insure reliable connections to overcome this challenge is the conventional solution, but is costly and time-consuming.

On the other hand, alternatives like LTE and broadband are less costly approaches, but they’re not always compatible for certain applications. Virtualization technology like Citrix SD-WAN optimizes your bandwidth for all business needs while lowering overall costs.

Specifically…

A Gartner report estimates that an SD-WAN solution can lower costs by 65% compared to a traditional WAN.

The report continues to further estimate:

• 25 percent of users will leverage SD-WAN in 2019, with revenue from vendors growing 59 percent annually.
• SD-WAN market is expected to be worth $1.3 billion by the year 2020.

These statistic is compelling to say the least but doesn’t end here. Other ways Citrix SD-WAN improves spending include:

• Traffic routing and prioritization
• Managing bandwidth availability
• Managing bandwidth usage
• Ease of administration

Moreover, your traditional branch infrastructure consist of WAN path controllers, routers, and more components. It takes more money and man power to manage, manually configure and install changes.

This is not considering the extremely expensive hardware required to maintain these components.

Citrix SD-WAN technology lowers costs through the automation of activities to maintain and update your network. This also cuts costs by allowing IT staff to reduce and reposition their workloads.

Improved application performance

As networking demands continue to grow, so does the number of bandwidth intensive business applications that companies utilize in the cloud. These mission critical application demands are growing much faster than the networks that connect them.

Recently, we published a free eBook called ‘The Essential Guide to Preparing your Network for the Cloud.” It covers in more specificity on how Citrix SD-WAN can improve application performance.

It’s imperative for all companies to implement the right technology solution to ensure that cloud applications perform well from the end-user perspective. However, organizations are beginning to witness the troubles that traditional WAN networks face when trying to keep up with today’s cloud application bandwidth demands.

Majority of applications we use to collaborate run in the cloud such as:

• Web conferencing
• Email
• VoIP
• File sharing
• Project management tools

Not only is productivity dependent on how efficiently employees can run apps out the cloud, but productivity is also dependent on the WAN links that carry cloud-based application traffic.

Citrix SD-WAN optimizes connectivity and improves application performance across cloud-connected networks for remote and branch workers in ways like:

• Identifying and prioritizing network traffic by using an appropriate network path selection for each application
• Steer network traffic around congested links to improve performance
• Tracks each network link using metrics that include packet jitter, latency and dropped packets
• Direct the packets of intensive applications down paths with adequate bandwidth

Compared to other providers that do not support asymmetric routing, Citrix understands that not all applications are symmetric and that an asymmetric selection delivers optimal efficiency.

This type of technology acceleration offered by Citrix SD-WAN makes applications, data and virtual desktops ultra-responsive, while empowering employees to do their best work.

Conclusion

The number one strategic imperative for organizations everywhere is digital transformation. However, companies continue to face connectivity issues. If that’s you, then Citrix SD-WAN is your answer.

Citrix SD-WAN is a healthy solution that has a predictable performance of the internet, maintains strong speeds and is consistent with application performance.

Level the playing field and implement this next generation networking tool for an all-around enhanced digital workspace experience.

If you’re interested in learning more about how you can help you prepare your environment for the cloud, make sure to check out our eBook: Essential guide to preparing your network for the cloud

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