AI-Driven SD-WAN: Driving The Future Of Network Operations
Introduction
SD-WAN is changing the way businesses think about network management. It’s giving businesses more control over their networks and allowing them to focus on innovation rather than just keeping the lights on. However, SD-WAN isn’t a standalone solution—it needs a partner to make it work best. That partner is AIOps (pronounced “eye-ops”), which relies on AI algorithms and machine learning techniques to automate much of what IT departments used to do manually. With AIOps as the underlying technology behind your SD-WAN deployment, you can expect better performance, improved security protections against hackers and other threats, less downtime due to system failures…and so much more!
What is SD-WAN?
SD-WAN stands for software-defined wide area network and is a networking technology that allows you to connect your branch offices to the main office over the public internet. It uses multiple internet connections to create a private connection between two sites.
It can also be used to replace MPLS or Frame Relay connectivity by using two or more providers. This allows you to choose the best-performing provider at any given time of day or during busy periods (peak hours), without having to pay for unneeded bandwidth during non-peak times.
What is AIOps?
AIOps is a set of technologies that uses machine learning to help network operations teams identify, troubleshoot, and resolve issues faster. AIOps helps improve the efficiency of network operations teams by automating processes such as identifying the root cause of an issue, deploying software updates to fix it, and monitoring whether or not these changes have been successful.
AI-driven SD-WAN doesn’t just apply AI to identifying issues within your SD-WAN; it also applies AI to automate how you respond to them.
SD-WAN and AIOps Coming Together
In a nutshell, SD-WAN is a network overlay that can be used to manage the performance of applications over a WAN. On the other hand, AIOps is a software platform that uses AI to monitor and optimize the performance of applications and infrastructure. When you combine these two technologies together, you get AI-Driven SD-WAN: an entire solution for automating the monitoring and optimization of your enterprise’s digital experience by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies like Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning (DL), and Natural Language Processing (NLP).
This combination enables enterprises to deliver better quality of service through proactive network management driven by real-time data from multiple sources. It also provides intelligent routing decisions based on application metadata collected from endpoints within your network as well as from external sources such as public cloud platforms or SaaS vendors.
How is SD-WAN Helping Businesses?
The most obvious benefit of SD-WAN is improved user experience. Many companies today have an Internet connection through a single provider, which means that if that provider has network problems, it can impact the entire business. Instead, businesses should be using a multi-vendor solution to ensure their users are always connected to the fastest available data stream.
Another benefit of SD-WAN is its ability to reduce costs by increasing efficiencies in network operations and maintenance. For example, an AI in networking as a service management platform can automate decisions about whether or not there should be more bandwidth allocated for certain applications or less (for example more for important HR apps during peak hours).
SD-WAN Enhanced User Experience With AIOps
SD-WAN can help improve an enterprise’s user experience by ensuring the best possible connection, both in terms of speed and latency, to the applications that users rely on. This is especially important for businesses that want to deliver a better user experience to their customers or employees.
Here are some of the best user experiences that can be achieved based on Juniper’s AI-Driven SD-WAN powered by Session Smart:
- Agility – Faster deployment, higher scale, dynamic optimization, boundary-free routing from client to cloud
- Performance – 60% Latency Reduction Less overhead, more scalability, dynamic optimization. Enables hitless voice and video calls.
- Visibility and Insights – 30-40% Less Support and MTTR Costs
- Reduced Cost – 30-50% Bandwidth 75% Headend Infrastructure
- Security – Zero-trust model: Authentication + Encryption + Segmentation. SASE-based policy and routing built-in.
- Simplicity – No tunnels, no overlays, no more hardware-centric networking
A network as a service provider can help in setting up an AI-driven SD-WAN for enterprises. Blue Chip, an IT consulting and NaaS company that offers network support in Los Angeles has expertise with AI-driven SD-WAN with the use of AIOps.
AI-driven SD-WAN Will Transform Network Operations
As we’ve discussed, the growth of AI has been fueled by the availability of data. In particular, AI has been able to successfully process data from sensors and other sources in real-time. It’s now possible for networks to collect and analyze their own operational data in real-time, creating a frictionless experience for IT teams to deploy a new service or make changes based on real-time usage patterns.
This means that companies can accelerate their time to market while reducing costs and risks around deployment projects, making SD-WAN an essential technology for future networks.
The Future of SD-WAN
The future of SD-WAN is one that provides a superior user experience and helps companies manage their networks. As we move forward into the AI era, there are many ways that SD-WAN can be improved.
In particular, there are two areas where AI will transform SD-WAN: service orchestration and network automation. Service orchestration takes an approach similar to serverless computing by eliminating the need for manual interaction with network devices. Network automation does just what it sounds like; it automates tasks within your SD-WAN environment so that you don’t have to spend time doing them yourself.
In addition to these two areas, I believe machine learning will become even more prevalent in the future of SD-WAN because it has already proven itself as an effective tool for improving business outcomes such as response times and uptime (for example). Machine learning also offers greater visibility into traffic patterns across various sites or locations within an organization’s network infrastructure – something which can be difficult without some sort of smart analytics solution in place first!
Conclusion
With the emergence of AI-driven SD-WAN and AIOps, it’s clear that enterprise networks will continue to evolve. Businesses are looking for flexibility, control, and visibility into their networks so they can deliver a better experience to users and customers. AI will help achieve these goals by providing insights into network operations and automating tasks that would otherwise take time and resources away from other business priorities.