Organizations of all sizes are looking to transform wide area networks (WANs) from “fragile to agile” by implementing software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) technology. SD-WAN serves as the connective tissue between applications, clouds and branch offices, enabling organizations to deliver applications to users without losing visibility, security or performance.
However, while implementing an SD-WAN solution can provide substantial benefits, there is specific expertise required to effectively manage it and optimize its benefits – and that can cost your organization money and time.
Enter the Managed SD-WAN solution for Cisco SD-WAN (Viptela and Meraki). Relying on the expertise of a third party to proactively monitor, manage and optimize your SD-WAN solution can free your organization from day-to-day maintenance requirements, allowing you the ability to refocus your team on more strategic and value-added business initiatives. Fully leveraging your SD-WAN investment is possible when you select a managed services partner with the expertise and track record navigating the features and functionality this powerful solution can deliver.
Why Consider a Managed SD-WAN?
Engaging a managed services provider (MSP) to manage SD-WAN networks offers a number of benefits, including but not limited to:
- Technical skills and expertise at reduced expense. Contracting with a services provider ensures organizations have access to the technical skills they need to be successful without incurring the cost to hire or retrain existing staff.
- Faster deployment. An experienced managed services provider—one with many deployments under its belt — can make the process easier and lead to a faster migration.
- Operational efficiency. Your in-house teams can be redeployed to focus their time on strategic projects such as cloud access or application programming versus performing network configuration and maintenance tasks. In addition, a dedicated MSP team continually monitors the SD-WAN network so issues are identified and resolved quickly.
- Application management. MSPs can monitor applications and make adjustments to load balance the network, optimize bandwidth utilization, and improve application performance.
- Carrier management. MSPs can provide carrier management to complement an organization’s internal efforts by monitoring circuits, managing connectivity, and optimizing expenses.
- Security. Managed Secure SD-WAN services provide a strong approach that aligns the SD-WAN architecture with the organization's security policy and ensures adequate security controls are the foundation for SD-WAN transport.
ePlus Managed SD-WAN
The right Managed Services Provider can simplify and accelerate your SD-WAN journey by delivering a solution optimized to your organization’s unique business and networking requirements. For enterprises with sophisticated environments needing customization and advanced routing, Cisco SD-WAN powered by Viptela® and in addition Meraki, is a perfect fit. The Cisco solutions have quickly gained traction in the market, and it is a compelling option ePlus Technology makes available as part of our SD-WAN Managed Services offering.
The ePlus Managed SD-WAN solution for Viptela comes in three distinct service levels: Monitor, Manage, and Maximize, and allows customers to conveniently select the service component that best aligns with organizational objectives related to the SD-WAN environment. This flexible and powerful offering also includes several policy management, advanced visibility and reporting, and security benefits:
Intuitive Policy management:
- Create policies that govern the routing of traffic to best match business priorities, increasing uptime and improving the overall performance of their SD-WAN environment.
- Review centralized and localized policies impacting traffic flow.
Advanced Visibility & Reporting:
- Gain confidence your SD-WAN is meeting business objectives with full network visibility to make better decisions, while reducing overall costs to operate the network.
- Prevent lost productivity and revenue caused by poor application performance by analyzing data and performance-related information from vAnalytics and LiveAction dashboards.
- Network visualization and analytics help to quickly identify network optimization issues and improve application performance of voice, video, and other mission critical applications.
- Eliminate the cost and complexity of operating multiple network management tools, reduce the mean-time to resolution of both simple and complex issues, and save days documenting their network status by leveraging automated reporting.
Actionable Intelligence:
- Simplify the collection, correlation, and presentation of enterprise-scale application and network data to make it actionable.
- Experience faster time-to-resolution by proactively identifying, easily troubleshooting, and quickly resolving network and application performance issues regardless of where they occur.
Built-in Security:
- Leverage built-in advanced security functions for deep packet inspection and zone-based segmentation within your WAN routing policies.
- ePlus Managed Services provides and maintains segmentation and inspection policies to ensure the solution complies with the organization’s security policies.
As Cisco’s go-to partner for managed SD-WAN services, ePlus empowers customers to deliver a better client and employee experience, reduce connectivity costs, and achieve operational agility. Our Managed Services organization can help supplement a customer’s internal talent pool and bandwidth to reap the full benefit of their deployment, across any industry. By offloading the management and remediation of their SD-WAN solution, customers are maximizing the agility, application control, and efficiency benefits attained throughout their cloud journey—while maintaining their internal staff’s focus on strategic business outcomes.
“Cisco SD-WAN is enabling enterprises to accelerate their digital transformation with secure access to cloud applications and enhanced application experiences,” said Jason W. Gallo, Vice President Enterprise Networking & Cloud, Global Partner Sales at Cisco. “Helping enterprises deploy Cisco SD-WAN represents a growing opportunity, particularly with managed services as a way to reduce the complexities associated with in-house WAN deployments. ePlus’ enhanced managed SD-WAN services empowers our joint customers to deliver secure access to cloud applications with optimized experiences, while also providing operational agility.”
Service Level Matrix – Viptela Specific Services
|
Service Type
|
Monitor
|
Manage
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Maximize
|
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Proactive monitoring and alerting of Viptela components via API to ViptelavManage
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✓
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✓
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✓
|
|
Policy Management– Incident & Change Request Driven
|
|
✓
|
✓
|
|
vAnalyticsDashboard
|
|
✓
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✓
|
|
CloudOnRampfor SaaS (formerly calledCloudExpressservice)
|
|
|
✓
|
|
Proactive Review of SD-WAN Policy with Regular Cadence Remote Feedback Sessions
|
|
|
✓
|
|
Application Aware Zone Based Firewall Management
|
|
|
✓
|
|
Enhanced dataflow analysis and environment visualization
|
|
|
✓
|
Supported Components & Services
The ePlus Managed Services Team provides support for the services, devices and applications listed below.
Supported Software
- vSmart Controller
- vBond Orchestrator
- vManage
- vAnalytics
- Cloud OnRamp for SaaS
- Application Aware Firewall Services
Supported Hardware
- vEdge Routers (physical or virtual or cloud)
- vEdge Cloud Instance
- cEdge ISR 4000 Series Routers
- cEdge ISR 1000 Series Routers
- cEdge ASR 1000 Series Routers
- cEdge Cisco Cloud Services Router (CSR) 1000v
If you are interested in learning more about how ePlus’ can help your organization achieve enhanced business value from Cisco SD-WAN powered by Viptela®, feel free to contact us.
