Now is an era of digitalization and digital transformation. Changes are taking place in the IT infrastructure at a rapid pace. Due to these changes, networking and security teams face several challenges. Securing the functionality of a cross-team workforce and protecting business applications from cyber-attacks in a cloud environment is of significant concern.
With everything going online, the usage of the internet has increased manifolds. However, its use is not entirely secure. Hence, IT professionals need to devise technologies to improve the digital experience in the multi-cloud environment. Here comes the role of Cisco SD-WAN. It is a cloud-delivered WAN solution that connects any user to any application. It is a unified solution consisting of security, multi-cloud, increased visibility, and analytics leading to a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)-enabled architecture.
Cisco SD-WAN is a software-defined WAN solution helping organizations securely connect users to their applications. It offers a software overlay running over standard network transport that includes broadband, MPLS, and internet for delivering services and applications. This overlay network extends the organization’s network to infrastructure as a Service and a multi-cloud world. It accelerates its shift to the cloud.
What can be done using the Cisco SD-WAN dashboard?
All your company’s branches, campus locations, data centers, cloud infrastructure, and remote workers can be easily and quickly connected using the Cisco SD-WAN dashboard.
To implement this interconnection, Overlay Management Protocol (OMP) is applied by Cisco SD-WAN to your company’s whole network. It results in simplified IT operations leading to unified policies, automated delivery, decision making, and quick updating in significantly less time. The reliability, security, and functionality of your network increase manifolds.
The architecture provided by Cisco is flexible so that SD-WAN can be extended to any environment. Whether you use cloud or on-premises implementation of your product, Cisco SD-WAN automatically discovers, authenticates, and delivers both new and existing devices.
What is Multi-cloud Choice and Control?
Businesses use several cloud data centers in IT operations and not just one across lasS, SaaS, and Platform as a Service (PaaS). Connecting all these applications and workloads with the WAN and remote users is pretty challenging.
Cisco SD-WAN minimizes this problem by providing a procedure for connecting any WAN location to multiple cloud platforms or any other company site. It increases the connection speed and reliability.
Cisco's Latest SD-WAN Update
Cisco's Latest SD-WAN Version 17.8 supports OnRamp for more apps. The latest version of Cisco SD-WAN provides Cloud OnRamp support to NBAR applications like Slack or GitHub and custom apps, thereby adding greater visibility.
The updated version of SD-WAN allows connecting to a wide range of applications for the customers.
Types of Apps supported by version 17.8
Version 17.8 adds Cloud OnRamp support for two types of apps:
- Custom applications
- Network-Based Application Recognition (NBAR)
This update ensures low inactivity by connecting to these applications, which is made possible by automatically selecting optimal paths to route traffic.
NBAR applications include apps like Slack, GitHub, and Workday. It adds to the already supported top 14 business applications, including Microsoft 365, Amazon Web Services' apps, Salesforce, Dropbox, and GoToMeeting.
What are the Benefits of Cloud OnRamp?
- Cloud OnRamp for SaaS is an extension of Cisco's SD-WAN. Different routing paths pointing towards the same endpoint are automatically analyzed by it, and it helps businesses with highly minimized inactivity and packet loss. The 17.8 update ensures that Cloud OnRamp users experience a high-quality connection while connecting to NBAR or custom applications. The experience and connection quality are no less than that while accessing AWS or Webex.
- Cloud OnRamp helps improve clients' performance who move from on-premise applications to cloud-hosted data centers. It ensures no deterioration in the user experience even if you are not using a locally hosted application.
- The new update ensures the enhancement of Cisco vAnalytics that provides higher visibility of traffic flowing in and out of the applications. It helps network administrators analyze data volume flowing over a connection and the number of users using that application in a specified period. It helps in troubleshooting problems by studying the traffic flow when everything is functioning perfectly.
- The expansion of Layer-7 application health check support is also included in the latest update. It contains additional security vendors like McAfee, Symantec, and Palo Alto. The inclusion of these security vendors, according to Cisco, will help customers with varied network settings to redirect traffic automatically through secure if a Secure Internet Gateway (SIG) becomes unreachable.
The Final Words
Cisco regular updates help support businesses deploying more and more applications in the cloud. It makes extracting the SaaS applications related information more accessible. It also allows Cisco remains ahead of its competition in the overcrowded SD-WAN marketplace that includes VMware, Aruba, Citrix, and Fortinet.
The primary goal behind this update is to enhance user experience in terms of security, connectivity, reachability, and lower packet loss and inactivity. So, whether you are trying to access an application in the cloud or data center, the result is an enjoyable experience.
