As the world tries to make senses of a new set of norms in the wake of COVID-19, organizations have learnt firsthand the importance of being agile and adaptable to change. Being flexible isn’t only applicable to business processes but to the enterprise networks that support those processes and employees’ abilities to get their work done.Over the past 6 weeks, we have been partnering with our customers to modify and upgrade their Wide Area Networks (WAN) to meet their increase in demand for network services. This enables organizations to replicate the availability and access to company data and applications to their employees remotely, keeping business running as smoothly as possible. We have identified three key considerations for building more resilient, adaptable WANs.

Remote Access Points for Remote Based Employees APs

Remote access points are automatically configured, allowing employees to simply plug them into any existing internet connection and they’re ready to go! In the backend, they maintain consistent VPN connectivity, complete with full tunneling capabilities and secure routing of personal and work traffic in order to maintain organizational privacy and compliance. These devices are centrally managed in order to ensure that changes, compliance and otherwise, are deployed to all users instantly.Our favourites:

• Aruba Remote Access Points
• Fortinet Teleworker APs

Automate Network Device Provisioning and Management

Most large organizations have long and complex methods of procedure (MOPs) which require manual intervention. As a result, delays are experienced and organizational agility is negatively impacted.The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of introducing network automation concepts so that organizations can quickly adapt. To help address this challenge, many leading vendor’s network devices have built RESTful APIs. These APIs are designed to seamlessly integrate with automation tools and languages allowing for easy capture of MOPs, configurations and artifacts as code enabling quick system changes that are fully traceable and have rollback capabilities.This provides:

• A single source for truth for configuration allowing for the automation of the entire network stack
• The capability to test and validate the network state
• The ability for continuous configuration compliance

Our favorites:

• Red Hat Ansible Platform
• FortiOS Ansible Modules
• Aruba Ansible Modules

Manage Network Traffic with Intent

For several years, SD-WAN has received buzz in our industry. But up until a few weeks ago, we hadn’t collectively faced a compelling event large enough to convince enterprises that it is the future of enterprise WAN.SD-WAN provides centralized control, intelligent routing and link aggregation (MPLS/Broadband/LTE) which ultimately allows a network team to have complete control of the network, quality of experience (QoE) and end to end observability. When faced with an unexpected situation, such as COVID-19, it provides network teams the ability to make much needed adjustments on the fly to deal with fluctuations in network demand. Our favorites:

• Fortinet SD-WAN
• Aruba SD-WAN

Interested in learning how MOBIA can help you meet your network services needs and build more resilient, adaptable WANs? Drop Geoff a note.

About the author

Geoff Sullivan is a passionate technologist who has spent the past decade helping companies of all sizes – from start-ups to some of the world’s largest telecom providers – navigate their technology and business transformations. When he isn’t busy talking about hybrid Infrastructure, automation and cloud native application platforms, you’ll find Geoff exploring the great outdoors with his partner Amy and their dog Ruby.