What Is SD-WAN Multicloud?

3 min. read

SD-WAN Multicloud Explained

SD-WAN, or software-defined wide area networking, offers organizations a virtualized way to connect and extend their networks globally, reducing costs and improving bandwidth. SD-WAN multicloud, or SD-WAN multi-cloud, further extends that service by providing direct connectivity to all public clouds (e.g., AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Oracle and Alibaba) and private cloud providers.SD-WAN multicloud further delivers a global backbone that interconnects users from anywhere to applications across multiple clouds.

Challenges

Everything is in the cloud now, presenting a number of challenges for organizations. Legacy architecture backhauls traffic to the data center, which is expensive and impacts both user experience and productivity. Manual operations to deliver cloud connectivity require significant expertise and operational complexity. As applications have moved to the cloud, so does the need for security. To ensure security, apps need to be inspected in the cloud – something that can’t be done with traditional security tools. Also, it isn’t just communication applications that are moving to the cloud. Now, enterprise applications live in the cloud, making user experience and connectivity more critical.

SD-WAN Multicloud Benefits

SD-WAN multicloud offers many benefits to organizations that are embracing the cloud. With all apps and access connected to the cloud, this direct-to-app approach optimizes app performance, which, in turn, enhances the user experience. Traditionally, SD-WAN was limited to applications egressing from branch locations. SD-WAN multicloud provides direct connectivity to the cloud, thus extending SD-WAN capabilities like application intelligence, visibility and control to the last mile in the cloud. Similarly, organizations can combine the management of their branch offices to WAN connectivity to the cloud applications that simplify operations significantly. SD-WAN multicloud simplifies branch infrastructure by providing the flexibility of adopting cloud-delivered security, thereby removing the need to enforce localized inspection with multiple point products.

SD-WAN Multicloud Solution

Choosing the right solution is necessary as you continue your digital transformation journey to the cloud. Palo Alto Networks Prisma SD-WAN offers the flexibility and seamless integration with Azure, Google Cloud and AWS. Prisma SD-WAN is the industry’s first next-generation SD-WAN solution that provides an ROI of up to 243%. With its autonomous infrastructure, organizations can eliminate up to 99% of support tickets, using machine learning and data science capabilities while enabling branch services, such as security and networking, from the cloud. Together with Prisma Access, security is enabled across multicloud environments.