The world is different now to how it was a few weeks ago. Owing to the outbreak of COVID-19 and the declaration of a pandemic, we have been forced to take unprecedented global measures.

With the bulk of the population confined to their homes, many companies, from SMEs to multinationals, have been forced to send their employees home and provide them with the right tools so that they can work remotely. The educational system is evolving in leaps and bounds to provide pupils an online educational service. All meetings, even governmental ones, are being held online. Restaurants are continuing to operate but are only accepting takeout orders or deliveries. Digital prescriptions are being issued by doctors, and many routine medical consultations are being conducted by telephone.

Furthermore, we are experiencing traffic overload on applications such as Netflix, Skype or WhatsApp calls. We are even seeing a whole lot of new applications for sharing online services. For example, Netflix Party is an application that allows users to synch Netflix content and watch it together via a video call.

How will “the Covid-19 crisis” affect the digitization of networks and systems?

While we reflect as individuals and as a society, I am certain that once this emergency is over and we overcome the potential coming economic crisis, organizations of every shape and size – whether public or private – will put the need to virtualize many of their systems and networks foremost among their priorities.

Networks are the nervous system of any organization. First, both SMEs and large companies must ensure their employees can access the information and tools they need so that production does not stall despite a relocation of the work. Secondly, a change in the way information and applications are accessed, which is increasingly through access to third-party services in the cloud, causes traditional WAN architecture to lose meaning.

The future of SD-WAN in times of  “post-crisis”

The good news is that we already have the technology needed to apply the changes, namely SDN / SD-WAN solutions; and not only is it much easier to manage, but it’s also cheaper. Implementing networks through a single platform allows IT to reduce complexity and operating costs without sacrificing functionality, security and reliability.

For this reason, small and medium-sized companies – SME’s, which often lack the resources to deal with these kinds of infrastructure changes, will see (more than ever) a significant benefit from the SD-WAN technology. Making these changes would solve the problems of network congestion, locations with connection difficulties, and instability in services that are latency-sensitive (e.g., video conferencing). SD-WAN would also provide complete flexibility for the company when deciding, whether by choice or by force majeure, that all employees work remotely.

We at Teldat have spent years developing our own SD-WAN technology that allows companies to transform their network infrastructure in a flexible, simple and gradual way.