There has been a lot of hype in the past couple of years around SD-WAN. Most people talk about it as being the “new WAN”.

Imagine that your business has fallen victim to a cyber-attack. What would be the first indication that you have been compromised – when you find yourself locked out of your systems? Often by the time a hacker reveals themselves, much of the damage has already been done.

If you’re using the Microsoft suite of services, you probably have a good grasp of why direct connections to the Microsoft cloud are beneficial. However, as our team dived into conversations with customers looking to use ExpressRoute, we noticed there’s some misunderstanding around its suitability for accessing Office 365 and Teams.

The results we’ve seen from the first couple of years of SD-WAN (Software Defined Wide Area Networks) deployments have been a mixture of reinforcing our initial expectations with a few new surprises. Here are five key things we’ve learned from our initial deployments so far.

If you have already considered deploying SD-WAN, you'll likely be aware of the more obvious benefits this new technology brings; and the fact it has matured to the point where you no longer need to feel your business is taking risks with early adoption of bleeding edge technology.