We’ve started to hear a lot about SD-Branch as a natural successor to SD-WAN, which makes sense as the centrally-orchestrated model is attractive to many enterprises. However, just as we saw with SD-WAN, the term “SD-Branch” is being adopted by many different vendors and service providers to mean what they want, in the absence of any “official” definition.

What is SD-Branch anyway?

Based on most definitions, SD-Branch means delivering more IT infrastructure to branches under a programmable, centrally orchestrated model. Think of it as “SD-WAN plus” – just as you can create templates or profiles in an SD-WAN network, an entire branch template could be generated that defines how the LAN is configured, what wireless LANs are used, how they integrate with the WAN, and what additional compute-based services need to be deployed at the branch.

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VMWare announced on November 2 that it intends to acquire VeloCloud Networks. The value of the proposed acquisition has not yet been announced, and VMWare expects it to close in Q4 of its FY18 which ends on February 2, 2018.

This acquisition appears to be receiving a more positive message overall in the market than Cisco’s acquisition of Viptela earlier this year. In Viptela’s case, being acquired by Cisco immediately raised questions about where this product would fit alongside the existing IWAN and Meraki products, its impact on the ecosystem of IWAN-related products (Glue Networks, LiveAction, etc.) and what the final product mix would look like. Many of these questions have subsequently been answered, but the immediate reaction was one of uncertainty and concern.

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As enterprises finalize budgets for 2018, a common question in IT departments is how to budget for the implementation of SD-WAN technology. The fact that these conversations are even happening is noteworthy in itself; this is a technology that has gone from being a curiosity 18 months ago to a top-5 initiative for many IT teams in recent months.

There are many variations between SD-WAN vendors and service providers on what the technology offers, how it’s paid for, and how the business case stacks up. Here are a few items to consider:

For most enterprises, SD-WAN savings are based on transport savings

One of the headline benefits of SD-WAN that attract most enterprises is the prospect of significant savings. This can mean many things, but the bulk of these savings typically comes from replacing private MPLS connectivity with Internet-based services, and using SD-WAN to glue these together. Internet “may” be poorer quality (more on that later), and may not have performance guarantees, but the path performance tracking and steering capabilities of SD-WAN can work around these limitations. This may be the case, but it isn’t universal:

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Wrapping up an SD-WAN workshop session with a client last week, I reflected on how rapidly the branch office WAN connectivity and management model is changing. Some great opportunities are emerging for enterprise IT teams that can materially impact how the network is designed, paid for and managed. Here are some thoughts:

1. Public cloud is driving a lightweight edge security model

Most people agree that SD-WAN can facilitate service chaining, and a selective backhaul model is interesting to many enterprises that want to concentrate next-generation firewall services in larger locations. But with the rapid growth of distributed content in public cloud applications (even from Microsoft and Salesforce, who long resisted this trend that Google pioneered) it’s increasingly counterproductive to backhaul browsing traffic long distances from the end users. It reduces performance, and adds significant load at hubs on the network — not ideal when this can represent 80 percent or more of the traffic.

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Services are a relatively new concept in WANs. Devices and configurations were traditionally what made up a WAN, with routers, switches, load balancers, firewalls, proxy servers and other components positioned at appropriate points in the network. Enterprises have long grown accustomed to the use of appliances—or “middle boxes” to perform a single function, and the maintenance and management of these devices can be a real headache for IT teams.

+ Also on Network World: SD-WAN: What it is and why you’ll use it one day +

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In previous articles I discussed how SD-WAN is an attractive step forward from simple IPsec VPNs as well as multi-vendor, multi-technology hybrid WANs, driving new functionality and quality levels into these networks. One important question is how next-generation WANs are managed – and by whom.

+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD 5 reasons to move to an SD-WAN +

Management is a fairly broad subject – what does it consist of in this context? There’s the orchestrator, where the configuration profiles and policies for each device reside. This can be cloud hosted or deployed on-premise, but somebody needs to perform the service design and configuration management roles regardless of where it resides. There are the edge devices themselves, which are typically managed through the orchestrator’s southbound interface. And finally there are the difficult, fragmented components around the edges: ISPs, MPLS vendors, metro Ethernet providers, maintenance vendors, field engineering resources – all of these must be effectively managed to deliver a workable solution.

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In previous articles I outlined one of the most clear-cut use cases for Software Defined WAN: replacing traditional Internet-based VPNs with a centrally-managed SD-WAN solution. This is easy for enterprises to relate to, and the benefits of deploying this type of project can be considerable.

However, many enterprises deal with a much more complex hybrid WAN, and the challenges with this type of environment can be substantial. A hybrid WAN means that multiple technologies are integrated to deliver the end-to-end solution; this can include MPLS, VPLS, point-to-point circuits and Internet VPNs. Traffic flows between end users and applications can span multiple technologies and multiple boundaries of management responsibility. I've worked with many global enterprises that operate networks like this, and I hear several recurring complaints:

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Internet VPNs have been a feature of many global enterprise WANs for the last 10 years. In a previous article I mentioned that this technology is often used out of necessity, with cost pressure forcing enterprises to just deal with Internet performance limitations.

With increasing interest in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) recently, many use cases have been proposed by vendors and early enterprise adopters alike. However, it is today's site-to-site Internet VPNs that should be seen as the 'low-hanging fruit' for initial SD-WAN deployments. Moving to a software-defined solution results in a topology that should be very familiar to enterprises with existing VPN deployments, while solving some of the bigger performance and management issues.

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After years of sitting in the shadow of virtualization, SaaS, containers, and all the other exciting IT trends, the wide area network is finally getting some attention. These other trends are actually drivers for this change in many cases; while WAN architectures have remained relatively static in recent years, the applications they need to support have changed beyond recognition. This is driving the need to re-think what the WAN looks like and how it operates.

The phrase 'next-generation WAN' will mean different things to different enterprises, but let's identify some of the characteristics that are starting to become more common. Some of these are new, but in many cases the next-generation WAN is a new network methodology or mindset. This can impact the technologies used, insourcing/outsourcing decisions, and functionality provided by the network.

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