3 Benefits of Offering an SD-WAN Solution as a Network Service Provider

With rising bandwidth demands and low operations budgets, network service providers must adapt and stay competitive by utilizing new technologies.

As networks become more complex and compute is pushed to the edge, more organizations are turning to software defined wide area networks (SD-WAN). SD-WAN solutions enable flexible deployment and usage-based options, allowing for optimization of traffic flow and network performance. SD-WAN provides a more efficient, less complex network that’s easy to manage and cost effective.

SD-WAN usage is expected to reach 30% of all businesses by the end of this year, and more than 85% of companies are considering SD-WAN to increase the security of their networks and reduce complexity. It’s clear that SD-WAN demand won’t be decreasing anytime soon.

While SD-WAN adoption continues to grow, these numbers present a huge opportunity for savvy network service providers to take advantage of SD-WAN demand, so they remain competitive and differentiate themselves from the competition.

There are numerous benefits to offering SD-WAN services, including increased revenue generation options, improved network performance and power, better, stronger security offerings, and significant operational cost savings. Forward-thinking NSP organizations must adapt to changing technology or risk high customer churn.

Taking advantage of SD-WAN demand can benefit NSPs in a variety of ways. SD-WAN solutions keep customers happy and less likely to turnover to the competition, allow service providers to upsell current customers, and reduce long term operational costs.

1. Minimize Churn Rates

Customer churn is a harsh reality that network service providers must face. Gaining market share and new customers can be difficult, so maintaining your current customer base by providing excellent, reliable user experiences is a critical component in reducing churn. Simply put, happy customers stay with their current service providers.

By offering SD-WAN, service providers can ensure that their network services never disappoint or frustrate their customers. Network needs continue to increase in complexity and bandwidth requirements, and these needs show no signs of scaling back in the future. NSPs can continue to remain competitive and reduce their customer churn by offering SD-WAN solutions that can handle traffic needs in any situation.

2. Increase Opportunities to Upsell Services

In addition to reducing customer churn, service providers’ existing customer bases can bring in additional revenue. Increased cloud-based demand means plenty of opportunities to offer flexible, hybrid WAN networking to existing customers.

3. Reduce Operating Costs and Labor Hours

Perhaps the most hype-inducing benefit of SD-WAN—its cost-effectiveness—is often the main reason enterprises and NSPs alike are moving toward a software-defined network. Cost savings of 40% or more have been shown after a switch to SD-WAN, in addition to improved bandwidth and better performance.

Additionally, SD-WAN reduces the need for additional IT and tech support, since it is easier to manage and can eliminate overly complex networks.

SD-WAN also allows for additional automation, further reducing costs. Zero-touch provisioning and automated network changes means that fewer human resources are needed to support the SD-WAN, and business policies can be defined to automatically route traffic over the best path for the specific need. Reduction in both short-term and long-term costs make SD-WAN solutions a home run for NSPs.

It should be noted that while reducing operational costs are the main reason why many enterprises are choosing NSPs that offer SD-WAN, improved performance, faster deployment, and improved bandwidth are all additional and important benefits to utilizing SD-WANs.

NSPs can remain competitive by offering flexible, hybrid WAN networking options that better match their customers’ needs, reduce churn rates, increase revenue, and reduce operating costs.

VMware provides the industry-leading VMware SD-WAN™ by VeloCloud® solution, helping service providers all over the world upsell state-of-the-art services to their clients. The VMware SD-WAN platform offers many unique benefits, including:

• Improved application performance and monitoring
• Enhanced cybersecurity
• Highly scalable and flexible networking
• Simplified network monitoring and troubleshooting
• Support for multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud architectures
• Perfect for 5G mobile networking
• Support for multiple deployment models
• VMware support, training, and marketing assistance

Download our Service Provider Solution Sheet to learn more about VMware SD-WAN.