Afro young woman sitting at the table in a home office, using laptop.
COVID Partner SD-WAN

Keeping the World Connected: Turning Every Location into a Remote Branch

NOTE: VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud is publishing a blog series on business continuity and what we’re doing to support our community, customers, and partners amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Check out these other published pieces:

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We are living in unprecedented times full of unknowns. But keeping your network running and employees working should not be one of those unforeseen factors.

As businesses transition their employees to working full-time from home, they are literally transforming each home into a virtual branch office. And in order to do their job properly, each employee needs to retain uninterrupted connections to their corporate applications and services, regardless of where they reside.

Additionally, businesses that provide “essential services” require uninterrupted connectivity to their cloud applications and transactional services to stay open. For example, hospitals need to access patient records and grocery stores have to submit supply orders and process payments. The cloud is the network and each essential enterprise needs to be cloud-enabled.


How can SD-WAN help?

The focus is on empowering people to work remotely while staying connected to required cloud applications. Tomorrow, the focus will be on how to modernize and transform the enterprises’ network to provide future business continuity.  Let’s talk about today first.

Today, a SD-WAN device can be plugged in straight out-of-the-box, that enables employees to have the same experience working from home as being in the office. A plug and play approach simplifies the provisioning and configuration through zero touch provisioning (ZTP), where users initiate deployment through an activation link provided in an email.

Many remote locations utilize direct connections to the Internet, which can result in performance problems, particularly with interactive applications including voice and video conferencing. SD-WAN helps eliminate quality issues by prioritizing interactive or unified communications (UC) applications over other connectivity streams, while delivering enterprise-grade quality in an environment where business applications, education and entertainment are competing for available bandwidth.

Looking to tomorrow, SD-WAN lays the foundation to support business operations, helping to modernize and transform the network while ensuring business operations with continuity as situations evolve.

How can we help?

Uncertain times bring opportunities to drive innovation. AT&T and VMware are collaborating to offer SD-WAN solutions designed specifically for small offices and home offices (SOHO). This offer makes it easier for enterprises to function in today’s world without disruption by empowering their people to work remotely from almost anywhere.

As employees and business locations become more dispersed and information flows from different points within the overall network, AT&T’s SD-WAN Work From Home offer powered by VMware ensure enterprises can retain full support and connection to their network infrastructure and service platforms. Offering a plug and play SD-WAN appliance allows remote workers to consume voice services and UCaaS simultaneously, while IT departments can segment and prioritize business traffic over non-essential network traffic. To support small offices, enterprises can create an office in any location, whether it’s a mobile testing facility or overflow healthcare facility. With a wireless back-up option, AT&T increases the resiliency of the network.

Today, AT&T and VMware are enabling solutions that allow enterprises to react quickly and transition on a dime with Work From Home and SOHO offers that keep the world connected, one connection at a time. Tomorrow, we can build and execute a business continuity plan with SD-WAN that continues to keep enterprises prepared and connected.