SMB/Mid-Market Spotlight: Is there a better solution to your bandwidth deficit than purchasing more bandwidth?

Operating a business in the world of social media, software as a service (SaaS), mobility, video conferencing and more is no small feat. Most businesses find themselves faced with choppy VoIP connections, dropped video conferences, slow access to business systems and applications and other counter-productive bandwidth related issues.

Do you know what’s consuming your bandwidth?

Here are the six primary things that typically suck up your bandwidth:

• Everything-as-as-Service (XaaS)
• Employees signing up for cloud-based applications without company knowledge/permission
• The transfer of big data and analytics
• The Internet of Things (IoT)
• Sudden surges in network traffic (holiday traffic to website) and unauthorized usage of network bandwidth (ex. Social media, streaming media)
• Constant introduction of new high-bandwidth applications (hosted contact centers, video surveillance, artificial intelligence, etc.)

Do you have the budget to purchase more bandwidth?

Research shows that the demand for bandwidth inside a business doubles every 18 months. What to do? This steady increase in bandwidth demand does not magically align with a larger budget to purchase more bandwidth.

While it seems the obvious solution is to purchase more bandwidth, there’s actually a smarter, more affordable solution. SD-WAN. If you are not familiar with SD-WAN, check out this infographic.

SD-WAN can free up bandwidth on your existing connections without you dishing out more money for additional bandwidth that will just be misallocated in a similar fashion. SD-WAN becomes the smart investment, while not always the obvious one.

• Deploy SD-WAN and gain visibility into which applications are draining your bandwidth.
• Then set rules that prioritize the bandwidth allocated to each. This means that Bob’s incessant YouTube streaming doesn’t pull bandwidth away from your VoIP calls or video conferences that are working to win you new business (not to mention you know about that now and can put a stop to it).
• With your newfound network insights, anticipate spikes and surges and plan proactively.

Not only is SD-WAN a quick fix to your bandwidth issues – offering up to 100x the bandwidth at a lower cost than the T1 you may currently be paying for — but it also sets your business up for future success – laying the foundation for other software-delivered solutions and delivering a network optimized to connect to cloud-based applications.