‘SD-WAN integration is complicated,’ says ngena’s Dietmar Geiler
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‘SD-WAN integration is complicated,’ says ngena’s Dietmar Geiler

Mixed thoughts from panel at Day 2 of WAN Frankfurt, on the best provider strategy for hybrid WAN deployments

Day 2 of WAN Frankfurt was kick started with a panel on provider selection strategies for hybrid WAN. Panellists included Jason Poole, principal product marketing manager, Citrix; Dietmar Geiler, head of product management & presales, ngena; Facundo Musante, global network services manager, Schlumberger and Johan Ottosson, VP of strategy at Telia Carrier. Moderated by Elliott Cheresh, research analyst at Telegeography.

On the topic of SD-WAN and its ability to facilitate a multi-vendor strategy Musante says that for “many years we [Schlumberger] has had a multi-vendor setup. In one way or another I don’t see SD-WAN changing that.”

“I think SD-WAN has changed the way people look at WAN,’ chimed in Poole. “It has democratised things for the customer and made it so that they can have multiple vendors. But not every organisation as the expertise, the need or want the cost of multi-vendor setups.”

But he keen to point out that whether it’s one or multiple vendors, the key is trust and whether or not these businesses trust vendors to manage their applications.

‘Most enterprises aren’t concerned with the pipes coming into their building (unless it goes wrong), their interest is in the applications,’ says Jason Poole

‘The perception is that SD-WAN is easier, but to integrate it is very complicated,’ says Geiler.

Although Poole disagreed saying: ‘to me, the demarcation of SD-WAN is pretty clear, in some cases the SD-WAN helps, with what’s working and what’s not.”

Ottosson seemed more in favour of a single vendor that is able to offer an overlay that can cover an underlay source from multiple vendors.

Musante “it is my impression that the use of a single overlay management is attractive, in the case of us doing it ourselves verses it managed by someone else, we are not in the business of managing networks.SD-WAN is creating huge opportunities particularly in the subscription model base, where we are not tied to a contract, as well as virtualisation and the feature set that brings the application and the network closer together.”

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