Should SD-WAN Providers Let Enterprises Drive?Should SD-WAN Providers Let Enterprises Drive?

Like teenagers and cars, many enterprises are eager to drive their SD-WANs, and have varying degrees of readiness to accept the responsibility should they run into a networking ditch.

Many enterprises go with a do-it-yourself approach, installing and operating their own SD-WAN equipment and software. Others look to a fully managed solution, asking their service providers to do all the work. Co-managed services are in between, with shared operational responsibilities between the service provider and enterprise customer, Chris Liou, Silver Peak VP Service Provider Product Management, said on a panel at the MEF19 conference in Los Angeles this week.

"It's a great opportunity for service providers to differentiate," Liou said.

Orange Business Services provides "read-only" control to some SD-WAN users, while others have the "right to write," said panelist Franck Morales, VP of connectivity services at Orange Business Services. For "read-only" customers, Orange Business Services provides information for capacity planning and managing user licenses, including flows, latency and other technology details, in a user portal.

Among those customers that want to manage their own SD-WAN service -- "right to write" customers -- some want to give the service provider final control, to insure against problems. Others want complete autonomy, and many of those have rules-based access controls.

Figure 1: Silver Peak's Chris Liou (left), Orange Business Services' Franck Morales, Spectrum Enterprise's Steve LaClair, and Teleography's Rob Schult.