A primary element with SaaS and Cloud computing is the virtual datacenter or Virtual Platform Infrastructure (VPI). VPI refers to virtual machines and virtual platforms which rely on many additional physical and virtual infrastructure elements. Over the past few years, new infrastructure platforms such as virtual machines, virtual management, virtual switching/routing, virtual storage, and virtual system management have been coming together to help drive this technology.

Virtual machine platforms such as VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V are indeed alluring technologies that have the promise of bringing cost-savings, infrastructure consolidation, dynamic provisioning and other total cost of ownership benefits to enterprises of all sizes. Although these products provide the tools for building virtual datacenters, there is another critical factor that cannot be overlooked. The successful implementation of VPI technologies requires a virtual network infrastructure to reliably deliver the virtual datacenter applications.

Virtual WAN Networking
Virtual WAN Networking is the bundling of multiple IP networks from different service providers, and or multiple IP connections from a single service provider, and automatically managing the connections to ensure optimum performance and uptime among connections. The ease and flexibility of network connection provisioning, and the automation of the connection health checking and failover of the virtual WAN network is the key to successful virtual WAN networking. Virtual WAN networking is a proven technology that delivers on the same cost-savings, infrastructure consolidation, and dynamic provisioning as virtual machine platforms.

With IP networks taking on many new challenges from VoIP, rich multimedia and other high-bandwidth consuming and high-priority mission-critical applications, as an enterprise customer, you better be sure the network connectivity between you and your SaaS or Cloud computing provider is protected with built-in reliability and controls for optimizing the delivery of traffic among the network connections.

Cost-savings
WAN link controllers can deliver easy and affordable ISP network connection aggregation, inbound and outbound connection load-balancing and failover, and site-to-site channel bonding. WAN link controllers help ensure Internet uptime – even if one of the ISPs has an outage. You may use two, three or however many Internet connections and ISPs you need. Leverage low-cost connections, eliminate connection congestion and bottlenecks, and use the WAN link controller to management traffic with QoS and traffic shaping to ensure bandwidth levels for specific applications.

WAN link controllers allow you choose the Internet connection performance/cost ratio that best fits your business needs; provides you with complete service provider independence; and eliminates the complexity of network protocols such as border gateway protocol (BGP). Bandwidth aggregation combines Internet connection load balancing to route sessions from congested links, to links with more available bandwidth. It also provides automatic failover of Internet sessions from failed links to functional links to eliminate a point-of-failure. For example, if you have a T1 line (1.5 Mbps), and need additional bandwidth, you would typically have to upgrade to a T3 line (45 Mbps) if you require SLAs. However, this may be significantly more bandwidth than you require, and will be a significant increase in monthly costs.

With WAN link controllers, this same scenario can be accomplished with two 768 Kbps DSL connections that can be combined for a total aggregated bandwidth equivalent to a T1 - at a fraction of the cost. You can also add additional lower speed connections such as cable, fiber, wireless, and others, with a relatively small increase in cost that can more closely match your needs. In addition to receiving more cost-effective bandwidth, you are dramatically increasing the reliability of your WAN network due to the new levels of redundancy through the aggregation of multiple Internet connections.

Dynamic provisioning
WAN link controllers provide the ability to easily provision multiple, diverse Internet connections and ISPs/telcos. By having the flexibility to pick and choose service providers at your will, and mix and match Internet connections based upon cost, size and type, IT personnel have greater control over their network infrastructure. If one service provider becomes too expensive, or is not performing to your expectations, you can easily replace them with another service provider. If you need to increase your bandwidth capacity because you are rolling out a new VoIP application outside of your LAN, simply add another Internet connection to the WAN link controller. You can even enhance the bandwidth management of that application by using QoS and traffic shaping policies. The WAN link controller will automatically load balance and handle the connection failover for you.

WAN link controllers deliver greater control over your network
WAN link controllers allow enterprises to easily automate the process of managing multiple (virtual) IP connections by intelligently transferring over from one connection to another if a network outage occurs, and load balancing traffic between multiple connections based upon each connections performance at any point in time. They provide IT personnel with greater control, and enable them to easily adapt to network changes by providing a resource optimization layer within their WAN. WAN link controllers do not require ISP or carrier coordination or peering relationships. In fact, they are completely independent from the service provider. This eliminates the peering disputes among service providers that have been known to cause serious connectivity problems for their customers, resulting in loss of productivity and revenue.

A single WAN link controller can be deployed at the enterprise to aggregate multiple disparate connections, or, they can be used to “channel bond” multiple connections among two of more sites to create a single virtual connection that combines multiple network connections from multiple service providers. This allows the enterprise to have complete service provider independence and flexibility. This flexibility not only pertains to the choice of service providers, but also gives the enterprise greater options for the type, size and cost of each network connection they choose to deploy. This allows them to take advantage of the most cost-effective ISP rates, while ensuring appropriate levels of bandwidth are available for specific applications. WAN link controllers combine multiple network connections such as T1, T3, DSL, Cable, Fiber, ISDN, Wireless, Satellite, and others into a single virtual wide-pipe with aggregated bandwidth, while providing WAN redundancy and automated ISP failover, load balancing, site failover and failback.

Whether you use an outside SaaS or Cloud provider, a hybrid Cloud solution, or you have an internal Cloud computing environment, WAN link controllers fit in to provide the virtual network you need to ensure reliable network connectivity and controlled performance.

Summary
In today’s competitive and economically challenging business environment, enterprises of all sizes are looking for ways to lower costs, reduce network infrastructure complexity and ease network provisioning. Virtual WAN networking has proven to deliver in each of these areas. Virtualization is a hot topic, and a promising technology area for both datacenter and network provisioning. WAN link controllers are at the front-end of virtual WAN networking, and they are the technology devices delivering on the promise of improved total cost of ownership benefits for network infrastructure, while providing the network connectivity to ensure that mission-critical applications get delivered fast, reliably and securely.