Building flexibility into our networked environments is the hallmark of digital innovation. It allows organizations to be more nimble when it comes to delivering critical resources and applications to customers and employees. It agilely adapts to changes in the marketplace. And it allows organizations to maintain a competitive advantage in a world where change is the only constant.

The need for this kind of flexibility has been highlighted by the current crisis. Organizations with a flexible and distributed infrastructure already in place were able to quickly adapt to new remote worker requirements with minimal impact on business continuity. Without proper strategies, solutions, and infrastructures in place, organizations were not only unprepared to address this crisis, but even normal requirements, such as digital innovation, present significant technological challenges to enterprises. Without the flexibility to provide application access, maintain optimal performance, and ensure uninterrupted connectivity to critical assets/resources can cripple their ability to compete and survive in today’s digital marketplace.

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To keep up with digital innovation efforts, organizations are increasingly replacing their traditional WAN edge, built around static MPLS and router deployments. New SD-WAN solutions include business application recognition and steering, WAN path optimization, advance routing, and security – enabling organizations to take full advantage of the ongoing digital revolution at their remote sites and branch offices.

But SD-WAN requirements are maturing, and as a result, many solutions are incomplete. Issues like limited scalability, the lack of automation to simplify operations, and lackluster cloud on-ramp and cloud and SaaS integrations can result in a poor user experience that can undermine the value of an SD-WAN deployment. Instead, SD-WAN solutions need to provide a robust set of networking and connectivity tools that can meet and adapt to the dynamic nature of digital innovation, especially as organizations move more aggressively to the cloud, transition from regional to global deployments, or expand the number of their regional offices.

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When IT leaders hear about segmentation, their first thought is usually about dividing a network up using VLANs or VXLANs. But segmentation also plays a critical security role in securing dynamic multi-cloud environments, IoT and BYOD strategies, and automated workflows in today’s highly distributed environments.

Digital Innovation is disrupting enterprise organizations, adding new networks such as dynamic multi-cloud to enable new services and business opportunities. However, these new environments also create increased risk. The explosive adoption of IoT and mobile devices, as well as applications and services from multiple clouds, are pushing the attack surface beyond the traditional network boundaries. And because workflows, applications, and transactions have to span all of these new environments, traditional network-based segmentation strategies stop at the edge of each network environment without putting cumbersome and complex solutions in place.

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