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California Telecom SD-WAN Platform

Score9 out of 10

2 Reviews and Ratings

What is California Telecom SD-WAN Platform?

Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) is a technology that offers benefits to organizations seeking to optimize their network infrastructure. California Telecom blends the benefits of SD-WAN with support and a team of Tier-3 Network engineers to provide a helping hand to come alongside organizations' boots-on-the-ground teams.


Some benefits that have been identified are:


  1. Improved Network Performance:

    • Dynamic Path Selection: SD-WAN allows for intelligent routing of traffic based on real-time network conditions. It can dynamically choose the best path for data transmission, optimizing performance and reducing latency.
    • Application Awareness: SD-WAN is application-aware, meaning it can prioritize and allocate resources based on the specific needs of different applications. This ensures critical applications receive the necessary bandwidth for optimal performance.
  2. Enhanced Bandwidth Utilization:

    • Load Balancing: SD-WAN can distribute network traffic across multiple links, preventing congestion on any single path. This load balancing capability optimizes bandwidth utilization and ensures efficient use of available resources.
    • Link Aggregation: This SD-WAN platform can aggregate multiple internet links, combining their capacities to provide a higher overall bandwidth. This is particularly useful for organizations with diverse network connections.
  3. Cost Savings:

    • Internet Offloading: SD-WAN allows organizations to leverage cost-effective internet connections for certain types of traffic, reducing the reliance on expensive MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) circuits. This can lead to significant cost savings in terms of network infrastructure.
    • Centralized Management: The centralized control and management capabilities of SD-WAN reduce the need for on-site IT personnel at every branch, resulting in operational cost savings.
  4. Increased Flexibility and Agility:

    • Zero-Touch Provisioning: SD-WAN simplifies the deployment and configuration of network devices. With zero-touch provisioning, remote branches can be set up without requiring onsite IT expertise, enabling rapid deployment and scalability.
    • Application-Based Policies: Organizations can implement and modify policies based on application requirements. This flexibility allows for quick adjustments to accommodate changing business needs.
  5. Enhanced Security:

    • End-to-End Encryption: SD-WAN platforms often include security features such as encryption for data transmitted over the network. This ensures the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive information.
    • Unified Threat Management (UTM): Many SD-WAN solutions incorporate UTM features, including firewalls, intrusion detection/prevention systems, and antivirus capabilities. This provides a comprehensive security framework for the entire network.
  6. Centralized Management and Visibility:

    • Centralized Orchestration: SD-WAN allows for centralized management and control of the entire network. IT administrators can monitor, configure, and troubleshoot the network from a single interface, streamlining operations.
    • Real-Time Analytics: SD-WAN platforms often include analytics and reporting tools that provide real-time insights into network performance. This visibility helps organizations identify and address issues promptly.
  7. Resilience and Redundancy:

    • Automatic Failover: SD-WAN platforms can automatically reroute traffic in the event of a network failure, ensuring high availability and minimal disruption to critical business processes.
    • Multi-Path Connectivity: Organizations can use multiple types of connections (e.g., broadband, MPLS, 4G/5G) simultaneously, providing redundancy and increased resilience against network outages.
  8. Support for Cloud Services:

    • Direct Cloud Access: SD-WAN facilitates direct and secure access to cloud services by optimizing the connection between branch offices and cloud data centers. This improves the performance of cloud-based applications.

Categories & Use Cases

CALTEL SD-WAN

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have 3 warehouses that are on East Coast USA, West Coast USA, and the Philippines. The SD-WAN solution provided by California Telecom has allowed us to introduce higher levels of security and redundancy at each of those sites with a level of flexibility we did not have before.

Pair that with the 24/7 support we get from California Telecom's NOC team, and we get a much more secure edge with expert support.

Pros

  • Circuit Fail Over
  • Traffic Steering
  • Advanced Firewalling
  • Amazing Analytics

Cons

  • More user friendly analysis

Return on Investment

  • Tunnel down time to AWS environment reduced to nearly 0. In prior years it was nearly 20 hours of down time per year.

California Telecom SD-WAN

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We used CalTel's SD-WAN as our Firewall and Internet Router.

CalTel replaced Windstream. The main issue we had with Windstream was both their unreliable service (we had a outage at a site every month) and unhelpful support (we would know more of the problem and what the problem was before Windstreams support).

Since we migrated to CalTel, all our sites have internet redundancy to prevent outages, more proactive on maintenance and preventative maintenance, and knowledgeable support.

Pros

  • Inovative infratructure for scalability and realiability.
  • More cost-effective from service to support
  • Proactive monitoring
  • Knowledgeable engineers
  • Seemless implementation

Cons

  • Jim G. works well with executive staff in discovering ways to meet requirement, implement a more scalable technology, while still being cost-effective. Jim will need to replicate himself in order to be able to have others to do this type of work instead.

Return on Investment

  • Moving from Windstream system to CalTel cut gave us a monthly savings of $371K /yr for our phone and internet expenses.
  • It also allowed us to be more proactive when a circuit has trouble and allowed us to have redundancy.
  • Also allowed us to easily migrate our servers to a Data-Center and manage the traffic.

Alternatives Considered

Windstream Cloud Connect

Other Software Used

FortiSASE