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Oshadha Ranaweera , Manager for Connectivity Services WAN and ISP , Somerville broadband connections and consumer-grade Wi-Fi equipment .

To ensure ongoing suitability for business application requirements and the everchanging distribution of devices , it ’ s best to think of connectivity in terms of services . These services are developed , delivered and managed by third parties that focus on building the end-to-end connectivity that businesses require .

The role of SD-WANs

As Australian businesses come to terms with these emerging challenges , many are focusing on the role of software-defined wide-area networks ( SD-WANs ). This technology is being increasingly viewed as an enabler of network transformation and a way to significantly improve application performance for users .

By allowing network infrastructure to be monitored and managed in software , SD-WANs allow service providers to dynamically change characteristics . The allocation of bandwidth and traffic routing can be changed to reduce latency and improve overall performance .

As more businesses come to understand the benefits offered by SD-WANs , usage is expected to rapidly increase . According to IDC , Australia ’ s SD-WAN infrastructure market is expected to grow at an annual rate of 29.6 % through to 2024 . The company expects it to eventually become the primary means of connectivity within enterprises .

Delivering networks ‘ As-a-Service ’

The rise of SD-WAN technology is enabling the provision of networks based on service level agreements ( SLAs ) that guarantee a pre-agreed quality of connectivity rather than simply a set bandwidth speed . This allows businesses to more readily adapt to changing user and application requirements .

It also means businesses no longer have to worry about building networks from point to point . Instead , they can regard communications services as providing resilient IP connectivity between all their networked resources .

They also need to consider how to abstract their applications and databases from the

IN THIS ERA OF EXTENSIVE REMOTE WORKING , EXPANDING NETWORK REACH , CHANGING USAGE MODELS AND NEW APPLICATION ARCHITECTURES HAVE CREATED NEW SECURITY VULNERABILITIES THAT MUST BE PROACTIVELY ADDRESSED .