SD-WAN vs WAN: The Technology Comparison for Businesses
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Securely connected – flexible, fast, and independent.
Secure Cloud Network
Secure Cloud Network is a type of overlay network that integrates any underlying connections such as MPLS, Ethernet, LTE, internet, wireless, enabling cost-optimized connectivity to your own corporate data center and cloud solutions (SaaS or DCaaS like Salesforce, Azure, Office 365, Google, AWS, etc…).
Unlike other WAN solutions such as MPLS, you are vendor-independent, flexible, faster, and more cost-effective when it comes to the data lines and technologies used. Through preconfigured connections of all major clouds to SD-WAN providers and local breakouts of internet/cloud traffic, backhauling is prevented and the performance of cloud services is increased.
Security is ensured through standardized encryption such as AES, creating a secure overlay network independent of the transport lines.
Before new SD-WAN equipment can become part of the Secure Cloud Network, it must be authenticated and authorized by the SD-WAN management layer. Once completed, the device downloads its assigned policy and is integrated into the Secure Net.
Depending on a company’s policy, highly sensitive traffic can of course be further encrypted beyond that.
In a nutshell:
- Maximum flexibility in connectivity
- Higher cloud performance
- Cost-optimized network infrastructure
- End-to-end security
- Centralized management & automation
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Virtual Service Delivery
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SD-WAN
Underlay
Dynamic service deployment at the click of a button
With Virtual Service Delivery in SD-WAN management, third-party or partner services and applications can be flexibly activated – as needed for locations, data centers, clouds, or individual user groups.
Via the centralized frontend, you can book features such as Dedicated Cloud Access (Azure, AWS, Google), firewalls, or WAN optimization simply at the click of a button. This reduces the need for on-site hardware and significantly simplifies management. Most services are preconfigured and ready to use instantly via zero-touch deployment.
A standardized direct-to-internet path ensures optimized SaaS connectivity. Combined with cloud security, multipath optimization, and intelligent packet steering, backhauling is reduced and bandwidth is used efficiently.
Critical, internally hosted applications can continue to run on the existing WAN. Many companies initially start with SD-WAN as an extension of their network to specifically connect locations with high MPLS costs or poor connectivity.
For particularly demanding regions – such as China – a four-week try-&-smile trial phase is available. The equipment is automatically provisioned, preconfigured, and tested under real-world conditions – including performance tuning, monitoring, and security. This creates a solid foundation for the subsequent rollout to additional locations.
Five key facts at a glance:
- Activated at the click of a button
- Zero-touch deployment
- Optimized SaaS performance
- Secure hybrid architecture
- Hands-on getting started
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Orchestration and analytics
In the SDN endpoint device, the control plane is separated from the data plane. This enables the use of simpler and more cost-effective standard hardware. The SD-WAN architecture is built on the same principle. The orchestration layer represents the control plane, which flexibly steers or “orchestrates” traffic to and from customer locations and cloud nodes across various underlying data connections.
It is failsafe, meaning it is built with multiple redundancy (highly resilient). The cloud-based orchestration layer is intuitively operated and significantly simplifies end-user deployment.
It has 3 functions:
Management-Plane:
A dashboard for zero-touch deployments, configuration monitoring, troubleshooting, and reporting. All necessary and typical settings and services for the CPE and the WAN are already standardized and preconfigured here. Including WAN optimization, capacity measurement, latency, jitter, and loss. This means individual configurations per data link are not required. Even QoS (Quality of Service) policies automatically adapt to changing line quality.
Of course, all of this can be manually adjusted to your own requirements, but the base configuration is fully predefined. Authentication and authorization of new SD-WAN devices in the network is also carried out within the management plane.
Highly available and redundant control plane:
It is extremely scalable and built on commodity hardware. As on-premise hardware, or even as a virtual machine. Using the control plane, customers can integrate existing WAN structures and attach SD-WAN environments with minimal configuration changes.
Business policy standards:
These standards reflect security, service assurance, and corporate governance requirements.
Benefits of SD-WAN
Respond quickly and flexibly to new business requirements
To maintain proximity to customers, many new branches and offices are often opened at short notice. Frequently, IT departments can no longer keep up with the provisioning of centralized services and network infrastructure. With an outdated, static network infrastructure, every new branch requires significant effort in planning and implementation.
Bei einer veralteten, statischen Netzwerkinfrastruktur erfordert jede neue Filiale einen hohen Aufwand in Planung und Realisierung.
SD-WAN solutions offer the ability to eliminate these bottlenecks.
Benefits:
- Flexibility and automation in provisioning
- Rapid deployment through independence from ISPs
- Standardization of security topics such as firewall and VPN
The combination of these SD-WAN benefits enables a flexible response to new requirements and growth.
More efficiency through automation and centralized management
SD-WAN has reshuffled the provider market. Alongside established providers such as Deutsche Telekom, Colt, Plusnet, or Vodafone, many new players have emerged – often with innovative user interfaces and better integration options.
A comparison is worthwhile – for several reasons:
Ein Vergleich lohnt sich – aus mehreren Gründen:.
- Overview of all SD-WAN providers
- The SD-WAN hardware is designed for installation via a zero-touch process. This means a non-IT person can connect the SD-WAN equipment. The configuration is then automatically transferred to the SD-WAN equipment according to the defined policies.
- Easy integration of SaaS and cloud providers such as Microsoft or Amazon. These platforms can be accessed directly without having to route traffic through the headquarters.
- All settings and policies can be viewed and edited in a single portal.
Reduction of total IT costs
All of the SD-WAN benefits mentioned above only come into effect if they also result in cost savings.
SD-WAN solutions can help plan and maintain the IT budget more effectively.
- A zero-touch rollout not only saves time and capacity, but also costly travel for IT staff.
- WAN upgrade costs can be reduced. By deploying an SD-WAN solution, it can be evaluated whether the expensive MPLS infrastructure actually needs to be expanded. Often, increasing the more affordable internet connection is entirely sufficient.
- Since all settings and policies are managed via a single platform and console, costs and licenses for conventional tools and hardware are eliminated.
- Where specialists for routing and security were previously required, today this can be handled by a single person.
Why
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SD-WAN vs WAN – FAQs
Traditional WAN (Wide Area Network) connects business sites over dedicated carrier lines such as MPLS or Ethernet, where routing decisions are statically configured and made inside the carrier network. SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network) places a software-based control layer over any underlay connections, dynamically routing traffic in real time based on application type over the best available link. The core difference lies in intelligence: traditional WAN is line-bound and static, SD-WAN is software-controlled and adaptive. For cloud-centric businesses, SD-WAN is the more modern and economical choice.
SD-WAN offers four key advantages over traditional WAN. Cost efficiency: SD-WAN uses cheaper internet lines instead of expensive MPLS connections, typically saving 30 to 60 percent of WAN costs. Cloud readiness: traffic to Microsoft 365, AWS or Salesforce is routed directly through local internet breakouts instead of unnecessarily through a central data centre. Flexibility: new sites are connected via zero-touch deployment in hours rather than weeks. Centralised management: all sites are managed through a single cloud console instead of carrier-dependent configurations per site.
Traditional WAN still has advantages in specific scenarios over SD-WAN. MPLS guarantees dedicated bandwidth and quality of service without dependence on internet quality, relevant for very latency-sensitive applications such as trading systems, industrial controls or high-volume voice infrastructure. For regulated industries such as financial services or critical infrastructure, private MPLS lines provide logical separation from the public internet without additional security layers. In practice, most companies today combine both technologies: SD-WAN for cloud traffic, MPLS for absolutely critical applications.
The right time to switch from traditional WAN to SD-WAN is when MPLS contracts are expiring and renewal prices are significantly above market average, cloud applications account for more than 50 percent of WAN traffic, new sites need to be connected quickly and cost-effectively, international sites exist in countries with poor MPLS coverage, or the network budget needs to be reduced without sacrificing performance. SAVECALL analyses your current WAN infrastructure and creates a concrete migration roadmap with a 5-year ROI calculation.
Traditional WAN over MPLS typically costs 400 to 2,500 euros per site monthly for 10 to 100 Mbit/s. SD-WAN with comparable bandwidth over dual internet underlay ranges from 250 to 600 euros per site monthly including SD-WAN licence, representing savings of 30 to 60 percent. Ethernet networking as a classic WAN alternative ranges from 400 to 2,500 euros depending on bandwidth and distance. Total savings over a typical 5-year term across 10 sites amount to 150,000 to 500,000 euros. Through the SAVECALL procurement pool, costs for both technologies reduce by an additional 15 to 35 percent.
A downtime-free migration from traditional WAN to SD-WAN follows three phases. Phase 1 (parallel operation): SD-WAN is introduced at 2 to 3 pilot sites in parallel with the existing WAN, initially only for internet and cloud traffic. Phase 2 (traffic shift): after a successful pilot, progressively more traffic is shifted to SD-WAN while the traditional WAN remains active as fallback. Phase 3 (WAN decommission): as MPLS contracts expire, the traditional WAN is gradually decommissioned. Typical total duration: 4 to 9 months. SAVECALL handles carrier coordination, SD-WAN configuration, traffic migration and MPLS termination end-to-end.
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