CRN Features Teridion In Hot SD-WAN Vendors List
This past week, CRN listed Teridion as one of the 6 hottest SD-WAN vendors to watch in 2019. We are very flattered to be recognized for our innovative and unique public cloud-based WAN service. Included in the list are some long time and well recognized WAN optimization and SD-WAN vendors. There is ONE vendor in the list, however, that doesn’t actually sell SD-WAN. That company is Teridion.
Hang on a minute… What?
How Do You Define SD-WAN Vendors?
In my 25 year networking career, I have seen more than a few technology categories that have been broadened in definition to cover a wide range of solutions. In some cases, the definitions have expanded to the point where the category name no longer clearly defines the companies contained within it. That has happened to Mobility, to Unified Communications, to machine learning and AI, and it is happening before our very eyes to the SD-WAN market.
By the definition I follow for SD-WAN products, SD-WAN vendors offer a solution for the WAN edge. This is typically customer premises equipment with branch office routing and security capabilities, combined with a set of speciality features like dynamic path selection, forward error correction, and the capability to load balance.
The industry typically defines an SD-WAN solution as a network edge technology, but Teridion offers no edge capabilities. So why would CRN select us for such high praise?
We caught the eye of CRN because we’re solving the endemic, long-time performance problems of the vast Internet middle mile with a carrier grade, SLA backed, public cloud-based WAN service.
What Makes A WAN Service
Let’s take a closer look at what that includes:
- A toolset that makes it simple and easy to design, deploy, and operate a domestic or global WAN. Our monitoring tools are workflow based and our UI is jargon free. You can set up a global WAN in a matter of a couple hours and be fully in service the next day.
- A highly available, redundant global network. We built our network on the biggest and best public cloud providers in the world, over 25 in total. We have over 450 points of presence worldwide. Everywhere there is a cloud provider datacenter, there is a Teridion presence.
- Teridion Curated Routing, that builds on the global nature of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), is a centralized and hierarchical routing protocol that is designed for scalability and efficiency. Teridion Curated Routing eliminates a fundamental problem with Internet routing, affecting the performance of the Internet backbone: its inability to make routing decisions based on performance. We do this by adding link and network performance as routing metrics to augment traditional hop count based metrics. This route optimization ensures low latency and low loss routing paths. Performance metrics ensure we are continually updating routing paths to deliver consistently high network performance.
- Each one of our Cloud Routers employs WAN optimization capabilities to accelerate TCP based applications. We squeeze every last bit of throughput possible out of the end to end connection. This isn’t just WAN optimization at the edge- this is WAN optimization in the heart of the cloud.
And What’s Not A WAN Service
There are some things that other folks on the CRN list provide that we don’t:
- A branch office router or CPE. The branch office routing and SD-WAN vendors with whom we partner do that. The Teridion public cloud based WAN service is a pure, turnkey service. There is no hardware to buy, and there is no software to deploy, manage, patch, or upgrade. Enterprises can use their existing routers or WAN appliances or deploy solutions from our partner SD-WAN vendors. Our partners include VeloCloud, Cisco Meraki, Silver Peak, and Citrix.
- A branch office firewall, IDS/IPS services, or Content Filtering. Our laser focus is on building a world class WAN service. WAN security capabilities come from the branch routing and SD-WAN vendors who are our partners.
Augmenting The Internet
Enterprise networking is in the process of undergoing a pretty radical transformation, and this transformation is forcing all of us to reevaluate the core tenets of networking. Teridion is challenging the conventional wisdom around WAN networking and Internet performance by addressing the middle mile in a way that has never been done.
We don’t replace the Internet middle mile with private networks. We re-architect it to make it an ideal network for high throughput and minimal loss and latency, one that exceeds the needs of today’s enterprise. Teridion’s network builds on the strengths of the Internet and takes advantage of cost effective and widely available broadband services, removing the need for legacy dedicated circuits. Our network then eliminates the weaknesses of Internet routing by improving and scaling routing to radically improve WAN performance. We strive to make it a true service-one that is simple, fast, and easy to use.
The Performance Speaks For Itself
I’ll share with you an example of how Teridion can complement edge SD-WAN solutions by dramatically improving performance over the middle mile. This is the result of a test run by one of the SD-WAN vendors with whom we partner, testing MOS from Frankfurt to Singapore through their devices across the public Internet, and then through their devices across Teridion’s network. (The chart references us anonymously as “OTT (over the top) SD WAN”)
Pretty impressive, isn’t it? We improve the performance from a user-enraging heart attack pattern to a steady, higher than toll quality line. This is the type of result that our customers typically see, and it gets even better. We are protocol-aware and we optimize traffic accordingly. We massage UDP traffic to mitigate loss, latency, and jitter. At the same time, we accelerate TCP traffic to achieve the highest possible throughput. Teridion’s intelligent network may even send those protocols through different routes to maximize performance.
The good folks at CRN decided to include our WAN service as a “hot” SD-WAN company based on the strength of this kind of radical performance. If you’re responsible for your enterprise WAN strategy, we encourage you to take a closer look.
If you’re interested in learning more about how we achieve great WAN performance and reliability results for our customers, check out our technical whitepaper. Want to try Teridion for yourself? It’s easy to do- just sign up for a trial. The results speak for themselves, and you’ll see them right away.
