Fast and reliable internet access is a crucial lifeline for modern businesses. As organizations switch to a hybrid workforce and embrace digital technologies, the traditional WAN infrastructure poses numerous limitations.
That's where software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) steps into the picture. It's a virtual network architecture that helps enterprises connect multiple branches and control, manage, and monitor the WAN via a centralized interface.
With 70% of organizations worldwide1 accelerating their use of digital technologies, SD-WAN solutions are becoming increasingly popular. It offers several benefits, including improved speed, agility, security, and flexibility – and it's particularly helpful for businesses in rural and hard-to-reach locations.
In the following sections, we'll discuss why SD-WAN is crucial for rural internet connectivity.
The Challenges of Rural Internet Connectivity
Businesses in rural areas often have to deal with limited connectivity options. They struggle with problems such as low speed and high latency. Because of this, finding reliable internet in rural areas and managing multiple endpoints in a network is challenging.
That makes SD-WAN an integral component of network connectivity and management in remote locations.
Benefits of SD-WAN for Rural Internet Connectivity
If you're wondering why SD-WAN is essential for business internet in rural areas, here are a few compelling reasons:
Guaranteed Business Continuity
90% of organizations believe the average cost of downtime is more than $300,000 per hour.2 Even a minor disruption in internet access can take a toll on employee productivity and revenue. Worse still, downtime affects the customer experience, resulting in loss of business.
SD-WAN helps businesses overcome these challenges by minimizing network downtime. It creates redundancy by letting data travel across multiple connection paths. That, in turn, helps mission-critical applications run even if a particular path fails.
SD-WAN solutions also offer dynamic bandwidth allocation and centralized network management, which is especially helpful for businesses in rural areas struggling with slow and unreliable connectivity. Our whitepaper takes a deep dive into the impact of the digital divide in rural locations.
Improved Network Performance
Besides excellent uptime, SD-WAN offers additional benefits, including:
- High speed
- Jitter buffering
- Automatic failover
- Low latency
- Forward error packet connection
These benefits come in handy in rural areas with few connectivity options. With SD-WAN, businesses in these locations no longer have to worry about stalling critical operations due to network latency, slow internet, or limited bandwidth.
Who Should Use SD-WAN?
Now that you know why SD-WAN is becoming a popular option for rural internet connectivity, it's natural to wonder who should use this technology. While every business can benefit from SD-WAN solutions, they are especially valuable for organizations that meet one or more of the following criteria:
- Having multiple business locations that need to be connected
- Running operations using several cloud-based applications
- Using hosted VoIP services
- Managing a remote or hybrid workforce
Connect Your Rural Customers With SD-WAN
In 2022, “why use SD-WAN?” is no longer a valid question. Instead, businesses in rural locations must identify the right ways to deploy SD-WAN solutions. BeyondReach specializes in providing connectivity to hard-to-reach areas – so your customers can reap the benefits of SD-WAN for rural connectivity.
Contact us to learn more about SD-WAN and understand whether it's something you should recommend to your customers. If you're ready to deliver fast, reliable internet connectivity that empowers your customers to adopt SD-WAN, request a quote today.
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