zWAN – SD-WAN USE CASE
SD-WAN Solutions for SaaS-Based Applications
Use Case: Organizations increasingly rely on cloud-based services and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications requiring fast and secure connectivity to platforms like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
As organizations increasingly adopt Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications to enhance operational efficiency, ensuring reliable, secure, and high-performing network connectivity becomes critical. However, traditional WAN architectures struggle to meet modern cloud demands, leading to latency, congestion, and security vulnerabilities that degrade SaaS application performance.
Common Challenges with SaaS Connectivity:
Latency and Performance Issues
Traditional WANs often backhaul SaaS traffic through centralized data centers, causing delays and congestion that result in unresponsive collaboration tools, slow file transfers, and poor VoIP/video call quality.
Bandwidth Constraints & Network Congestion
The rising demand for SaaS applications increases bandwidth usage, causing network congestion during peak hours, while the lack of traffic prioritization forces business-critical apps to compete with non-essential traffic, leading to performance slowdowns.
Security Risks with Direct Internet Access
SaaS applications require constant internet access, which can expose corporate networks to cyber threats, compliance violations, and data breaches, while traditional firewalls struggle to inspect SaaS-bound traffic, leaving gaps in security enforcement.
Complex Network & Traffic Management
Managing multiple network connections, routing policies, and security protocols across locations is challenging for IT teams, often resulting in inconsistent SaaS performance for remote workers and branch offices, which impacts overall efficiency.
How AmZetta’s zWAN Addresses These Challenges:
Quality of Service (QoS):
- In traditional network configurations, all network traffic is created equally. This means that a major conference call using a VoIP or video conferencing application would get the same priority as a standard user streaming videos while they work. With zWAN’s QoS, business-critical and SaaS based applications can be prioritized over non-critical traffic and ensuring that higher priority SaaS applications will receive the necessary bandwidth in the event of network congestion
SaaS Breakout for Direct Cloud Access:
- In legacy environments, traffic to SaaS applications are routed back through the main corporate data centers, causing additional hops and exposing trusted SaaS traffic to additional security measures. With zWAN’s, SaaS Breakout allows trusted SaaS applications to connect directly to cloud and SaaS providers, bypassing unnecessary data center routing and additional security inspections. This reduces latency, improves speed, eases overall network congestion, and improves user experience for real-time and business-critical applications SaaS communication.
Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) for Advanced Security:
- DPI scans and categorizes network traffic, identifies threats, blocks unauthorized access and enforces security policies. DPI is configured at the edge Gateway Router and will identify trusted SaaS based traffic and allow that traffic to route straight to the internet and avoiding additional security policies and backhauling.
Multi-Path WAN:
- zWAN’s SD-WAN solution utilizes multiple WAN paths ensuring connectivity for all communications over less expensive network paths. For SaaS applications this allows administrators to configure the utilization of multiple paths to make sure that business critical and real time applications are always available.
Simplified Centralized Management:
- The Director provides a single-pane-of-glass for monitoring, optimizing, and managing SaaS application traffic across all locations. Real-time analytics enable IT teams to detect network issues, enforce policies, and ensure optimal SaaS performance.
Ideal Use Cases
Enterprises with Distributed Workforces
zWAN enables employees seamless collaboration across various locations to access cloud-based software tools with minimal latency, enhancing productivity.
Organizations Adopting Hybrid Cloud Strategies
Flexible resource management support for hybrid deployments, zWAN allows businesses to balance workloads between on-premises infrastructure and cloud services efficiently.
Industries with High Data Security Requirements
Finance, healthcare, and government rely on DPI, encrypted tunnels, and access controls to protect sensitive SaaS data.
Work-From-Home (WFH) Employees Connecting via VPN
zWAN supports secure remote access to SaaS and corporate applications via encrypted VPN tunnels, ensuring protected communication.
Branch Office Traffic Routed Through Data Center for Security
Businesses requiring centralized security enforcement can route SaaS traffic through corporate data centers, ensuring policy consistency and regulatory compliance.
Conclusion:
AmZetta’s zWAN SD-WAN solution provides a powerful, secure, and scalable way to enhance SaaS application performance, optimize traffic, and simplify network management. By leveraging Dynamic Path Selection, SaaS Breakout, Deep Packet Inspection, Quality of Service (QoS), Traffic Shaping, and Intelligent Routing, zWAN ensures uninterrupted, high-speed, and secure access to cloud applications.
Product Links
Ready for an online demo of the zWAN SD-WAN?
Just click this link for live access to the zWAN SD-WAN Director and Edge Controller. The interactive demo allows you to get a feel for the SD-WAN solution. AmZetta offers quick intro interactive demos (under 5 minutes) and deep technical interactive demos (30 minutes). Pick the demo you want to see and go!