How to Start Building an SD-WAN RFP

Enterprise network teams need to draft software-defined WAN request for proposals (RFPs) to force proposed vendors and service providers to provide transparency into the multitude of capabilities offered within the SD-WAN market. In this article, we’ll explore the elements your enterprise should include when drafting an SD-WAN RFP.

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The most common purchasing consideration is whether to buy SD-WAN from a vendor or a service provider, which is essentially the difference between DIY SD-WAN and managed SD-WAN. The difference here is whether your enterprise requires a single point of contact across all aspects, including customer premises equipment and network connectivity.

Only a few years ago, IT teams would typically default to a telco or virtual network operator as their WAN provider and use edge equipment provided by a network vendor such as Cisco or Juniper. In 2020 and beyond, the landscape will shift to a vendor-led model where actual connectivity is not a primary consideration. If your organization is considering a service provider, a managed SD-WAN RFP should focus on a specific platform that supports the first two offerings.

How to Start an SD-WAN RFP

SD-WAN offers a wide range of features, each of which can have a positive impact on your application access and performance, as well as security and optimization. When creating an SD-WAN RFP, creating a feature matrix is ​​often a good starting point.

Teams should consider the following capabilities when evaluating SD-WAN capabilities for their RFP:

• Dynamic path selection. This feature ensures that traffic uses the best path based on business needs, such as mission-critical and latency-sensitive applications.
• Quality of Service. QoS evaluates fine-grained application handling across user profiles, application types, and business requirements.
• Link steering and repair. When a traditional outage occurs, failover conditions are usually set to up/down. SD-WAN provides enhanced capabilities to sense packet loss, increased latency or jitter, and select a path based on circuit performance.
• Application performance monitoring. Some SD-WAN vendors offer detailed packet analysis to analyze traffic at the application and user level.
• Next-generation security. Security is a top priority for IT teams, and many see it as a major component of network transformation. Some SD-WAN vendors have built-in next-generation firewall services into their SD-WAN products.
• Network Function Virtualization (NFV). Ask whether WAN edge devices can be used as virtualized functions delivered in a cloud-based environment.
• Zero-touch deployment. With this feature, IT teams can quickly and efficiently deploy services without having to interact with physical devices to start services.
• Automation and orchestration. One of the main advantages in an SD-WAN environment is that services can be installed quickly and easily using a management GUI.
• WAN optimization. While WAN optimization is often offered as a separate device, SD-WAN technology often includes the ability to optimize and cache traffic.

In addition to the capabilities listed above, an SD-WAN RFP may request high-level information to demonstrate performance before moving on to more granular information requests.

Recommended SD-WAN RFP Sections

An important part of the RFP process is asking the right architectural questions of the vendor. Here are the questions network teams should ask when constructing their SD-WAN RFP.

1. What is the vendor's elevator pitch? Requesting an elevator pitch means understanding the vendor's high value proposition. Examples include cloud-based NFV, global support, optimization, next-generation security, granular QoS, etc.
2. Can the vendor sell a standalone service? Ask the vendor if it sells SD-WAN services as a standalone service or if it offers other capabilities, such as network connectivity and security. In many cases, a vendor or provider may be known for a specific capability. However, the vendor may have other beneficial capabilities outside of this core function, such as firewall settings.
3. Does the service offer third-party private circuit support? One of the benefits of SD-WAN is that enterprises can choose to terminate multiple circuit types. In most cases, many enterprises will migrate from MPLS to Internet-based services. In this case, the network team may need to run dual connectivity for a period of time. MPLS can still be part of a hybrid network architecture, which requires the SD-WAN vendor's WAN edge to terminate proprietary services.
4. How does the vendor or provider address the need for global support and coverage? If your business requires international connectivity, you need to analyze the provider's point-of-presence (PoP) coverage to understand the impact on application performance. Some providers and vendors operate significant global networks that include specific PoPs for private and Internet traffic. SD-WAN capabilities focus on application performance, but latency and jitter challenges can arise when deploying international services.
5. What are the provider's unique capabilities? Certain vendors and providers are known for their specialties, such as wireless deployment, security, out-of-the-box configuration and installation, 4G access, and cloud support. Find out what areas a potential provider excels in and evaluate them against your business needs.
6. How do vendors deliver SD-WAN architectures? The promise of SD-WAN is to provide an architecture based on WAN edge devices with access to a software management server. Another option is to consider NFV deployments, where the technology is based on x86 virtual instances of SD-WAN functions. All designs have common capabilities to mix and match NFV and hardware.

Beyond device deployment, network teams also need to consider network elements. SD-WAN vendors are independent of connectivity, and some products can provide both SD-WAN and network connectivity built specifically for software-based functions. These options typically include dedicated SD-WAN private networks, specific PoP locations to reduce traffic to local Internet service providers (ISPs), or direct public IP connections.

Does the vendor or provider offer a proof of concept? An SD-WAN proof of concept is a great way to determine the capabilities of an SD-WAN product. Some vendors will provide demonstration hardware for a period of time, often with pre-sales resources to assist with configuration.

Managed SD-WAN Considerations

If your SD-WAN RFP is sent to a network service provider, you will need them to fully outline their relationships with vendors. In some cases, the vendor works with multiple vendors; in other cases, the vendor will have specific capabilities. It is critical to understand the provider's experience, especially with any managed services, as these experiences often include elements of professional services.

Cost savings

The main benefit of SD-WAN is the significant cost savings it can provide. When migrating from an MPLS network, IT teams expect to achieve a certain level of cost savings. The key factor to consider is how these cost savings are achieved, as many options use low-cost ISP services to keep prices down.

The cost issue of SD-WAN is often less obvious. For example, IT teams can reduce total cost of ownership with a single configuration for security, WAN optimization, and WAN connectivity. In the SD-WAN RFP, IT teams must analyze ISP connections, associated service levels, and traffic performance.