Digital transformation on the 3rd Platform continues to present unprecedented opportunities and challenges for enterprise networks and the IT professionals who operate them. Indeed, the requirements associated with cloud computing have already reverberated through datacenter networking, with software-defined networking (SDN) arising as an architectural approach that provided the network with the agility and responsiveness that it lacked previously but has come to require.

Now, The focus is turning to how the WAN must change to accommodate the requirements of cloud applications and services. Fortunately, technologies such as hybrid WAN and software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) are giving enterprise IT the means to allow the WAN to meet these challenges directly.