Vodacom Business Africa, an enterprise-focused ICT subsidiary of the Vodacom Group has said that, having successfully deployed its software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) solution to several businesses in South Africa, it is now making the offering accessible to clients in all 47 operating countries across its African footprint.
SD-WAN, says Vodacom Business Africa, boosts efficiency by managing bandwidth availability and usage, traffic routing, and prioritisation of business-critical protocols. When working with business-critical systems and automated processes, this prioritisation is vital, the company suggests, as a connectivity lapse could cause production delays and revenue loss.
This, it explains, is why clients across multiple industries, from mining and manufacturing to retail, have embraced SD-WAN. The technology offers high-quality connectivity across all sites, even in hard-to-reach locations or in rural areas, where it would otherwise be difficult, and costly, to connect.
“Vodacom Business Africa offers an end-to-end SD-WAN solution, meaning we provide both the physical network underlay and the digital overlay so that you don’t have to approach various providers to set up the kind of network you need,” explains Wale Odeyemi, Executive Head of Strategic Marketing for Vodacom Business Africa. Companies can therefore link to multiple providers and let their software decide which is the fastest, most efficient link to perform specific tasks.
As an overlay technology, the company’s SD-WAN can run on top of existing carrier-grade multiprotocol label switching connections (MPLS) and across hybrid WANs. It’s also scalable and configurable to meet each business’s needs and pace of growth.
Furthermore, the Vodacom Business Africa SD-WAN is fully managed by a team of technology experts, which streamlines networks across multiple locations locally and internationally. This is crucial for organisations managing multiple data centres and critical branch operations across private and public cloud environments.
As a result, Vodacom Business Africa says, clients get enhanced application performance and improved network visibility. They are also equipped with a single-pane view of all data usage across multiple assets, whether in remote factories or branch office locations.
