I am an account director at ISN, a Cisco ISP that helps businesses transform from traditional LAN & WAN’s to Intelligent, Intent based Networks. ISN enable organisations large & small to deliver flexibility at the pace & scale required to stay competitive well into the 2020’s.An SD-WAN can extend directly to the cloud, providing digitisation of the whole network from the datacentre to the desktop, delivering L7-L2 control & app aware routing using Cisco ACI, SD-WAN (Viptela), Meraki & SD-Access. These can be cloud or air-gapped.In a lot of cases ISN can transform existing routers to become SD capable & also distributed firewalls, providing increased functionality for the cost of an additional software license. This is unique to Cisco. ISN have one of the only Viptela Labs outside of Cisco in the UK, we run in depth workshops for clients at our office or on-site, showing how moving to SD-WAN can be the first step to reaping the benefits of a full digital transformation. One Global client’s IT team estimated that by upgrading their existing devices to SD-WAN, a config change that would normally take 3 weeks to deploy across the globe would take ½ a day.Cisco SD-WAN can be deployed directly into multiple cloud environments using virtual routers. This enables multiple clouds to be accessed across the network & for peering between different regions to be controlled simply, reducing the complexity of managing connectivity between IAAS clouds & regions.Cisco’s IoT solution combines elements of SD-WAN, low band SD-WAN & SD-Access. Using DNA Centre & an array of IoT endpoints & connectivity devices Cisco can deliver a comprehensive IoT solution for medium to very large-scale deployments.Another + for Cisco is the integration of security in the SD solutions. Cisco provide security products that deliver complete confidence & visibility from the Cloud through to end-point devices. If a bad actor tried to attack a business, or a devices was compromised Cisco’s Umbrella, AMP, ISE & E-mail Security will block or minimise the threat, enabling a business to accurately map the scale & extent of any compromise. My favourite is Cisco Stealthwatch, which actively monitors the whole network. If a device is compromised it can be set to alert the security manager & automatically block access until an investigation has taken place.Cisco’s TALOS group provides the updates to Cisco’s security products & blocks more threats on a daily basis than any other non-government organisation on the planet.If your business is looking at network digitisation message me.