For more discussions and topics around Service Providers, please visit our SP Community: http://cisco.com/go/serviceprovidercommunity To view this blog post (with hyperlinks): https://communities.cisco.com/community/solutions/sp/blog/2013/12/12/cisco-s-intelligent-wan-solution-delivers-high-quality-branch-connectivity-with-internet-service-pricing

1. Cisco’s Intelligent WAN Solution Delivers High-Quality Branch
Connectivity with Internet Service Pricing
By Michael Kennedy
Principal Analyst, ACG Research
The Cisco Intelligent WAN solution provides highly reliable WAN service to branches
while reducing monthly charges by 34 to 81 percent.
With applications moving to the cloud, the Internet Edge migrating to the branch,
increasing mobility adoption and proliferating use of bandwidth-intensive video
applications, IT departments, many working with flat or decreased budgets, are
scrambling to meet new branch networking requirements. With WAN bandwidth needs
expanding and customers relying on networking to support their business-critical
applications, companies cannot compromise on availability and quality of experience
and must ensure strong network visibility, monitoring and control.
The typical branch WAN, today, employs premium-priced WAN connectivity to connect
each branch to the corporate data center. Private packet services are delivered as
Multiprotocol Label Switching Virtual Private Network (MPLS VPN) service. The service
has broad acceptance because the underlying TDM/PDH transport service is widely
available and reliable. On the downside it is very expensive. Additionally, business
Internet services have changed radically since network architects adopted the premiumpriced WAN connectivity model for the branch WAN. Initially, the premise for employing
premium-priced WAN connection services in building branch WANs was that public
Internet services lacked the reliability required to support business networking
requirements. That is no longer the case and, today, Internet service reliability is
approaching that of premium-priced WAN services.
To address these issues Cisco has introduced a new approach to branch networking
called Intelligent WAN (IWAN). What IWAN does is make it feasible to substitute lowpriced Internet services for high-priced premium WAN services by employing dual
transport paths between the branch and the corporate data center, a Cisco integrated
service router at the branch and dual Cisco routers at the data center. The solution
features transport independence, secure connectivity, intelligent path control, and
application optimization to improve the availability, quality, and security of the WAN
while reducing its cost.
Four use cases that substitute cost-efficient Internet services for high-cost MPLS VPN
services illustrate the cost savings associated with IWAN. These scenarios include a
range of implementation strategies from partial to full substitution of Internet for MPLS

2. VPN services and demonstrate the trade-offs between business Internet and business
broadband Internet services. All cases are for a network consisting of 100 branches and
one data center hub site. A cost comparison is made for the branch transport services.
Return on investment (three-year computation) and payback are computed to compare
the cost of the initial investment in ISR-AX branch routers with the savings in monthly
service charges. The investment includes the cost of the routers, installation, and
service.
Cisco IWAN addresses today’s branch networking issues by easily meeting bandwidth
requirements, increasing network availability and quality expectations, strengthening
network visibility and control capabilities and most importantly, by meeting security and
policy compliance requirements while reducing costs significantly. (available to
download)
For in-depth discussion of the four case studies see Business Case for Cisco Intelligent
WAN (https://communities.cisco.com/docs/DOC-37834 - Available to Download)
For more discussions and topics around Service Providers, please visit our SP Community:
http://cisco.com/go/serviceprovidercommunity