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IT departments are being urged to refresh branch wide area network (WAN) equipment with software-defined wide area networks (SD-WANs) as they migrate applications to the cloud and renew network contracts. There’s nothing that the technology industry likes more than the next big thing. Over the last decade, enterprise networking has experienced many big things. Along with the immense interest in 5G mobile networking, software-defined networking, particularly within wide area networks, is a technology trend that has been gaining a lot of attention. In 2019, traditional suppliers of networking equipment pivoted away from hardware to software. For some, this was a huge development – upturning many decades’ worth of hardware experience and their underlying business models. Business culture changes SD-WANs benefit both the management of network equipment and network services, and potentially pave the way to business culture changes. As such, an SD-WAN should not only be regarded as a replacement for traditional networks, but as a core...