The wide area network (WAN) has always been about connecting users to applications and moving data over long distances. This includes connectivity for collaboration among enterprise users, clients, suppliers, and partners across distributed geographical locations. It also includes the movement of data over distance for disaster recovery and business continuity.

Those requirements still exist today, however, the explosion of cloud services and frustration surrounding the high cost and inflexibility of Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) networks has forced a rethink of the enterprise WAN. Companies are now looking to the Internet as their WAN, which opens the door for faster WAN provisioning and the ability to use multiple WAN paths at the same time. This WAN transformation is referred to as the software-defined WAN (SD-WAN)