This blog is a collaboration co-authored with Kamden Schewitz,Product Marketing Specialist

The IT industry is fast-paced and chaotic, a place where unpredictable business challenges often arise faster than they can be solved. Every day brings a new challenge, and the weight of connecting and securing that business lies heavy on the backs of IT professionals everywhere. As networks evolve and the need to integrate on-prem and cloud applications rise, the demand for simplicity in your everyday processes and experiences is at an all-time high.

Cisco's mission is to help you transform your infrastructure to meet these demands and to provide a unified experience for your employees regardless of where they are. In our latest Cisco SD-WAN release (17.10), we have taken a large step forward in supporting our efforts to simplify user experiences everywhere.

Cloud OnRamp's Newest Enhancements 

Complexity serves no good in any facet of the business. With Cisco SD-WAN's latest joint cloud networking solution, Cloud Hub with Azure Virtual WAN, we have made provisioning easy by automating connectivity between branches and across regions. This is done utilizing Microsoft's global cloud backbone as the middle-mile network.

Cloud OnRamp for SaaS, Cisco SD-WAN's application optimization tool now includes additional features that enhance the application experience by providing advanced insights into application and network performance for Webex via telemetry.

Also on the laundry list is the new Kubernetes integration that automatically programs connectivity requirements for Kubernetes applications.  This enables an ease of integration that will enhance operations for industries of any scale operating on Cisco SD-WAN and reduce time to configure Cloud OnRamp for SaaS.

Multi-Region Fabric (MRF) Innovations

Cisco SD-WAN Multi Region Fabric provides industry-leading scalability and simplified management of the architecture.  Your IT Team can now deploy their SDCI-related Cisco SD-WAN infrastructure with MRF architecture by using the Cloud OnRamp Multicloud Interconnect Gateway workflows on vManage. This allows SDCI (Software Defined Cloud Interconnect) deployments to leverage the benefits of MRF architecture and improves the experience of the IT teams by enabling:

• Simplified control of policy configurations
• Automatic resolution of routing loop and blackhole scenarios
• Ability to assign regions and roles to SD-WAN edges deployed within SDCI infrastructure.

Customers can also segment their MRF region into multiple sub-regions and share Border Routers (BR) between these sub-regions, allowing for flexible BR redundancy and failover-centric network designs.

Network Admins Galore 

This latest version of IOS XE offers a new level of simplicity and control to network administrators. Dynamic Access Control Lists (ACLs) simplify policies, policy updates, and make overall policy management easier. This means that network administrators will finally get back time to work on projects that are most important to them.

Accelerate Issue Identification and Resolution

Cisco now offers additional visibility enhancements to simplify SD-WAN operations. Cisco vAnalytics provides transport path visualization, enabling IT teams to lower the Mean Time to Identification (MTTI) of issues with detailed metrics such as network usage, availability, and granular flow information. vAnalytics also provides hop-by-hop analytics and root-cause analysis that decreases overall Mean Time to Repair (MTTR). New deep integration with Webex brings a seamless Webex user experience via telemetry, path optimization, and policy automation.

Greater Choice for Your path to SASE

Your SASE journey is unique, and you need flexibility to get there your way. Cisco can help you realize SASE in many ways. -for customers who are looking for a unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture, Cisco SD-WAN and Cisco Umbrella (industry leading security solution) will meet your needs.  However, some customers choose a stair-step approach or two-vendor strategy for their path to SASE.

Last quarter, Cisco and ZScaler provided deeper integration of Cisco SD-WAN and ZScaler security in our 17.9 release. Cisco has since expanded our SASE ecosystem to offer integration through collaboration with both Cloudflare and Netskope to provide even more choice. This integration with these Security Service Edge (SSE) solutions simplifies your path for a two-vendor architecture.

Cisco is also offering integration through collaboration with Splunk, one of the leading Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) providers, providing customers with a security dashboard that captures vital data points. The ability for you to visualize all security threats to your network enables you to take quick action based on the data points, ensuring your network is always protected.

Unified Experiences for All

The range of capabilities in Cisco's latest release places an emphasis on simplicity in the lives of our customers -both IT professionals as well as their end users. From integrations to optimizing SDCI deployments, this most recent release was designed to defeat complexity and create a unified experience for all users on your network.

See How Cisco SD-WAN Works for You