We just completed a consulting engagement with a large hospital group with sixty locations located around a city core. Their frame relay network agreement was expiring and the carrier was interested in having them migrate to an MPLS network. As it turns out, being a large hospital entitled them to special discounts on their frame relay network, but not if they moved to MPLS. SD-WAN-Experts was hired to perform a network analysis and make recommendations.
The first thing we wanted to understand was the performance requirements of the data traffic. We also obtained bandwidth utilization numbers to understand the average and peak utilization. After some analysis, we proposed something surprising.
“Have you considered testing an IPSec VPN using your Internet connection?”, I asked. Their inter-facility distances were, in most cases, less then ten miles. So latency would not be a problem. With much more bandwidth through the Internet VPN, they might find that performance would be better. Their initial testing confirms this. Cellular modem backup will be used, at $50/month, since the SLA on their internet connections are not as stringent as the frame relay network.
The amount of money that will be saved will be very substantial; on the order of 50%. Just one more example about why using a consulting firm to analyze your options can pay big dividends.
