Cisco has tweaked its SD-WAN software package to increase customer application flexibility and improve visibility into the performance of distributed resources. The 17.8 release adds support for business and customized cloud applications, analytics and security features.
Among the upgrades, is the SD-WAN Cloud OnRamp for SaaS service, which links branch offices or individual remote users to cloud applications such as Cisco’s Webex, Microsoft 365, AWS, Google, Oracle, Salesforce and more.
Cisco says Cloud OnRamp for SaaS supports any customer-developed, cloud-based applications as well as applications that work with Cisco’s Network Based Application Recognition (NBAR) classification engine. Cisco routers and switches use NBAR to identify a dataflow by inspecting packets to set traffic flows. Once the applications are recognized, the network invokes services for that particular application.
NBAR applications include Microsoft Dynamic CRM Application, Slack, Github, and Workday. Homegrown apps that are not standard applications recognized by NBAR are supported as well, according to Cisco.
Cisco also has bolstered its cloud-based vAnalytics package to provide performance insights for the SD-WAN and its applications.
On the security side, Cisco has expanded its Layer-7 Application Health Check to support SD-WAN resources protected other unnamed third-party platforms. Cisco SD-WAN supports its Umbrella security and Zscaler health checks, which help customers ensure network tunnels are working and provide load balancing or failover support in case of problems.
The software also supports a new Secure Internet Gateway (SIG) Data Policy Fallback feature that redirects and reestablishes secure connections in the event of a network problem or failure.
For more information, go to https://www.cisco.com/
