Optimise Costs and Save Time with Network Automation
Managing today’s networks is a highly manual and error-prone process that makes it difficult to scale operations or operate with agility. So just imagine if you could provide network access in minutes for any user or device to any applications, without compromising on security.
With more and more users and device types coming into the network, it’s becoming more and more complex to configure user credentials and maintain a consistent policy across the network – especially if you’re maintaining separate policies between wired and wireless. As users move around the network it becomes more difficult to locate users and troubleshoot issues.
And that’s not ideal if you need to make changes efficiently in response to real-time needs.
SD Access – reducing cost and network complexity
Cisco’s Software-Defined Access (SD Access) is a ground-breaking new solution that cuts through the complexity and saves time through network automation.
SD Access uses automated policy enforcement and network segmentation over a single network fabric to dramatically simplify network access for users, devices and things.
By automating day-to-day tasks such as configuration, provisioning and troubleshooting, it slashes the time it takes to adapt the network, improves issue resolution from weeks to hours and dramatically reduces security breach impact.
Which means you can respond faster to changing business demands, with less downtime and risk – while gaining back valuable time that can be invested in more strategic networking projects.
Indeed, customer tests have shown a reduction in network provisioning time by 67%, improved issue resolution by 80%, reduced security breach impact by 48%, and OpEx savings of 61%.
It’s a game changing technology development that’s revolutionising networking as we know it.
How does it work?
Delivered through Cisco DNA Center, a centralised management console, SD Access decouples network functions from hardware to bring more agility to network management. Making it possible to manage your wired, wireless and WAN networks as a single security entity and control all access from one place.
In other words, in a click of a button you can apply one policy across the entire access network.
But that’s not all. The integration of Cisco Identity Service Engine (ISE) at the back end enables user and device mapping, visualises topology, supports software image management and makes it possible to centrally manage the user policy.
Policies are then applied to users and applications, instead of your network devices, to simplify and secure their management.
The bottom line – what this all means
Quite simply, Cisco SD Access automates user access policy enforcement and network segmentation across the network fabric, so that organisations can make sure the right policies are established for any user or device with any application across the network.
The process of on-boarding users and devices can be time consuming and tedious – leading to errors and creating security risks. Cisco SD Access eliminates the network challenges that result from manual configuration and automates the process – something that will become increasingly critical for IoT endpoints.
It also reduces the resources and time needed to configure, deploy and set up new network branches and segments with zero-touch deployment for Cisco enterprise network routers, switches and wireless controllers.
To find out more, why not join our Networking for the Next Century – the Future is Here event