Guidelines For Building Versus Buying An Ethernet WAN

Organizations that have used traditional private line wide area networks (WANs) to support high-performance business-critical applications are migrating to Ethernet WANs in droves. Many of these organizations are contemplating their mode of acquisition — is building an Ethernet WAN or buying an Ethernet service the best approach? To assist clients in their decision-making process, Forrester has developed a WAN decision model with 11 criteria, which include organization mission, performance requirements, availability of technology, and capital expenses. Depending on the strengths of the scores derived from the model, it may be possible to perform an abbreviated return on investment (ROI) analysis, or omit one altogether. This report describes the model, which is included as supplemental material with this document.