Most Firms Will Use Multiple WAN Technologies

Organizations of all sizes are abandoning legacy telecommunications technologies in favor of all-IP wide-area networks (WANs) to support intersite connectivity. Laggards are being pushed off of older point-to-point WAN services based on Frame Relay and ATM by service providers that don't want to continue to support them. For example, many firms issue an RFP for Frame Relay corporate intranet, but yet the responses all come back "MPLS." But because corporate sites have different requirements regarding service performance predictability, availability, accessibility, and security, a one-size-fits-all approach to selecting intersite networking technology is inappropriate. As sourcing and vendor management (SVM) teams help their firms manage the transition to newer WAN architectures, strong governance will be a key success factor.