Portland's very own Bigleaf Networks is a local company with a very bright future!

Joel Mulkey and Jeff Burchett founded Bigleaf Networks after gaining experience with SD-WAN and Internet Optimization as part of the Freewire team, based out of Portland, Oregon. The two make a dynamic duo with a strong tailwind in an industry ready to explode. I am excited to see what the next 3 years bring. 

An unsung hero walks among us. She wears a cape of connectivity and empowers every organization that chooses to embrace her amazing abilities. Yet the tales of her triumph go without praise or even the slightest acknowledgement. Dramatic entrance I know... so before I unveil who this mysterious hero is, let me first set the stage for why her tale must be told.

When it comes to managing your business over the Internet, it’s important to have connectivity and solutions in place that allow you to monitor your network and ensure performance and reliability to remote applications. To that end, SD-WAN (Software Defined Wide Area Network) is fast becoming the go-to option for companies both large and small who want to integrate more cloud services for employees to use.

As technology continues to evolve, a relatively new development is the move back to massive centralized infrastructure for application delivery to enterprises large and small. The trend brings with it incredible value but also new complexity that many firms haven't prepared for. The thought goes something like "if we move this to the cloud, all our technical needs are resolved!” Well now, someone is feeling a bit optimistic and definitely naive. Moving to the cloud requires a thoughtful approach for all aspects, from managing ever-increasing recurring costs, to how you plan to move data to and from cloud platforms.  The first place to begin your preparation has to be the network, now and always. 

IT administrators can generally always agree on one thing: dealing with carriers for their multi-site connectivity sucks! This connectivity normally comes in the form of a MPLS Private IP cloud, EPL, EVPL, VPLS, etc….  At this point in time it feels like so many carriers just make up new acronyms to try and make their service sound flashier. The industry consensus is that ordering new circuits takes forever and submitting trouble tickets is pretty much a “hurry up and wait” game. To receive SLA credits is near impossible, requiring you to use their own systems to prove they are incompetent. These are just the normal complaints about interacting with the carriers, when you start talking about how much money you send them every month...wow...just wow.

SD-WAN Defined: SD-WAN stands for Software Defined Wide Area Networking. It’s a combination of Software Defined Networking (SDN), which was created for use in cloud datacenters, and Wide Area Networking (WAN) which is the network outside of your office (e.g. the Internet, or site-to-site networks like MPLS and Metro Ethernet).