SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network) is an approach to the corporate wide-area network where routing and policies are controlled centrally by software, rather than by proprietary hardware at each site. For companies with multiple locations (several stores, factories, remote offices), SD-WAN allows the WAN to be managed as a single service, differentiated policies to be applied per application, and multiple link types to be used simultaneously (fibre, 4G/5G, MPLS).
The practical value includes: reduced cost versus traditional MPLS (with comparable or superior performance), resilience (a primary-link failure automatically fails over to backup), quality of service per application (video-conferencing takes priority over backup), and fast deployment of new sites (equipment is configured centrally).
In INFOS implementations — typically at industrial customers with dispersed units or expanding retailers — SD-WAN comes in when the number of sites or the criticality of the links justifies the investment. For smaller customers, traditional links with basic redundancy remain the right solution. INFOS combines SD-WAN with consistent security layers across all sites — zero trust, EDR, central monitoring.