Planning an SD-WAN Migration: 7 Steps to a Smooth Rollout
SD-WAN projects rarely fail because of the technology. They struggle when applications are not understood, links are not diverse, or the rollout tries to do everything at once. These seven steps keep a migration on track.
- Discover applications. Measure what actually runs over the WAN — and which traffic now goes to SaaS and cloud. This drives every policy decision.
- Define success criteria. For example: video-call quality, failover time, cost per site, time to deploy a new branch.
- Review the underlay. Check every site’s links: are they physically diverse? Is 4G/5G coverage good enough for backup?
- Design policy and security together. Decide where internet breakout happens and how it is protected — on the edge device, a cloud security service or a central firewall.
- Pilot. Deploy at three to five representative sites, including one difficult one. Measure against your criteria.
- Roll out in waves. Group sites by region or profile. Keep the old WAN in parallel until each wave is accepted.
- Operate and optimise. Review application performance and link usage monthly, and right-size links that are over- or under-used.
A note on MPLS
You do not have to remove MPLS on day one. Many organisations keep it at hubs and large sites and move smaller branches to broadband over time.
We run SD-WAN migrations end to end and manage the result 24×7. Learn about our SD-WAN service or start with a pilot.
