What Is SD-WAN as a Service? Guide for Enterprise IT.

Understanding SD-WAN as a service for enterprise IT teams

Software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) as a service promises speed, flexibility, and simplified deployment, but for many IT teams, it also introduces gaps in control. As policies extend across cloud services, service providers, and remote sites, visibility becomes harder to maintain. What starts as a smart move away from traditional hardware can quickly lead to blind spots and enforcement issues. This guide breaks down what SD-WAN as a service really looks like in the field and what it takes to stay in control as it scales.

What SD-WAN as a service includes

SD-WAN as a service provides a platform for delivering an SD-WAN without hardware, as routing decisions, policy updates, and VPN provisioning can be managed through a cloud-based service. Supporting broadband internet, MPLS, and LTE, an SD-WANaaS can optimize bandwidth, reduce latency, and speed time-to-market for IT teams when bringing up new sites, rather than waiting for internal hardware orders and manual configuration.

Key functions include service chaining, which routes traffic through added optimization or security tools, and service insertion, allowing enforcement at key routing points. SD-WANaaS differs from WAN as a service by focusing on overlay functionality, routing control, and flexible WAN architecture, rather than pure carrier connectivity. Providers offer affordable SD-WAN bundle features, including orchestration, SLAs, network services, and network management, in scalable offerings. The value of Tufin’s integration with Cisco Meraki lies in extending policy control across hybrid environments and multiple service providers, supporting secure access, consistent enforcement, and alignment with SASE principles across modern SD-WAN deployments.

Challenges with SD-WANaaS adoption

Policy Drift

SD-WAN as a service is often delivered across cloud services, branch offices, and remote users who use different services and providers, allowing them to apply their own configurations and service chaining. These enforcement gaps can easily go unnoticed, leading to performance degradation, unintended access paths, and other unexpected gaps in policy and network security. This risk becomes greater when policy changes are made without centralized or consistent governance.

Vendor Complexity

SD-WAN solutions from vendors like Cisco often come with custom, on-premises configurations required for firewall or VPN policies, routing configurations, or other network settings. Small differences in how these overlays or service chaining are configured can lead to drift and onboarding challenges when connecting with new sites and larger network infrastructure. Teams that use network assurance visibility and tools can identify misalignments and quickly detect deviations from policies that are consistently enforced across environments.

Visibility

Regional or global SD-WAN deployments that use multiple local service providers are also challenged by different routing or security service defaults, which can be difficult to audit centrally. Without a holistic view of the paths between internal environments and cloud applications and without policy validation and enforcement capabilities to detect or remediate these paths centrally, teams can lose a baseline of control.

Visibility (the ability to see how software-defined networking policies are implemented across multiple vendors and regions) and ways to audit the network as those policies scale are key reasons IT teams use the Tufin Orchestration Suite. Network teams can scale SD-WAN deployments with confidence, maintaining scalability through automated tools and built-in policy validation while retaining control and auditability.

To keep up with the growing complexity of diverse environments, teams will also consider SD-WAN best practices, as well as DIY SD-WAN vs. managed SD-WAN, resources that allow network teams to prioritize their needs for control and flexibility as their infrastructure grows and changes. These efforts work in tandem with considerations around how to maximize your Tufin investment with Prisma Access to ensure an alignment between cloud-based security policy and SD-WAN.

How to maintain control in a distributed SD-WANaaS environment

As SD-WAN networks expand across cloud services, data centers, and remote sites, keeping firewall and VPN policies aligned becomes a challenge. With multiple service providers and routing configurations, similar firewall rules and VPN settings get pushed into fragmented policies, impacting network connectivity across platforms and SD-WAN appliances. To reduce risk and accelerate management and compliance, centralized control systems (discussed in how to manage fragmented security policies in hybrid environments) give IT teams greater control and visibility.

Automation keeps pace with complexity. Instead of manual reviews and error-prone spot checks, real-time policy validation identifies potential problems before they are activated. Policy validation, guided by the Tufin Orchestration Suite, also allows teams to review access, rationalize firewall rules, and ensure compliance across any SDN, SASE, and cloud environments, and their related  applications (for less manual effort and more precise policies).

Governance is missing when VPN flows and service chaining paths are not consistently managed and tracked across regions and vendors. Without clear ownership, it’s challenging to enforce service-level agreements or maintain steady application performance. Teams facing these gaps often benefit from insights into the hidden challenges of SD-WAN, which detail what fails and why when policies fall out of sync.

For organizations balancing internal teams with managed service providers, solutions like heterogeneous hybrid mesh firewall support consistent control across all environments. Whether scaling through an MSP or building in-house, choosing between models like DIY SD-WAN vs. managed SD-WAN helps align architecture with long-term business needs.

Conclusion

SD-WAN as a service cuts down on hardware and speeds up deployment, but it also introduces new risks, like overlapping firewall rules, policy drift between vendors, and limited visibility into where traffic’s really going. A small misstep might not become apparent until a critical app slows down or a security rule gets bypassed. Whether your IT team manages deployment in-house or partners with an MSP, you need orchestration that keeps policy updates, routing traffic, and service level agreements in sync across every part of your network.

See how to bring that control back to your SD-WAN deployment—get a demo.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does SD-WAN as a service typically include?

SD-WAN as a service provides IT teams with an easier way to manage VPNs, traffic routing, and network configurations without the need to ship boxes to each location. With centralized control from a single dashboard, it’s also easier to dynamically change routes based on performance.

See how this works in practice with Tufin’s integration with Cisco Meraki.

How is SD-WAN as a service different from traditional WAN?

Traditional WANs rely on fixed MPLS circuits and physical appliances, while SD-WAN as a service uses software to route traffic over broadband and cloud links. It’s faster to deploy, easier to update, and offers more flexibility for growing networks.

Learn how policy control works across hybrid environments in how to manage fragmented security policies in hybrid environments.

What tools improve visibility and policy control in SD-WAN as a service environments?

Without visibility, especially when using multiple providers, it’s harder to spot issues. Tools that catch policy mistakes before they go live help avoid slowdowns, misrouting, or missed security controls.

See how this is handled with network assurance.