FINAL WORD financial services firms into telecommunications contracts that could not easily expand or grow to meet changing business requirements .
Oshadha Ranaweera , Manager for Connectivity and Network Services at Somerville addition to the customer experience . It follows that branch and contact center staff benefit from having reliable access to mission-critical applications they need to access for customer transactions , in much the same way that customers do : if the whole interaction they have with customers is frictionless and time-to-serve can be reduced , customers are more likely to leave happy and Net Promoter Scores are likely to improve .
The rise of SD-WAN
This focus on improving connectivity and application performance has financial services firms evaluating and adopting SD-WAN technology . This is software that acts as an overlay to physical network infrastructure , such that these links and their capacity can be dynamically managed , based on ambient network conditions and customer and employee demands .
SD-WAN supersedes older , more inflexible WAN architectures such as MPLS networks , which locked
In addition to enhancing customer and employee experience in front-facing parts of the organization , SD-WAN is also improving aspects of back-office operations as well . Financial employees often now require access to sensitive data and applications from remote locations – regional branches , home offices or as mobile employees . Banks need a way to ensure compliance by providing secure access to data based on role and identity .
In addition , SD-WAN is lowering the cost and increasing the efficiency of deploying new network-connected IT hardware into branches and remote locations . Indeed , SD-WAN can extend to laptops and devices . Among other things , it facilitates faster onboarding of branches with zero-touch appliances that can be managed centrally . It also allows financial services firms to securely use Internet broadband and 5G / LTE connections at a lower cost , but with the same benefits as private dedicated lines . Installation of new network connections to sites is also faster and backups and Disaster Recovery plans are quicker and more practical .
Furthermore , financial institutions face strict regulations , such as the PCI DSS standard ( Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard ). Compliance is made more accessible with an SD-WAN solution , since SD-WANs have security features such as end-to-end data encryption baked into them , meaning payment data is secured as it traverses the financial services firm ’ s network . p
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