With the spread of distributed software applications and multicloud, the computing network is coming under attack. It’s too slow; the infrastructure is outdated; it’s not intelligent. Legacies like Cisco Systems Inc. and lesser-known startups alike are repaving the path data takes from one point to another. Many are betting on software-defined wide area networking to burst the latency bottleneck.

Today’s busy information technology environments need a programmable network. That’s a network that doesn’t jam all traffic — high or low priority — down the same stuffed-to-choking artery.

“It’s really important that a network understands not only how it routes, but also understands what it routes,” said Martin Bosshardt (pictured), chief executive officer at Open Systems AG. “That’s the power of SD-WAN. You really can route different applications in different routes.”

Open Systems, headquartered in Switzerland, was founded in 1990 with a focus on security infrastructure. The company has since pivoted to SD-WAN with built-in security. It is now establishing a presence in Silicon Valley.

Bosshardt spoke with John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Open Systems “The Future Is Crystal Clear With Security and SD-WAN” event in Las Vegas. They discussed SD-WAN’s potential to bring order to modern IT chaos. (* Disclosure below.)

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The old networking model just connected locations and piped traffic through a virtual private network. Open Systems has worked with companies with globalized value chains and non-government organizations. These experiences revealed the flaws in this system; and they helped make a strong case for SD-WAN, according to Bosshardt. 

“We learned a lot about what SD-WAN is really capable to do when we started to work for the NGO space when you use a lot of satellite traffic,” he said. Piping all their traffic streams through satellites is very expensive, he added.

“You need to slice the traffic into important stuff, less important stuff, and then you decide what are you going to route through the satellite, and what are you going to route terrestrial,” Bosshardt said.

This is where SD-WAN works wonders. “You’re not bound to protocols anymore, so you really can route your Office 365 traffic different than your Facebook traffic. You can prioritize,” he stated.

Putting together a secure SD-WAN has typically been extremely difficult, according to Bosshardt. “Most companies operate like 40, 50 different products to achieve that. And with us, it’s like subscribing to a service,” he said.

It can also demand a lot of human personnel with scarce security expertise, he added. “We see ourselves as a weapon in the war for talent. It’s just impossible for our customers to find the talent to really operate stuff in a good way, and we make that much easier,” Bosshardt concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Open Systems “The Future Is Crystal Clear With Security and SD-WAN” event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Open Systems “The Future Is Crystal Clear With Security and SD-WAN” event. Neither Open Systems AG, the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE