Why Businesses Are Switching to SD-WAN

Written by Uniti Fiber

March 28, 2021


Adoption, Rising edge computing demands, and exploding data volumes. The greatest competitor to your business is your own network. And most businesses are losing. Don’t just meet today’s heightened network demands. Beat them. Enter SD-WAN…

SD-WAN is an intelligent accelerator for your private network. It operates agnostic to the type of underlying connectivity. An orchestrator engine in the cloud provides a smart brain to SD-Wan Edge units that live at your branch locations. These edge units typically serve much like routers. The orchestrator provides a single pane of glass to set policy configurations on edge through a secure web portal. One place one screen, one click…

A secure cloud overlay network then connects the cloud orchestrator to the edge units and delivers a protected onramp to cloud infrastructure and application providers.

What does this mean for your business?
Centralized network, zero touch management, traffic path optimization, connection redundancy and performance, faster branch provisioning, real-time remediation of performance issues, and smarter digital transformation?

Great, but what does it really mean for your business?
Increased IT efficiency, accelerated network performance, smarter network consumption, and improved application performance. In a landscape where performance matters, SD-WAN is no longer a consideration— it’s an imperative.

Test your SD-WAN preparedness today with a free readiness assessment visit www.unity.com/contact.

*The testimonial transcript has been edited from the original video content to provide an improved reading experience.
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Kenny Gunderman
President - Chief Executive Officer
Kenny Gunderman

Kenny Gunderman is president and chief executive officer of Uniti Group Inc. He has 20 years of experience in the telecommunications industry and is focused on growing Uniti’s real estate portfolio of mission critical communications infrastructure. He has prior experience at Stephens, Lehman Brothers and KPMG. He currently serves on the board of the Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation, the Hendrix College Board of Trustees, and the NAREIT Board of Governors. Gunderman holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hendrix College and an MBA from Yale.

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Paul Bullington is the chief financial officer and treasurer of Uniti Group Inc., previously serving as senior vice president of Strategic Operations for Uniti Fiber. Until its acquisition by Uniti in 2017, he served as the CFO of Southern Light, a position he held since the company began operating in 2001. During his time as CFO, the company was named one of the “5,000 Fastest Growing Companies in America” by Inc. Magazine for nine consecutive years.

Bullington also has prior experience at Accenture and Royal Cup Coffee. He currently serves on the board of Eastern Shore Repertory Theatre and is a former director of First Community Bank in Alabama. Bullington holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Birmingham-Southern College and an MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

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Heard graduated from the William H. Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Central Arkansas.

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Friloux previously was chief executive officer and president of PEG Bandwidth where he led the wireless backhaul provider through a time of rapid expansion serving 2,400 cell towers over a 15,000 route mile network through 16 states.

Prior to joining PEG Bandwidth, Friloux served as president and chief operations officer for Citynet Fiber Networks where he developed the company into a leading regional wholesale carrier network spanning 13 states and 8,000 route miles.

Friloux started his career as a software engineer for Sabre Computer Services (American Airlines.)

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Ronald J. Mudry

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Mudry leads Uniti’s sales and business development initiatives which include providing fiber based services to wireless carriers, wireline carriers, hyperscalers, content companies, cable MSOs and other wholesale customers. Mudry previously served as President of Sales and Business Development at Uniti Fiber.

Mudry has over 30 years of experience in the telecommunications industry and was the founder of two start-up fiber operating companies that grew to become leaders in their industry segment. He joined Uniti in 2016 following the acquisition of Tower Cloud, a company he founded in 2006, that was a leader in fiber, small cell and cell site backhaul services in the Southeast, U.S. Earlier in his career, he founded Progress Telecom (formed in 1998) and before that spent 15 years with GTE Corporation (now Verizon) where he held key management positions in finance, sales and marketing, international operations, treasury, strategic planning, and mergers and acquisitions.

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Newton was the co-founder of Southern Light, and for the previous 19 years served as its president and chief executive officer where he led the overall operations, strategic guidance and culture of the company. Under his direction, Southern Light grew to become one of the top 10 largest pure fiber optic providers in the country.

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