Performing WAN upgrades, be that configuration, software or connectivity has always been a struggle. The more complicated the environment the longer an upgrade would take. Could you script it? Sure, but test it out in a lab first to ensure you have accounted for every permutation you could run into. If not then you could be sure there will be failures.
SD-WAN solves this problem. Recently I performed an upgrade for a customer. We deployed new software throughout the environment, while enabling LTE connections at the remote sites. If an organization wanted to do this in the past, it would of required a team of people, lab infrastructure and weeks of testing.
With SD-WAN services we enable the 'Network As A Service', which allows automation and migration with wide spread impact but without any of the hassle. Upload software images to the management plane, define which version you want to move to and allow the control plane handle the rest. Schedule your downtime and let it role. No more late nights of copying binaries via TFTP all over the place, or having to ship out USB thumb drives so you can perform a local copy, the system positions everything for you. You can define what the default version for your environment is to be,this way any new devices will always come online with that version, regardless of what they ship with.
Adding that backup LTE connection is always simplistic. Create a template for the interface type, and publish it to the devices, they will start using that interface as soon as their SIMs cards are ready. Since the controllers are responsible for all encryption and certificates, the tunnels are established in the background without requiring an engineer to configure all the interface and tunnel parameters on each device.
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