Jargon Buster

WAN: "Wide-Area Network". Any network that covers a great geographical distance. The internet is technically a WAN, but it's most commonly used to refer to business networks that connect users between branches, or even between countries.

SD-WAN: "Software-Defined Wide-Area Network". An evolution of traditional WANs like MPLS. SD-WAN solutions do all their clever stuff via software, not hardware. This allows for easy, affordable setup, as well as a whole bunch of features you can't get with old-school networks.

MPLS: "Multiprotocol Label Switching". A precursor to SD-WAN. MPLS remains one of the most popular wide-area networking solutions. However, unlike SD-WAN, it's not built to handle high-bandwidth applications like cloud-based SaaS or video conferencing.

The cloud: A catch-all name for services that "live and run" on the internet, instead of being hosted locally. This is relevant because SD-WAN allows users to access these services directly, rather than being routed through your HQ's internet connection.

SaaS: "Software as a Service". Any software application that's hosted on, and accessed via, the cloud. Popular examples include Google Apps, Salesforce and Slack.

IaaS: "Infrastructure as a Service". IaaS, like SaaS, is delivered via the cloud. However, rather than providing a single application, IaaS lets users access a complete, cloud-based IT infrastructure (hence the name). It's essentially a complete IT data centre, hosted somewhere off-site.

Microsoft Azure: One of the most popular all-round cloud services, operated by tech giant Microsoft. Azure offers SaaS and IaaS access. (As well as PaaS, but that's enough acronyms for now…)