The success of many organizations is largely dependent on the success of their branch locations. Satellite offices, retail stores, manufacturing facilities, distribution centers, and even vessels on inland waterways need IT resources to keep up with today’s business demands.

As of July 20, 2018, tugboat and towboat operators must comply with new Coast Guard regulations designed to improve safety. Published in the Code of Federal Regulations at 46 CFR Subchapter M, the rules require that towing vessel operators submit to an annual Coast Guard inspection or implement an approved towing safety management system (TSMS). Many operators are deploying onboard vessel management systems to help meet these requirements, but are struggling to maintain the real-time data communications needed to make the management systems work properly and ensure compliance.

Not that long ago, the wide-area network (WAN) was used to connect a few branch locations to headquarters and headquarters to the public Internet. Today, the WAN has become the foundation of operations in a wide range of industries.

Changing traffic patterns and bandwidth requirements are forcing organizations to rethink their WAN architectures and data transport options. In the past, most applications and resources were hosted in the corporate data center, and branch locations connected to headquarters in a hub-and-spoke architecture. Today, the WAN primarily supports Internet traffic and cloud access, making traditional designs costly and inefficient.