A large number of applications and traditional functionality that businesses have come to rely upon, which at one time were slow, expensive, error-prone exercises to introduce, install, and service are now available remotely by binding the same functionality to generic administration utility applications in the cloud computing. Plus, the individual branches of an organization do not have to add anything to their footprint.

The unanticipated control cloud computing has enabled, through SD-WAN implementations in the cloud, is that management can now see and control a very large enterprise through a central core facility. Of course, with everything now virtual, the actual management personnel can be located anywhere on the planet, and never have to actually enter the premises of the central cloud servers, or ever visit all the distributed resources of the cloud. Velocloud is a brilliant cloud networking services company, that provides cloud-delivered SD-WAN. In a sense, SD-WANs have facilitated the concept of the cloud, which has, in turn, caused computing to transcend the traditional limits of hardware and software to become its own virtual entity. The location and power of each individual computer have become trivial to the system as a whole. And for the first time in history, the system as a whole is worth far more than the sum of all the very many, well distributed, secure, and manageable parts. Without WAN innovations, and especially the innovations of Software-Defined WANs, it is unlikely that we would ever have achieved this level of computing ubiquity without a massive effort of every person in computing, instead of just a few hundred very brilliant innovators. It will be interesting to see what the future holds, based upon what has been accomplished so far. Aside from the questions about the possible dangers of Artificial Intelligence, the existence of such computing power might well lead to solutions of very old and thorny problems. Perhaps cancer will be cured. Perhaps we will achieve longer lifespans. Perhaps we cannot even imagine what the future holds for those building on the shoulders of what we now consider modern computing. Our grandchildren will probably say, “Well, they made a little start. Now we can really get something done.”

If ever there was a time in human history when extremely large and complex projects, as well as huge production lines and massive services, could be implemented with limited numbers of workers, it is now. And all thanks to the innovations of WANs and the more powerful SD-WANs. It is possible that if this kind of computing power and versatility had been available during the Space Race, the goal to reach the moon could have been completed in just a couple of years and with perhaps a tenth of the people involved. Therefore, it should be possible to expand humanity’s horizons to send people to other planets and perhaps even colonize other worlds, now that we have sufficient computing resources to get the job done.