How ACL Digital Engineered an Automated SD-WAN Platform That Reduced Branch Deployment from Days to Hours
Overview
A leading U.S. telecommunications provider sought to offer enterprise clients, including retail chains and banking institutions managing hundreds of distributed branch offices, a highly cost-effective, automated Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) solution. The goal was to eliminate the heavy capital expenditure associated with proprietary routing hardware and replace time-consuming manual deployments with a fully automated, cloud-hosted orchestration system built on open standards. ACL Digital was engaged to architect and deliver this end-to-end solution, leveraging its deep expertise in SDN, NFV orchestration, and Zero-Touch Provisioning (ZTP).
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Challenges
Slow, costly branch deployments
Deploying hardware at a new branch site required a field technician to manually configure the device on-site, a process that routinely took two to three days and up to a week per location
High capital expenditure
Standard enterprise SD-WAN platforms required expensive, specialized proprietary hardware with integrated routing logic, making scalable rollouts financially prohibitive for SMBs
Lack of automation
Existing processes depended heavily on manual field intervention, creating operational bottlenecks and limiting the provider’s ability to scale quickly for enterprise clients
Complex connectivity requirements
Enterprise clients required both hub-and-spoke and direct branch-to-branch mesh connectivity, with secure, reliable tunneling across all topologies
Solution
ACL Digital designed and deployed a comprehensive, fully automated SD-WAN architecture built entirely on open industry standards:
- NFV Service Orchestrator: Built on the MANO (Management and Network Orchestration) framework, the orchestrator serves as the operational core of the solution, dynamically ingesting incoming enterprise customer orders through direct integration with the provider’s commercial ordering and billing systems.
- OpenDaylight SDN Controller: The orchestrator communicates with an OpenDaylight (ODL) controller, which uses the Netconf protocol to push configurations to low-cost Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) endpoints developed in partnership with hardware partner NXP.
- Zero-Touch Provisioning workflow: A CPE device is shipped to a remote branch, powered on, and an embedded bootstrap script automatically locates the central SDN controller. The device handshakes with the ODL controller, which notifies the MANO orchestrator. The orchestrator retrieves the customer’s order details and pushes the required configuration, establishing secure IPsec over GRE tunnels entirely without manual field intervention.
- Flexible topology support: The solution automatically provisions both hub-and-spoke connectivity, where branch CPEs route traffic to a cloud-based Virtual CPE acting as the central hub, and spoke-to-spoke mesh topology for direct branch-to-branch communication.
Outcomes
- Dramatic deployment acceleration: Branch deployment times were reduced from several days to a matter of hours, enabling enterprise clients to become fully operational almost instantly
- Significant cost savings: By replacing proprietary routing hardware with standardized, low-cost Netconf-enabled CPEs, the provider avoided substantial capital expenditure without compromising performance or reliability
- Proven in production: The solution was validated through live, automated branch deployments connecting offices across two cities, demonstrating real-world reliability on a scale
- Independently commercialized components: Multiple solution components developed by ACL Digital, including Virtual Firewalls, Virtual Private Networks, and Virtual CPE software, were independently commercialized and sold to other vendors, validating the quality and market readiness of the engineering output
- Platform-agnostic expertise: ACL Digital's deep knowledge of MANO, Netconf, and OpenDaylight ensures seamless applicability to both white-box deployments and premium vendor platforms such as Viptella and Versa, making the engagement reusable across diverse client environments
