As enterprises continue to adopt cloud infrastructure and applications, exploding traffic levels and changing traffic patterns are driving them to re-evaluate their WANs. The WAN is a key enabler in transforming businesses to the new digital economy, but the current WAN infrastructure based on conventional routers was not designed for the cloud. To keep branch offices protected from threats, all web-bound traffic is backhauled to headquarters-based security services, which negatively impacts cloud application performance. As a result, enterprises are faced with architectural complexity, inconsistent application performance, and security challenges for applications and users.