Modernizing Network Infrastructure Using AWS Cloud WAN at Sonos

Sonos connects millions of listeners around the world to the content they want, where and how they want it. It is best known for its multiroom audio products, including smart speakers that connect to the cloud and stream music. To build these devices, Sonos employees need reliable access to data and a network that they can use to share that data.

“As a global company, we have to interconnect our entire environment,” says Jim Hauser, senior director of engineering technology and operations at Sonos. “This includes our offices, our partners, other cloud providers, and internal operating environments. It’s critical to have a robust, high-performing, and secure network to accomplish that.”

Spread across four AWS Regions, Sonos’s previous network infrastructure was difficult to expand and was not simple to scale. The VPN connections it relied on were causing processing delays. As the network approached capacity, the company knew it needed to modernize.

When Sonos learned about AWS Cloud WAN at re:Invent 2021, it realized that a solution was within reach. “AWS Cloud WAN was exactly what we were waiting for,” says Ben Robinson, principal network engineer at Sonos. “It provided a dynamic, multiregion wide area networking solution. Plus, AWS Cloud WAN is very interoperable, so we were able to effortlessly connect other cloud providers to our AWS network.”

When AWS Cloud WAN was made available for public preview in February 2022, Sonos began to experiment with the solution. By the summer, the company was connecting its nonproduction Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (Amazon VPCs), which developers can use to define and launch AWS resources in a logically isolated virtual network, to an AWS Cloud WAN network. Sonos also built on AWS Cloud WAN with AWS Network Firewall, a service that deploys network firewall security across VPCs.

“AWS Network Firewall acts as a robust inspection engine for the traffic that enters and leaves our AWS Cloud WAN solution,” says Robinson. “AWS traditionally has had many layers of security available through security groups, network access control lists, and routing. By building on AWS Network Firewall, we could strengthen our defense strategies on every layer of the network.”

Sonos also adopted Amazon CloudWatch, which observes and monitors resources and applications on AWS and on premises. This solution monitors more than 100 Amazon VPCs that individual teams use to perform their work.

To avoid delays and empower its engineering teams to adopt AWS services at their own pace, Sonos deployed the new network infrastructure incrementally. “We wanted to make sure that our internal users were very comfortable with what we provided and trusted it enough to migrate their workloads,” says Hauser. “We purposely built a plan that lets our engineering teams use AWS services without a centralized bottleneck.”

As of July 2023, 60 percent of Sonos’s teams have adopted the AWS Cloud WAN solution. Migrated workloads have increased throughput by three times, and the capacity of the company’s VPCs has increased by 10 times. Sonos has also accelerated its ability to expand its network into more AWS Regions.

“What used to take a few weeks can now be done in a few hours,” says Robinson. “AWS Cloud WAN has greatly simplified our regional expansion and deployment model, which supports Sonos as we expand into new marketplaces.”

Sonos has reduced costs significantly using AWS Cloud WAN. The company has simplified and reduced its network address translation gateway costs by 66 percent, and spending on VPN connections has been reduced by 60 percent. “We also decreased our megabit-per-second cost while increasing our capacity,” says Robinson. “During a period of cost optimization, we remained within budget.”