The growth of cloud-based networking

The growth of cloud-based networking for business

The growth of cloud-based networking is essential for business effectiveness and efficiency. The new post-Covid world of hybrid work has created a number of new dynamics and new challenges for businesses. High among these has been the acceleration of digital transformation projects which have
become more important.

So has their need to be activated as soon as possible. At the heart of virtually every business, a digital transformation plan is cloud-based applications and services. With boundaries between home, mobile, and office-based working now blurred to becoming invisible, the new glue that binds the hybrid model is the cloud.

Yet as business customers aim to achieve their digital transformation and cloud-based networking goals by moving to the cloud, delivering differentiated cloud-based customer experiences for end customers and better work experiences for employees is key. Indeed, this is truly the age of the experience economy.

By upgrading to advanced network infrastructure, firms can deliver mission-critical services through cloud providers and through their own cloud resources. These increased capacity need has seen the deployment of optical networking and advanced network solution such as software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN).
The bottom line is that businesses are in constant need of robust, specific, and increasingly complex connectivity solutions. The move to the cloud and adoption of cloud-first architectures have therefore become table stakes as technology leaders help businesses navigate the pace of change in their industries.

This need has grown as the flight to the cloud has accelerated. the fundamental task is to take advantage of cloud-based services to support hybrid working, the key will be a reliable infrastructure to connect all parts of their businesses and truly participate in the new experience economy.

Appetite rising for the network as a service

The sustained digital transformation needed in light of the Covid pandemic has pushed organizations across the EMEA region to re-evaluate their current network setups, with nearly nine in 10 companies currently discussing network as a service (NaaS) in some capacity, according to research from Aruba.
The study from the networking services provider, undertaken by Coleman Parkes, surveyed 5,400 senior EMEA decision-makers responsible for IT and cloud strategy.

The research was conducted via an online methodology and fieldwork was conducted between May and August 2021. The sample comprised organizations with more than 500 employees, ranging up to 5,000.
Network as a service was defined in the survey as when a company has over 50% of its network roll-out, operations, and life cycle management delivered by a third party on a subscription basis.

As well as showing 86% of EMEA companies were currently discussing NaaS in some capacity, the study also showed that it was a topic of frequent discussion in almost a third of firms.

When asked about the reasons behind this interest, financial efficiency emerged as one of the main anticipated benefits, with over three-quarters (76%) of respondents expecting NaaS to help reduce operational costs, and 60% thinking it could enable a shift from CapEx to OpEx. But flexibility – both in terms of the network and team time – was another primary driver revealed by the study.

Three-quarters (75%) of companies indicated that having the flexibility to scale their network based on business needs was key to their interest, and almost two-thirds (64%) see it as a potential game changer in how they are able to manage activities.

Meanwhile, less than half (48%) are looking at NaaS to help them reduce IT staff levels – instead believing it will free up team time for innovation and strategic initiatives (57%).

Yet even though it said the appetite for NaaS was evident, Ariba warned that the road towards NaaS implementation looked less clear, with the survey identifying a number of key barriers. High among these were issues with internal processes.

The study on cloud-based networking showed that among the top concerns identified by technology leaders were budget rules and investment cycles (59%), finding the budget (55%), and compliance with internal procurement (51%). However, the data revealed a much more fundamental barrier: a lack of overall understanding of NaaS. While all technology leaders said they were familiar with NaaS as a term, only two-fifths claimed to fully understand what it meant.

Even among the companies discussing NaaS on a frequent basis, the study found that only 46% of technology leaders claimed a full understanding Aruba noted that this education gap was also evident in the perception of NaaS’s viability. Only 11% of technology leaders currently saw NaaS as an established and viable solution.

The remainder either considered it to be a concept looking for a market (45%) or in its early beginnings (44%). “As we emerge from the pandemic, the need for agility and flexibility in network management is greater than ever,” said Aruba EMEA vice president Morten Illum. “We know that NaaS can ensure the critical flexibility needed by businesses as they look to recovery and beyond, as well as solve a range of issues from security and scalability to budget and team constraints. However, in order for businesses to unlock the potential of NaaS and cloud-based networking, we must focus on bridging the gap between awareness and knowledge.” Contact Musato Technologies to learn more about our innovative ICT services and solutions. – an article by TechTarget

Author: Gideon E. M

Gideon Ebonde M. is the CEO and Chief Software Architect at Musato Technologies. He is experienced Software developer with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. He has a strong engineering professional skilled in Mobile Application Development, Enterprise Software, AI, Robotics, IoT, Servers, Cloud and business application. He is an accomplished DevOps software engineer and a visionary computer scientist and engineer.