CIO OPINION
For example, organisations are increasing
their use of APM and rolling out overlay
SD WAN networks and/or NFV. Typically,
they view these technologies as a way of
diverting more network traffic securely and
automatically over public Internet links as
part of a hybrid WAN, in order to relieve
pressure on their core networks.
Rate of adoption
Organisations are typically testing these new
approaches through proof of concept and
trialling before deploying them at scale, both
to prove they can deliver real benefits and also
to mitigate the risks of change to the business.
To ascertain the scale of adoption, we asked
respondents when their company plans on
making network changes to deploy SD-WAN,
APM or NFV services. The percentage of
companies that have already invested is low
(less than 2% across all these technologies).
However, the proportion that has already
deployed a hybrid WAN approach is
much higher, at 23%. And despite the
generally low adoption rates, it’s clear these
technologies are on organisations’ radars
and under serious consideration. A majority
of respondents (just over 61%) said they
were looking at NFV as a part of their network
roadmap. Within two years, almost a third
(31%) will have gone through a proof of
concept and almost as many (30%) expect
to have fully deployed the technology.
It’s a similar story with APM. More than
60% of respondents have it on their
roadmap, with 29% and 31% expecting to
have completed proof of concept and full
deployment (respectively) within two years.
SD-WAN isn’t quite as far along the adoption
curve. Just over a quarter of respondents
(27%) are considering how to integrate the
technology into their estate, with 14% saying
they will have undertaken a proof of concept,
and 13% a full deployment, within two years.
What companies want
Organisations seem keen to understand
how these new technologies can help them,
but business imperatives dominate their
day-to-day thinking. When asked what
was most important to them they perhaps
unsurprisingly placed service performance
50
INTELLIGENTCIO
“
NETWORKS ARE
CLEARLY FEELING
THE STRAIN
FROM THE RAPID
GROWTH IN
DATA VOLUMES.
in pole position (74%), followed by service
availability (70%), ongoing customer
support (57%) and delivery and provisioning
of services (46%).
While a significant proportion of
organisations are looking to trial and deploy
new networking technologies, the survey
suggests they may face a challenge in
terms of in-house skills. Levels of network
engineering skills to deal with hybrid WAN,
SD-WAN and NFV are, on average, 10-15%
lower than required.
This, of course, isn’t surprising given these
technologies’ current levels of maturity.
However, the gap will need to be filled if
businesses want to pursue their networking
roadmap successfully, with effective delivery
and management.
Interestingly, a quarter of respondents said
they would be very likely to adopt new vendors
when current equipment comes up for its
cyclical refresh, with a further 40% saying
they would at least consider them. Again,
this seems to suggest there is a growing
appetite among organisations to look at new
networking technologies and approaches.
What companies need
For all organisations, the security of networks
is of paramount concern. But the traditional
approach – using a private network to carry
enterprise data traffic between corporate
data centres with a few tightly-secured
gateways onto the wider Internet – has
limitations and is increasingly seen as a
bottleneck. The need to route more traffic
over Internet connections fundamentally
changes security considerations. When you
deploy these new networking technologies,
you increase the potential points of
entry for attackers. In this environment
an organisation can no longer just rely
on deployment and management of
firewalls and firewall policy. What’s needed
instead is a new, multi-layered approach
to security. Businesses recognise this, and
survey respondents say they need ‘market
leading security’ when deploying these
technologies. It was cited as the most
important feature in both NFV and hybrid
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