Network Communications News (NCN) June 2017 | Page 26

BUSINESS AGILITY
Redefining the network
to achieve greater
business agility
In today’s digital marketplace, enterprises worldwide are waking up to the need for
business agility—the ability to quickly evolve with changing customer preferences, says
Steve Foster, solutions engineering manager at Riverbed Technology.
E
nterpris es have
rea lis ed that s p e e d
a n d fl exibility a re ke y
to reducin g tim e to
ma rket a nd e nh a nc ing
competitivenes s , a nd t h at new
tec hnolo gies pla y a maj o r ro l e
i n achi evin g the a g ility t h e y
nee d to s ta y a hea d. Th at is
w hy an in crea s in g n um b e r of
organi s atio ns a re purs u ing a
di gi tal b us ines s s trate gy , s h if t ing
away fro m l e ga cy IT s er v ic e s ,
and adopting cl o ud ba se d
ser vi c es ins tea d.
However, while companies have
moved data centres , a p p l ic at io ns
and stora ge to the clo u d ,
most have yet to update t h e ir
net wor ks , which haven’ t c h a nge d
mu ch i n the l a s t 20 yea r s , a nd
are t herefo re ha ndica p p e d in
the i r ab il ity to s uppo r t b u s ine s s
agi li t y imperatives .
For true a g ility, comp a nie s
mu st ta ke a new a ppro a c h to
connectivity in the ente r p r is e .
It i s t i m e for cha nge a n d t h e
tec hnolo gy they n eed is o u t
the re – SD-WAN is the ke y
to meeting bus in es s nee d s
ef fi ci e ntly a n d ef fective l y .
The challenges of
outdated networks
In today’s increasingly digital
world, organisations can only
implement digital technologies
successfully if their network is
flexible and agile. But many are
26 | June 2017
struggling to stay in control of
inflexible, complex networks.
Firstly, because many companies
are storing information in the
cloud as well as on local systems
– generating what are known as
hybrid environments – putting
an incredible strain on their
current network, which traditional
networking technologies are not
designed to handle.
Second, because employees
within most organisations are now
using a range of devices to access
more and more cloud based
applications and services. More
than ever, users expect consistent
levels of network availability and
application per formance even
when they are spread across the
globe in remote locations and
branch offices. Inevitably, the
network starts to feel the strain,
which in turn can impact not only
application per formance levels,
but also bandwidth availability for
business critical applications.
In fact, our Global Application
Performance Survey revealed that
89 per cent of executives said
that poor application performance
negatively impacts their work on a
regular basis.
Last, but not least, traditional
networks have to be deployed
in the field, requiring engineers
to manually enter hundreds of
commands to configure the network
or make changes, a time and labour
intensive effort that can take
months to carry out, and which is
prone to error, severely increasing
the risk of network downtime.
This issue has become
particularly apparent with the
proliferation of remote and branch
offices, which are radically
changing network traffic patterns.
Responding by merely trying
to upgrade and add traditional
routers to the network can create a
number of issues for organisations.
Even small configuration
challenges can be hard to navigate
without impacting an already
fragile and inflexible network.
C o n si d e r i n g a l mo st 8 0 p er
c e nt of e nte r p r i se e mp loyees
a n d co nt ra cto r s n ow work from
b ra n c h of f i c e s a n d a cces s
c r i t i c a l b u si n e ss se r v ices v i a the
WA N, b a n d w i d t h re q u irements
a re b e i n g p u sh e d we l l b eyon d
i n i t i a l d e si g n p a ra meters .
The key to optimisation
These problems require more
than a patchwork approach
to upgrading legacy network
architectures. Simply reacting
to network hotspots and user
complaints is a recipe for failure;
the only winning strategy is to get
out in front of the challenges.
Providing effective long-
term solutions requires a rethink
of networking itself. Today’s
organisations need a resolution
that fundamentally redefines the
way networking is done to better
align with new, cloud-centric