Networks: Mastering 6 biggest challenges

In the digital world, networks have become an important enabler of efficient business processes and innovative business models. However, companies often need help to support their business in the best possible way with a powerful network because the high complexity of the infrastructure prevents them from doing so.

Networks are becoming increasingly complex as the demands of remote work, cloud services and IoT applications continue to increase. The six biggest challenges that companies have to master due to the complexity of the networks.

A lack of agility in the networks is slowing down business.

The demands on networks change regularly as companies introduce new applications and cloud services and optimize operational processes as part of the transformation processes. In conventional infrastructures, the necessary adjustments require many manual, time-consuming activities. 

Those responsible usually have to configure several network devices individually, for example, to prioritize the traffic of certain applications. They implement changes in software-defined environments faster and more flexibly. In these, the requirements of an application can be defined centrally – smart software then determines the optimal path for data packets,

Legacy devices compromise security and compliance

Increasing investments in the cloud has led to a slower renewal of the on-premises infrastructure in many companies. As a result, many networks have outdated or redundant network devices, which poses security and compliance risks because these devices are often no longer regularly patched and have vulnerabilities. In addition, old devices often cannot be managed in a software-defined manner, which means that it can be difficult to integrate them into modern network and security architectures and enforce current guidelines.

Networks: Inconsistent user experiences breed frustration

Employees today have high expectations of the availability and performance of applications and cloud services. This is partly due to their good experiences with Netflix, Google & Co. in their private lives and the often demanding everyday work.

Long response times or disconnections affect your productivity and quickly cause frustration and reduce motivation. Companies should therefore ensure that they offer consistent user experiences to employees in the office and the home office.

Especially when using cloud services, it can make sense to allow remote employees direct access via SD-WAN and not to route data first via central infrastructures.

Edge and IoT workloads are increasing the pressure to modernize.

Remote workers and new Edge and IoT applications not only increase data loads and bandwidth requirements in the network. Rather, modern wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi 6 or private 5G are increasingly needed to connect mobile devices or those to which no cables can be laid.

In addition, many edges and IoT workloads have high response time requirements because they depend on data analysis and real-time reactions. To take full advantage of these applications, organizations must be able to assign them connections with guaranteed bandwidth and latency.

Poor performance and WAN costs negate cloud benefits.

If companies move their applications to the cloud or introduce new SaaS solutions, they expect cost advantages or more efficient processes.

They often overlook how the data flows; thus, the demands on networks are changing. For example, slow connections prevent applications from being dynamically moved between on-premises systems and the cloud or slow down SaaS services so employees cannot use them comfortably.

In addition, cloud and SaaS quickly lead to high WAN costs if the network does not offer the necessary flexibility to transmit data over the Internet instead of MPLS lines.

Networks: Skills and processes no longer match the solutions used

Smart management tools for manual activities and scripts are replacing modern networks. In addition, new governance processes are needed for agile adjustments to the infrastructure.

Companies must accompany their modernization with training courses and workshops to ensure skill gaps are maintained, and there is a risk of network disruptions.

Outsourcing network operations to a service provider as part of a managed service can help ensure high availability and relieve employees. So far, this has mainly been used in the WAN area, but more and more companies are outsourcing LAN management.

Today’s networks are extremely complex, leaving many organizations needing help managing and only sometimes meeting business needs.

Future topics such as remote work, multi-cloud, edge computing and IoT depend on a stable, powerful and secure network that must be highly agile to implement changes quickly and efficiently.

Software-defined solutions offer all this and make the network the business enabler companies depend on in a dynamic and uncertain business world.