The Intelligent Network – backbone of the distributed enterprise

Businesses around the world, and in Ireland, face a maelstrom of pressures and challenges.  From fluctuating markets to changing demand, energy costs, inflation, challenges from new entrants, and the sheer pace of technological change, the list goes on.  All of this is to the backdrop of a series of shocks which has not been seen for generations, from Brexit to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. 

The key themes that have emerged from these experiences are resilience, agility, adaptability, and perseverance. Businesses need be resilience but remain agile enough to be adaptable for not just the shocks, but new opportunities in markets and demand. And all the while, they must be able to persevere through the change, becoming not just change ready but accustomed. 

Through all of this, sustainability has become ingrained in how businesses operate, with the trend to science-based metrics and common reporting frameworks seeing widespread adoption. 

Digital core of business

In order to cope with all of this, businesses are focusing on their digital core — the critical infrastructure at the heart of enterprise that allows new apps, services and capabilities to be quickly developed, deployed and deliver value. This is increasingly in a sophisticated landscape, across multiple clouds, platforms, services and providers, between on-premises and the edge, and down to sensor networks. 

Combined research from IDC and Gartner suggest that the future, distributed  enterprise will comprise 20% core infrastructure, 30% public cloud services and 50% edge computing.

Healthcare, finance, retail, and entertainment are just some of the sectors that have been early adopters of the hybrid infrastructures that are transforming how they do business and all with a common foundation: intelligent networking. 

As various sources have predicted modest or negligible growth in server sales for this year, networking is expected to see strong double-digit growth, with certain segments, such as multi-cloud networking seeing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.3%, growing to almost $20 billion this year. 

Intelligent networking

Businesses are looking to providers who can begin adding intelligent networking elements to existing estates, as well as green field opportunities. They need flexible deployments that are cloud-ready, enhanced with AI and machine learning, with new levels of programmability. To meet the needs of fluctuating demand, these networks demand elasticity, resilience and agility, all of which can be managed across the entire estate from a single console, with automation, fault tolerance and autonomic capabilities. 

These operational capabilities are combined with deep analytics that inform and refine operations, giving unprecedented visibility for improving efficiency and service, while at the same time facilitating the most ambitious of sustainability goals. 

As organisations increasingly drive digital transformation to survive and compete in today’s, and tomorrow’s, business environments, the intelligent network is the backbone on which value is built. Businesses increasingly look to it to provide the framework on which they can deliver the applications and services they need, while sat the same time linking disparate resources, connecting islands of value, and orchestrating the entire entity. 

Vendor offerings

Currently, few vendors can offer the breadth of services necessary to be able to claim a full intelligent networking stack that is cloud ready, edge capable, and AI managed. 

Even then, intelligent networking vendors need to have strategic partnerships to combine with their own capabilities to deliver a full range of capabilities, to span the OT/IT frontier, IIoT, and across the entire enterprise. 

By working with a trusted partner whose expertise and portfolio includes these key elements, and who understands the needs of each customer, businesses can begin to deploy the intelligent networking capabilities that can build that digital backbone to power tomorrow’s world. 

Key Themes:

The key themes have emerged recently for enterprise IT: resilience, agility, adaptability, and perseverance. Businesses need be resilience but remain agile enough to be adaptable for not just the shocks, but new opportunities in markets and demand. And all the while, they must be able to persevere through the change, becoming not just change ready but accustomed. 

Businesses looking for a new kind of partner:

Businesses are looking to providers who can begin adding intelligent networking elements to existing estates, as well as green field opportunities. They need flexible deployments that are cloud-ready, enhanced with AI and machine learning, with new levels of programmability. To meet the needs of fluctuating demand, these networks demand elasticity, resilience and agility, all of which can be managed across the entire estate from a single console, with automation, fault tolerance and autonomic capabilities.

Digital transformation and the intelligent network:

As organisations increasingly drive digital transformation to survive and compete in today’s, and tomorrow’s, business environments, the intelligent network is the backbone on which value is built. Businesses increasingly look to it to provide the framework on which they can deliver the applications and services they need, while sat the same time linking disparate resources, connecting islands of value, and orchestrating the entire entity. 

Conclusion:

Currently, few vendors can offer the breadth of services necessary to be able to claim a full intelligent networking stack that is cloud ready, edge capable, and AI managed. 

Even then, intelligent networking vendors need to have strategic partnerships to combine with their own capabilities to deliver a full range of capabilities, to span the OT/IT frontier, IIoT, and across the entire enterprise.