The right partner can guide you through strategic choices
Modern enterprises are increasingly moving mission-critical software, data, and infrastructure into public clouds, private clouds, software-as-a-service platforms, and other locations that require end users to connect to them across formidable distances. Meanwhile, the pace of business is relentlessly accelerating, meaning that organizational processes need to move ever faster. Enterprises can’t afford a slowdown because of network congestion, poor throughput, or subpar speeds. To succeed, every enterprise must ensure that it has a modern network to achieve the performance it needs.
There can no longer be dependence on a single type of connection to data, applications, and other digital assets, because users and assets each have different requirements, depending on the use case. Network modernization requires understanding the endpoints and workloads as well as the performance levels required. A retailer may need a high-performance connection to manage autonomous robots within a warehouse, but using that connection to reach Microsoft 365 so that marketers can use Word and Excel would likely be overkill. And high performance means different things to different industries. For example, a hedge fund involved in automated high-frequency trading will need a connection that’s far faster, with much greater bandwidth, than what a car dealership needs.
For connections where high performance isn’t required, a standard internet connection may be sufficient. But for use cases where a better, guaranteed level of performance is required, the organization should go with a private fiber connection, such as Fiber Internet Access. For the special use cases that require the highest-possible performance, a dedicated wavelength connection may be necessary.
For most, a mix of different types of connections will likely be necessary to meet the needs of every use case. For example, many organizations may adopt a hybrid WAN that pairs a flexible, easily scalable software defined wide area network (SD-WAN) with their legacy network. Others may need network edge resources that, when combined with SD-WAN technology, create an extremely scalable, high-performance WAN that is viewable and manageable through a single portal. These technologies enable a level of control that enables IT to manage traffic prioritization.
Flexibility for the future
Once IT has determined the performance needs for each end user and use case, the organization needs to map this information against planned business needs. This approach will help build the network to scale as needed. No one wants to massively overprovision — buying a high-bandwidth connection that won’t even come close to full utilization for several years — or wants to redesign the network every time a significant increase in performance is required.
Network connections are typically available in bandwidths below 1Gbps, at 1, 2, 5 and 10Gbps, then scaling to 100Gbps in increments of 10Gbps. Understanding how network needs are likely to grow enables the organization to design a network now that can affordably and efficiently scale in the future.
By taking a strategic approach that identifies the current and future needs of each endpoint and use case, organizations can modernize their networks so they can efficiently provide the performance required today and the scalability required to meet future performance requirements for many years to come.
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