In 2019, Network management and monitoring (both on-premises and cloud-based) are among the top priorities of IT teams, followed by analytics. The demand for network flexibility, scalability and bandwidth have already wiped out legacy network infrastructure. Like a domino effect of the surge of cloud, new technologies, and the constantly rising customer’s expectations, enterprises are witnessing a major shift in their network architecture. And, as enterprise networks grow in size, networking teams are in an uphill battle with the rising complexity of networks in a dynamic cloud ecosystem.
The rising conundrum in managing networks
Earlier, network management primarily focused on two aspects – Network availability and performance. Enterprise IT used traditional data centres (DCs) and traffic was back-hauled for internet breakout. The network architecture included a Hub and Spoke. 55% of enterprises now prefer to connect branch offices directly to the cloud, rather than route cloud traffic through a data centre or hub.
Today, enterprises – branches, remote locations and employees – connect directly to the cloud. Network traffic is mostly generated via the public cloud (and not from traditional DCs). In almost every enterprise, networks are a mesh of branches (distributed and mobile) globally, new age data centers are deployed in numbers, cloud services and applications galore, and enterprise WAN is extended at the edge to reach out remote and mobile users, delivering bespoke user experience. This is how a dynamic enterprise network team looks like today.
This growing complexity in managing and monitoring distributed enterprise networks dictates the use of automated network management as well as monitoring solutions. The complexity caused by multi-vendor, multi-platform and multi-cloud IT environments, coupled with other networking issues and security threats, makes managing today’s enterprise networks a challenge for most IT teams.
The Whole Enchilada- Network Visibility
Trends like Virtualization, Software Defined Networking (SDN), Cloud, AI, ML and hybrid network architectures have already become pervasive in enterprises to intelligently manage and monitor today’s complex multi-cloud network architecture. Synced with other teams like DevOps, Security etc. network teams in such dynamic IT environments clamours for end to end visibility of enterprise WAN.
An important key to network management is comprehensive visibility, backed with advanced performance analytics, all through one centralized platform. End to end network visibility is one of the major network management challenges, networking teams face today. For dynamic IT teams, effective network management starts with empowering networking teams with powerful monitoring and analytics capability. 90% of enterprise network teams indicated that they need an end-to-end management environment that covers WAN networking.
Thanks to – SD-WAN- the software-centric nature of networks today; Networks are automated (poised with AI and ML), it can be managed and monitored from a centralized platform, flexible enough to allow different functions (OpenAPIs, Cloud, DevOps) to customize and make network experience better, and transparent enough to get granular visibility to data all over the network (Advance analytics for quick discovery and MTTR reduction). Most enterprises want platforms that support more comprehensive management of this kind of software-defined-WAN environments.
The Cog in today’s network architectures
With better visibility, comes better management and monitoring of networks. SD-WAN addresses network issues—across all application service chains, individual network nodes and endpoints— and empowers networking teams to reduce time to resolution while enhancing user experience satisfaction. SD-WAN acts as the cog in today’s network architectures. It solves some of the biggest challenges of distributed enterprise networks. Apart from allowing enterprises to get secure direct access to the cloud, enhancing network performance, SD-WAN makes managing and monitoring WAN programmable. This allows NetOps teams to embed advanced solutions to close all possible weaknesses present in the network.
Evolution of SDN and SD-WAN is the key behind the smooth transformation of enterprise networks. From cloud to enterprise edge, backed with powerful analytics, intelligent automation and visibility of overall network enhanced by AI and ML, SD-WAN is the foundation for enterprise network architecture. Managing and monitoring heterogeneous enterprise network today creates new challenges for network administrators.
In the absence of data visibility, it becomes hard for network teams to predict and monitor network issues. SD-WAN allows enterprise network teams to validate and analyse data of multiple network sources, and applications seamlessly from its built-in analytical feature of the controller. This helps network teams to solve and respond to business requirements faster. It allows networking teams to gain visibility into network and applications with respect to how users experience over your SD-WAN network.
There’s more to talk about Lavelle Networks SD-WAN solution suite and the benefits it can provide for your enterprise network. To see for yourself how the CloudStation offers full-scale visibility of your distributed enterprise networks, contact us today to learn more.
