Is Your Network Cloud-Ready? How to Be Prepared for Whatever Comes Next.

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Not if, but when…

It’s a familiar story. A new technology appears, promising to change how we do business. Organizations clamor for it. Business blooms... then, suddenly; things sour. Application performance declines; as does productivity and customer/user experience. People lose patience, and they look at you to solve the problem.

Such is the case for those running today’s networks. Once regarded as tools for connecting the business, today, the network is central to how business gets done. So when things don’t work, people notice.

The truth is, most networks haven’t been able to keep up for some time. If that’s not so at your company, don’t feel left out; this is one of those “not if, but when” kinds of problems.

While a number of factors led to this, one has quickly risen to the top: the steady migration of enterprise apps to the cloud.

In most cases, the march of everything cloud and the overarching “X-as-a-Service” movement has paid off well, enabling innovations across every aspect of business while improving speed to market and operational efficiency and reducing costs.

The cloud has a silver lining; it also has an Achilles’ Heel

While the cloud’s promise seems limitless, it has a dark side, too, caused primarily by a lack of consideration paid to the networks delivering it.

In fact, a recent study by BCG1 called the network the Achilles’ Heel of cloud computing; the one vital weakness that has the potential to bring the entire operation to its knees.

It doesn’t have to be that way. The move towards cloud maturity has only begun. This leaves plenty of time to rethink the network and execute a plan that won’t just help keep up, but rather, stay out front.

IT Labor

Annual IT spend of a medium-size retailer

Companiestypically

reinvest savings in cloud usage/

new services

IT Software

IT Infrastructure

Network

Today

42%

$1,515K

$802K

24%

11%

23%

16%

13%

23%

48%

Future

-47%

The cloud delivers a big bang for the buck; a typical business can save 47% moving to the cloud, freeing-up resources to drive innovation, customer experience, etc.

Source: BCG, “Can Your Network Deliver the Potential of the Cloud,” 2016

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Challenges impacting today’s network (AKA, I thought the cloud was supposed to make my life easier?)

The challenges presented by the cloud are directly related to the associated benefits. The cloud makes it simple and affordable to add and change applications, users and locations. Just make a call/order online with a credit card and you’re off.

Herein lie the primary challenges network managers face, causing many networks to fall short as they try to keep up with current and future business need:

Challenge #1: Explosive growth of cloud-based apps

Bandwidth demand continues to scale rapidly. BCG estimates it doubles every 18 months, with 80% of outbound traffic destined for the cloud. Some of that is attributed to legacy apps moving to more agile cloud environments. In BCG’s survey of 750 mid-size company CIOs, 65% said they’ll move current workloads to a public or private cloud by 2017.2

A more significant portion can be attributed to the growing SaaS app ecosystem. IDC estimates the number of apps supported by the enterprise is now doubling every four years.3 A similar BetterCloud study showed that kind of growth in just two years’ time.4

Challenge #2: Emergence of new, bandwidth intensive, latency sensitive apps

If the burgeoning number of apps isn’t an issue, the nature of them may be. The cloud now supports bandwidth intensive, latency sensitive video and voice services. This encompasses both traditional uses like conferencing, as well as new ones like video surveillance, digital signage and table-side streamed entertainment along with a steady flow of new apps across finance, healthcare, transportation and manufacturing. All of this combined puts more pressure on the WAN than ever.

Use of cloud apps to more than double in two years’ time; and these are just the ones IT knows of4

What is the average number of SaaS applications officially supported by IT?

* Results based on estimation from March 2015 poll

March 2015 Poll March 2016 Poll March 2017*

8 12 17

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Challenge #3: Shadow IT

“Shadow” IT sounds scarier than it really is; it’s just a new name for line of business users making tech purchases without approval by IT. While this has gone on for years, the cloud makes it easier than ever. All you need is a credit card and a browser and you’re off. This is one reason why IDC estimates tech spend outside of IT to rise from 5% to 33% in the next few years.5

For those running networks, the implications are serious. Without knowing what’s on the WAN, it’s virtually impossible to keep up with demand. For example, during a recent diagnostics engagement, a customer told EarthLink’s professional services team they had four cloud apps at each location. It turned out they had fourteen. Multiply across hundreds of locations and you have a scary “Shadow” problem, indeed.

Challenge #4: Rapid growth of mobility and the IoT

Just how many devices can you hang on a network? A lot. And the figure is rising as organizations widen their embrace of mobile/wireless, making it easier than ever to add bandwidth hungry devices, users and apps to already stressed networks.

The Internet of Things (IoT) amplifies this challenge tenfold. And it’s not just the machine chatter that adds up; there’s also a constant stream of analytic data the devices feed to support efficiency. So there was no surprise when a very progressive customer shared plans for dual 48 port switches for every location. A store with that capacity is laying a foundation for a whole new kind of networking.

Challenge #5: MPLS reaching maturity

Everything covered so far has been about new things impacting the network. There’s one mature challenge we should mention; MPLS. While it’s still robust, it’s also 15 years old and expensive when adding bandwidth.

Compared with all the rapidly evolving large-scale changes taking place around it – most notably enterprise migration to the cloud – it seems that this particular platform is a bit frozen in time.

Challenge #6: A lack of visibility into all of the above, and no way to control it

So networks are now taxed by an explosion in cloud-based apps. Many are bandwidth hogs; others are “shadow” apps implemented without IT’s OK. Finally, there’s a host of new devices, users and apps being added wirelessly. All running on a network built when we were using flip phones.

The implications are serious. In most cases, network managers have no visibility into any of it, or a way to control it. The collective results are the degradation of customer and user experience, bottlenecks, latency and insufficient/inefficient use of resources. This combination’s not going to make anybody happy.

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Solutions: How to plan and optimize to get and stay ahead

Despite challenges to the network, the upside of the cloud makes it inevitable that we’ll continue moving steadily in that direction. Which brings us to an important question; what can be done to proactively accommodate ongoing network evolution and growth?

Optimizing your route to the cloud

Prior to the cloud, some enterprises used WAN optimization to provide reliability and security between branch offices and mission critical apps in the data center. Moving to the cloud changes the application path, but doesn’t lessen the need for reliability and security. EarthLink’s Cloud Express™ uses EarthLink’s MPLS network to connect directly to leading cloud vendors such as AWS, Microsoft Azure and IBM Softlayer, providing privacy and security while leveraging the efficiency of the cloud. Since the cloud is such a big part of forces reshaping the WAN, this can be a great way to start.

Start driving a hybrid (WAN)

Hybrid networks combining MPLS and Internet-based VPNs offer the best evolutionary path to a broader solution, a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN). By balancing workloads between highly reliable private MPLS connections and more cost effective broadband connections, an EarthLink Hybrid WAN addresses current challenges and offers a path to building the foundation for a cloud-optimized future-ready software-defined WAN.

Get visibility and take control with SD-WAN

Once considered futuristic, SD-WANs are here today and here to stay. Leveraging multiple connections like you find in Hybrid WANs, SD-WAN adds a layer of software-defined intelligence providing real-time visibility into – and control of – network and application performance. SD-WAN also offers dramatically simplified network management.

The resulting performance improvements can be astounding:

• 50% increase in application performance

• 89% improvement in user experience

• Up to 100x more bandwidth

• At up to 90% lower cost per megabit

SD-WAN also virtually eliminates service outages via active/active connectivity and dynamic path selection. Using pre-defined user policies (prioritizing by application user, location, date/time or conditions) and advanced algorithmic science, the network can look at multiple connectivity options – MPLS, Internet or LTE – and dynamically decide which offers the best route.

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This represents such a significant leap forward in terms of agility and cost efficiency that nearly 50% of enterprises surveyed by IDC reported plans to implement SD-WAN in the next 2 years.5

The success derived from SD-WAN can be even more substantial when working with a managed service provider such as EarthLink, with deep experience implementing and managing enterprise networks.

It’s time to rethink your network. And your network service provider.

Whether your network is prepared to keep up or not, and whatever you might need to do in order to change that, one thing is clear: the decisions you make today will have important consequences regarding the ongoing success of your entire business.

It’s such an essential decision, that it might lead you to explore a broader question first involving the choice of the right network service provider. You’ll want one with a hands-on team, experienced with companies like yours, that is equally concerned about the customer experience they provide you and your team as they are about the experience they help you deliver to your customers and end users.

You’ll also want one with experience helping companies like yours make a smooth transition to the cloud. To find out more about how you can be sure your network is prepared for whatever comes next, visit EarthLink.com.

Sources:

1 “Can Your Network Deliver the Potential of the Cloud,” BCG Perspectives, Boston Consulting Group, 2016

2 BCG Research, 2015

3 IDC, 2016

4 BetterCloud Growing Pains: Latest Research Shows IT Struggling to Meet SaaS Application Demand, 4/16

5 “Cloud and Drive for WAN Efficiencies Power Move to SD-WAN,” IDC, 3/16

Migration plans to SD-WANDoes your company plan to migrate any of your existing WAN / network connections to an SD-WAN alternative?

Plan to migrate within the next 1 year

Base 1,204 respondents, survey manged by IDC’s Quantitative Research Group.

Plan to migrate in 1-2 years

Plan to migrate in more than 2 years

No plans to migrateto SD-WAN

Don’t know

(% of respondents)

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

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