UNCOVERING THE LAYERS
the way organisations architect their
networks needs to change.
To really gain first-mover advantage and
be an industry leader, businesses need
the ability to pivot and adjust as markets,
customer demands and business models
dictate. To do this, uptime and cost
efficiencies are essential factors that
ensure stability and competitiveness.
Migrating to an app-based world
To solve the agility problem, organisations
need to understand the core components
of how to make agility a reality in a
networking context. Firstly, businesses
need to ensure that the network is
application aware, predictable, accessible
and cloud integrated. Applications are
now distributed across IT environments
– some living in the data centre, some
at the Edge and some in the cloud. This
means organisations need the ability to
connect to and access any application
regardless of its location. An application-
aware network can identify and classify
www.intelligentdatacentres.com
applications and apply the appropriate
optimisation to ensure peak performance
per user. bandwidth to either support specific
projects, or to support a spike in employee
workload for a short duration.
In a digital economy, there is little
room for suboptimal performance of
applications as businesses, employees
and customers expect a consistently
smooth and seamless experience,
even when using a cloud network. This
means that secure network connectivity
needs to encompass the cloud to offer
greater flexibility, agility and scalability.
In addition, organisations should be
able to ensure sustained availability of
the network by leveraging the ability to
have two or more lines in operation as a
precautionary solution for failover. Similarly, the organisation needs the ability
to provision changes. With automated
policy management, organisations have
the ability to automatically rollout changes
or updates to the enterprise network at
speed, regardless of location.
Adaptability and flexibility
Secondly, it is undeniable that to enable
agility, the network needs to be flexible,
available on demand and easy to manage.
Organisations need the ability to make
real-time changes to user access or
A new networking approach
To make this agile Elysium a reality,
organisations need to consider how
they can rearchitect their network for
a digital age. Agility is all about enabling
enterprises to pivot quickly in response
to change – potentially requiring the
introduction of new products or
services, the need to enter a new
market or even create a new digital-
centric business model.
Selecting the right networking technology
needs to become a priority for enterprises.
Issue 13
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