How to remove network complexity for CIOs

The pace of inno­va­tion is accel­er­at­ing across indus­tries as organ­i­sa­tions race to opti­mise their process­es and embrace new busi­ness mod­els befit­ting of the dig­i­tal age. On the hunt for greater agili­ty, effi­cien­cy and speed to mar­ket, com­pa­nies have grav­i­tat­ed to scal­able tech­nolo­gies that help them thrive among an increas­ing­ly inter­con­nect­ed ecosys­tem of dig­i­tal sup­ply chains, part­ners and chan­nels.

Automa­tion is the most pow­er­ful means of mak­ing inter­de­pen­den­cies more effi­cient — and the rise of the cloud has helped democ­ra­tise access to its capa­bil­i­ties. In recent years, busi­ness­es have trans­formed how they con­sume infra­struc­ture, soft­ware and plat­forms through an on-demand, web-based ‘as-a-ser­vice’ mod­el under­pinned by the cloud. Most busi­ness­es use dozens of soft­ware-as-a-ser­vice (SaaS) appli­ca­tions to run their busi­ness, while rent­ing pub­lic cloud infra­struc­ture from hyper­scalers like Ama­zon and Microsoft.

Although these mul­ti-cloud envi­ron­ments are bring­ing great ben­e­fits to busi­ness­es by con­nect­ing more things out­side the con­trol of their own envi­ron­ment, they are also adding com­plex­i­ty to the already inter­con­nect­ed ecosys­tem they oper­ate with­in. A high-qual­i­ty, agile and scal­able net­work is the sav­iour, but tra­di­tion­al hub-and-spoke wide-area net­works (WAN) are no longer fit for pur­pose. It is the turn of the net­work to embrace the cloud.

“The con­fig­u­ra­tion and the struc­ture of the enter­prise net­work is chang­ing,” says Neil Tem­ple­ton, vice-pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing at Con­sole Con­nect. “His­tor­i­cal­ly, organ­i­sa­tions would peri­od­i­cal­ly go out to a ven­dor with a request for pro­pos­al, imple­ment a WAN ser­vice, have it for three or four years and then go back out for anoth­er ven­dor pro­pos­al to aug­ment or change it. They were stuck in a cycle of long con­tracts for fixed band­width and pre­dictable traf­fic flows.

“Those days are gone now. It just does­n’t work any­more because it does­n’t suit the way busi­ness­es are oper­at­ing. There’s now a big push both from the enter­prise, as well as from the sup­pli­er, to change the mod­el.”

Just as oth­er parts of the IT estate have embraced the as-a-ser­vice mod­el, CIOs are now say­ing good­bye to inflex­i­ble net­works, which are dif­fi­cult to recon­fig­ure and tied into long con­tracts. They are instead con­sum­ing a more effi­cient and agile net­work-as-a-ser­vice (NaaS) offer­ing.

Lead­ing the charge in offer­ing this new gen­er­a­tion of ser­vices is Con­sole Con­nect, which offers a tier-one net­work with a fibre back­bone sup­port­ing a lead­ing glob­al MPLS that has under­pinned large enter­prise net­works for more than a decade. Hav­ing auto­mat­ed that net­work, Con­sole Con­nect now makes it avail­able in a sim­ple and flex­i­ble point-and-click NaaS envi­ron­ment that busi­ness­es can pur­chase, con­fig­ure, pro­vi­sion and con­nect to through a web-based por­tal or API in a mat­ter of min­utes.

“The enter­prise does­n’t have to suf­fer the com­plex­i­ty of hav­ing to set up, con­fig­ure and man­age all of those inter­con­nec­tions, they can just plug into our net­work, spin up an appli­ca­tion and get it to mar­ket very quick­ly. It rapid­ly accel­er­ates time to mar­ket,” says Tem­ple­ton.

“We’ve already con­nect­ed every major cloud provider, many SaaS providers, and lots of busi­ness­es and part­ners around the world. It’s a vast, grow­ing ecosys­tem and the automa­tion and pay-as-you-use mod­el dri­ves sig­nif­i­cant cost reduc­tions and effi­cien­cies.

“Busi­ness­es only pay for what they use and can flex their con­nec­tions up and down on-demand. Cru­cial­ly, how­ev­er, this is deliv­ered over a high-qual­i­ty pri­vate net­work. We’re not talk­ing about con­nect­ing clouds and appli­ca­tions over the pub­lic inter­net, which is great for some basic appli­ca­tions but you have no con­trol over traf­fic rout­ing, speed and effi­cien­cy.

“To con­nect the crit­i­cal busi­ness cloud-based appli­ca­tions busi­ness­es now rely on, com­pa­nies need the SLA assur­ances that only a high-per­for­mance pri­vate net­work can deliv­er. NaaS is the future of net­work infra­struc­ture, enabling com­pa­nies to embrace the pace of inno­va­tion in the years ahead.”

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it consoleconnect.com

Pro­mot­ed by Con­sole Con­nect