Demand more from your network
With businesses embracing the cloud as a means to their digital transformation ends, new
bottlenecks are starting to make themselves felt. Especially when it comes to connectivity,
where reliance on legacy network services based on technologies developed for use in the client/
server era are making it difficult to adopt more agile ways of working.
In this research paper we look at the current state of play when it comes to these wide area
network services, in particular the pain points associated with sourcing connectivity, managing
and balancing bandwidth and resolving problems. We also look at pricing models, the cost of over
and under provisioning and the need for on-demand connectivity services to better fit the needs of
the modern cloud-based business in pursuit of their digital transformation goals.
If digital transformation is all about developing agile business models – to better compete or,
even just survive, in an increasingly competitive online world – then on-demand cloud-based
services are the means by which most companies look to achieve that goal. Migration of workloads
off premises and out into data centres and the cloud, however, can only deliver on part of this
promise and, as enterprises become ever more reliant on the third party digital ecosystem,
bottlenecks to achieving business agility simply shift to other parts of the IT infrastructure.
Not least wide area networking, where current technologies and services are to be found wanting
when it comes to meeting both the needs of the cloud and the expectations of its users.
Networks that don’t match
The mismatch between the kind of connectivity the modern enterprise needs and what it can get
is largely down to the sheer pace at which businesses are moving workloads to the cloud. Once
shunned as a platform for customer-facing applications, the last few years have seen concerns
over security, compliance and scalability addressed to a level where CIOs now feel much more
comfortable with cloud computing and, as a result, more willing to green light the migration of
even business-critical workloads to both public and private cloud platforms.
More than that, many are putting the cloud at the core of plans for digital transformation with very
few companies dismissing the cloud in any format, as can be seen from the results of a recent online
survey of around 250 UK enterprises, ranging from fewer than 50 employees to over 5000. (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1 : How much of your business is now outsourced to the cloud?
3% 3%
12%
13%
We are almost an entirely cloud shop
We’re making impressive in-roads,
but still have our core function in
on-premise hardware
We’re looking at cloud, but there’s a
real journey ahead
We’re interested, but haven’t yet acted
28%
41%
Cloud? Forget it. We don’t want or
need it
Other
Computing | research paper | sponsored by Colt 3
Demand more from your network
Conducted across large companies representing a cross section of industries, respondents to this
poll were asked how much of their business was outsourced to the cloud, with those having done
little or nothing in that direction very much in the minority (15 per cent).
More significantly still, barely three per cent of those polled said they had no plans at all for using
cloud services, compared to more than half (54 per cent) who said they had either moved to an all
cloud model already (13 per cent in total) or were making impressive in-roads into achieving that
situation (41 per cent).
Although not asked about in this survey, the drivers leading to this rapid cloud adoption are
well recognised, with clear benefits when it comes to both cost management – with many cloud
services sold on a pay-as-you-consume basis – and the speed at which new applications can
be brought online. Indeed, customers are becoming accustomed to being able to source both
computing power and storage at very short notice and, of equal importance, to scale workloads
in response to changes in demand (up or down) and do so very quickly – often in real time.
When it comes to wide area connectivity, however, progress has been a lot slower leaving
information and applications trapped inside data centres and enterprises tied into long term
arrangements based on outdated client/server models and legacy WAN technologies.
As shown in Fig. 2, for example, simply sourcing new network connections, either to data centres,
cloud providers or other enterprise buildings, can take months.
Fig. 2 : How long does it typically take your organisation to get new
network services provisioned?
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
1%
ime
Rea
l-t
2%
tha
Les
s
mo
na
tha
nw
eek
11%
nth
s 31
nth
4 Computing | research paper | sponsored by Colt
Les
s
mo
to 3
hs 3
ont
6m
%
6%
%
s 10
3 to
nth
mo
tha
n6
Mo
re
Ay
ear
or
mo
re 9
%
0
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