With the rise of digital technology in business operations, the growth of network infrastructure is inevitable, so is the development of high speed and high capacity internet. Networks have grown more complex, requiring more resources to handle and maintain them.
Gartner’s research in 2016 predicted that organisations will have a wide variety of enterprise network infrastructure challenges, such as:
1. Internet Based Applications
Adoption of public cloud will grow 17% annually by 2019. With the growing popularity of cloud and internet based applications, requirements of WAN connections in enterprises will therefore increase.
2. Internet of Things
The emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) projects, including headless devices as well as smart sensors, will also add a tremendous number of endpoints to the enterprise network. Between 2013 and 2020, Gartner expects the number of endpoints deployment for IoT applications will grow by 32% every year.
3. Smartphone and Mobile Applications
The widespread deployment of 4G and soon the emergence of 5G connections and ultra-high smartphone penetration, it is not only impacting how people work with technology, but it is also driving up mobile data traffic organisations’ application delivery controllers (ADCs).
4. Private and Hybrid Clouds
With more enterprises building their own private clouds or adopting hybrid cloud infrastructure models, networks need to be more flexible, across data centres and WAN connections.
In addition to the above-mentioned challenges, the growing volumes of data (bigger documents, images and video files) and intensity of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) connections, are affecting the utilisation levels of WAN. With higher network traffic and limited bandwidth, the potential of network congestion is high, resulting in lower application performance and slower service delivery. This can lower business productivity and may impact the customer experience.
Choosing Managed Network Services (MNS) to run your network means you are already on the right path to overcoming the problem, but you can perfect the service further by opting to use WAN optimisation services as well.
According to a research by Goldman Sachs “IT Spending Survey: Downturn takes its toll”, US Technology Strategy: Independent Insight, 3/9/2009, exhibit 17”, WAN optimisation is ranked in the top ten priority list of today’s IT initiatives. This is because WAN has many functions necessary to stabilize networks suffering from busy and complicated conditions. The values of WAN Optimisation:
1. Application acceleration
The ability to expedite and receipt data delivery and improve productivity.
2. Network optimisation
Reduces barriers in data delivery on the network by 65% to 95%, minimising the waste of bandwidth quotas and providing many benefits without the need for excessive effort.
3. Consolidation
Amplifies signals between branch servers to the data centre, on a server in the branch itself and helping support performance improvement of LAN.
4. Disaster recovery
It is important for organisations to be able to back up all data and to recover it in a short time, which will minimise negative side effects on the WAN after a disaster and the achievement of the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO).
WAN optimisation is not just about optimising your organisation’s network utilisation, it is also about delivering organisational-wide, end-to-end network performance improvements through network stabilisation. For instance, you can have your applications run well in LAN, but if you have a bottleneck WAN, it will result in a slow-response application experience for your customers.
For example, an organisation using the cloud-based Office 365 service with WAN optimisation, delivers network stability, especially on Office Exchange applications (email) and SharePoint applications (collaboration). The use of WAN optimisation on cloud applications can optimise the application with current network up to 92% on SharePoint and 36% on Office Exchange. Hence, seamless collaboration runs smoothly, even if the server has been consolidated into a cloud environment. Furthermore, backup processes are also improved: reduced to just 5% of time needed, compared to the previous network set-up without WAN optimisation.
WAN optimisation services will not only help you manage your organisation’s network, but also the quality of your customer experience, the business growth potential and the ability to focus on your core business rather than your network infrastructure.
Choosing a qualified WAN optimisation service provider is an important decision for your company. You have to maintain your service quality, as well as the company’s reputation when signing contracts with vendors. However, the important thing in choosing the right service provider is that they should be able to provide a complete end-to-end solution: to manage everything from checking tools, hardware supplies, to maintenance and repair services. Make sure you also have a good and accountable service level agreement (SLA). Finally, ensure to check your service provider’s portfolio to enable you to choose the right one for your company.