Legacy networks hindering cloud adoption and digital transformation: Riverbed
In a survey by the Riverbed Technology, titled “Riverbed Future of Networking Global Survey 2017”, Which includes responses from 1,000 IT decision-makers across nine countries, including 100 in India, revealed that legacy infrastructures are holding back their cloud and digital strategies. According to the company, the survey explores the impact both legacy infrastructure and next-generation networks have on cloud adoption and digital transformation initiatives.
It revealed, nearly all respondents from India (98%) agree that legacy network infrastructure will have difficulty keeping pace with the changing demands of the cloud and hybrid networks. Conversely, 94% of respondents say their organization’s cloud strategy will only reach its full potential with a next-gen network, and 98% agree that a next-generation network is critical to keep up with the needs of their business and end-users.
The findings showed that there is a current gap in the adoption of next-generation technology such as SD-WAN (software-defined wide area networking) that will accelerate the cloud and digital transformation. However, a tipping point is near. Out of the IT decision- makers in India surveyed, 92% plan to migrate to SD-WAN within the next four years, up from just 3% today (compared to 4% globally).
Commenting on this, Bjorn Engelhardt, Senior Vice-President, Asia-Pacific & Japan, Riverbed Technology, said, “This survey and the resulting data reveal the tremendous pressure that IT decision-makers in India and globally are under to execute their cloud strategies, achieve digital transformation and keep pace with the speed of innovation that is the norm in today’s hypercompetitive markets.”
He further added, “It was almost unanimous that to have a successful cloud strategy, organizations must adapt next-gen software-defined networking immediately to support it. Riverbed is dedicated to ensuring this transformation is successful and that organizations are able to achieve the operational agility needed to thrive through the use of SD-WAN for cloud networking.”
Currently, performance pains experienced by businesses are glaring, as 42% report that they experience cloud-related network issues specifically caused by their legacy infrastructure a few times a month or more; and 90% said it impacts their business at least monthly. Unfortunately, 79% of these same decision-makers say they are still several years away from reaching the full potential of digital transformation, in part due to their legacy infrastructure. This gap between realization and actual deployment is consistent from companies across verticals such as financial, manufacturing, retail, energy and utilities, communications and media, and IT services, and could threaten their competitive positions in their respective markets.
The inability of these networks to support cloud-centric applications and workloads and just as importantly, provide end-to-end visibility into their performance is viewed as a real challenge to cloud success. 84% of Indian respondents stated both legacy networking infrastructure and lack of visibility into the cloud are barrier to their cloud strategy reaching its full potential – compared to 69% globally.
Companies are struggling with legacy networks, which are not suited to meet the demands of today’s cloud-based applications and their accompanying workloads. Simply put, legacy networks are dysfunctional for the business.
Factors Driving Businesses to Next-Generation Networks
In the survey, 60% of Indian respondents acknowledge that achieving operational agility is critical to the success of a modern enterprise, and next-generation networks as well as the technology to support them are the key to reaching this goal.
Other top factors which are driving the move to next-generation networking technology:
* 58% – successfully achieving digital transformation initiatives
* 53% – a strategic move to the cloud and hybrid networks
* 54% – growing need for mobility
* 57% – rising customer and end-user expectations (higher than the global average of 52%)
* 42% – support for IoT devices
The survey also found that the current gap exists in the adoption of next-gen technology to support cloud and digital transformation in the enterprise. This is changing quickly. Of those surveyed, 100% agree that within two years SD-WAN technology will be critical in the next- generation networks to manage cloud and hybrid. And while only 3% of those surveyed are currently benefiting from SD-WAN today, within two years 54% plan to migrate to SD-WAN, and 92% within four years.
Indian IT decision-makers see a variety of benefits for SD-WAN, each ranking fairly close:
* Increase in application performance (40%)
* Network automation and ability to prioritize apps (55%)
* Unified connectivity across entire network (43%)
* Network visibility and monitoring (47%)
* Simplicity/ease of management (51%)
* Increased network security (46%)
* Integration with WAN optimization (37%)
* Instant cloud connectivity to AWS and Azure (44%)
* Decreased costs (29%)
Updating legacy networks and anchoring next-gen networking with technology such as SD-WAN will have many positive outcomes for the enterprises according to IT decision-makers, including greater efficiency due to better use of bandwidth (47%); increased productivity (55%); greater opportunities for expansion (52%); increased revenue (45%); greater agility (42%); and improvement on digital initiatives (52%).
Users can also access the full report that also includes regional and vertical insights from the official website of Riverbed Technology.
Tags: cloud adoption, digital transformation, Riverbed, riverbed future of networking global survey 2017, Bjorn Engelhardt riverbed technology, varindia
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