If you’ve seen lots of wide area network diagrams you’ve probably noticed a familiar pattern emerge, one that bears a striking resemblance to the members of the arachnid family. Yep, quite a few WANs look an awful lot like a spider, with a central core branching out to multiple satellite data centers, offices and remote locations.

For a while, this design made sense and, honestly, was pretty much the only way to design a WAN. Central offices connected all of their remote locations through high speed (and high cost) dedicated connections.

But in the modern world of cloud computing and distributed networks, is this really the smartest way to connect the many locations of a large and distributed enterprise? Isn’t there are smarter way to do this networking?

Luckily, the answer looks to be yes. In the new Aberdeen Group research report “Building a Smarter Networking Strategy for the Modern Large Enterprise“, I looked at how top performing businesses are improving network and application performance and also had the chance to speak to one specific organization that has built their own smarter global network.

It can be very easy for an organization to stick with an old-school strategy for networking. It’s often seen as a safe method, especially when compared to implementing a strange and potentially disruptive new architecture. But successful companies know that change is inevitable, and those who are able to effectively leverage new technologies and strategies will be able to improve network performance while simultaneously cutting overall network costs.

Jim Rapoza is Senior Research Analyst at Aberdeen Group.

Related Links:

Aberdeen IT Infrastructure Practice

Aberdeen Group Research Report: Building a Smarter Networking Strategy for the Modern Large Enterprise