Decision makers display a very high level of understanding that meeting their digital and business challenges means moving to a next-generation, software-defined network is critical.
Start with Part 1: Legacy Networks Are a Barrier to Cloud and Digital Transformation
As organizations are turning to a cloud-centric or cloud-first strategy, there is a major gap between what their current hardware-centric infrastructure offers and what they need to realize the benefits of the cloud.
In the Riverbed Future of Networking Global Survey 2017, 57 percent of 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 key to reaching this goal.
Other top factors driving the move to next-generation networking technology:
■ 56 percent – successfully achieving digital transformation initiatives
■ 55 percent – a strategic move to the cloud and hybrid networks
■ 51 percent – growing demand for mobility
■ 51 percent – rising customer and end user expectations
■ 45 percent – support for IoT devices
Next-Generation Cloud Networking and SD-WAN
While a 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, 98 percent agree that within two years SD-WAN technology will be critical in next-generation networks to manage cloud and hybrid. And while only 4 percent of those surveyed are currently benefitting from SD-WAN today, within two years 52 percent plan to migrate to SD-WAN, and 93 percent within four years.
Global IT decision makers see a variety of benefits for SD-WAN, each ranking fairly close:
■ Increase application performance (44 percent)
■ Network automation and ability to prioritize apps (44 percent)
■ Unified connectivity across entire network (43 percent)
■ Network visibility and monitoring (42 percent)
■ Simplicity/ease of management (42 percent)
■ Increased network security (42 percent)
■ Integration with WAN optimization (40 percent)
■ Instant cloud connectivity to AWS and Azure (39 percent)
■ Decreased costs (38 percent)
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 (48 percent)
■ increased productivity (47 percent)
■ greater opportunities for expansion (46 percent)
■ increased revenue (45 percent)
■ greater agility (44 percent)
■ improvement on digital initiatives (44 percent).
Methodology: The Riverbed Global Survey 2017: The Future of Networking is the result of a custom online survey by Wakefield Research of 1000 IT decision makers at companies with $500 million or more in revenue. Research was completed in August 2017 across nine countries: US, Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan and the UK. Among the 1,000 respondents, 200 were in the US, with 100 in each remaining country
