The case for Software-Defined Wide-Area Networking (SD-WAN) Enterprise networks do not have it easy. They are facing an unprecedented level of demand; driven by the combined pressures of digital disruption, operational complexity and cyber security.
The continued growth of mobility, the IoT and big data applications is adding to what is already a lack of insight into IT operations. Legacy, frequently siloed systems see many IT departments spending 3x as much on network operations as they do the network itself.
Add to this the ever-changing cyber security landscape and its easy to see why the industry is ready for a change. Business demand for SD-WAN infrastructure and services will see a compound annual growth of over 69% over the next 3-5 years (IDC). By the end of 2021, Cisco predicts that 25% of all WAN traffic will be software-defined.
What is SD-WAN?
SD-WAN is the application of software-defined networking technologies to wide area, enterprise networks. It is used to secure WAN connections between branch offices, remote workers and data centre facilities that are geographically dispersed.
Effectively a network overlay, SD-WAN is carrier agnostic and transport Layer independent. It promises reduced operational costs, greater control over network applications and simplified management.
Who needs it?
It might be easier to say who doesn’t need it. Any organisation that relies on public or private networks to operate their business should be considering SD-WAN. More specifically, if you are contemplating any of these initiatives, SD-WAN should be front of mind:
- Use of video or bandwidth intensive applications
- Deploying hybrid WAN topologies at remote locations
- Planning to review/optimise existing branch routers
- Migrating away from MPLS
- Increasing bandwidth/network resilience
Managed SD-WAN
Whilst SD-WAN promises greater simplicity and visibility, management of the network and its component elements is required to ensure your WAN infrastructure continues to be a business enabler, rather than an inhibitor.
Many businesses will seek to employ SD-WAN as a managed service from a trusted technology partner to ensure they make the most of the benefits available. Improvements in business agility, reduced capital expenditure, ease of management, reduced maintenance costs, even greater resilience can be realised.
Thrive has established best-practice processes and resources for managing the implementation of software-defined networks. Our network monitoring and management solutions are backed by leading SLAs and our customers benefit from the transparency of a single provider for CPE and the underlying connectivity.
Moving your critical infrastructure to the cloud isn’t as hard as you think Cloud adoption rates have continued to rise through 2018. Having been the driving force behind digital transformation for small and medium sized businesses, it is predicted that this year will see a tipping point for enterprise cloud adoption.
According to Forrester, this year will see over 50% of enterprise workloads moved to the cloud. This prediction is supported by the findings of a LogicMonitor survey published earlier this year, in which respondents foresee 83% of workloads will be in the cloud by 2020. The survey suggests 41% will be running on public cloud platforms, with 20% using private cloud and a further 22% adopting a hybrid approach.
The naysayers that predicted cloud would have limited appeal to medium-large enterprises have had to admit that the cloud “bubble” is not going to burst. Adoption rates have continued to grow year-on-year as organisations of all sizes seek to take advantage of the reliability, flexibility and cost-effectiveness that cloud brings.
While these benefits are widely accepted, some organisations still feel a degree of reticence around making the jump to a cloud first strategy. This may be because of a perceived gap between what ‘good’ looks like (i.e. the ability to move their desired apps to the cloud) and the realities of budget, skills and resource constraints. For some, this makes a cloud-first strategy something that organisations pay lip service to, rather than committing to digital transformation.
There are two other reasons that organisations often cite when asked about their hesitance to move: Firstly, the belief that their critical applications are not cloud ready, and secondly a desire to maximise ROI on legacy technology – adopting the cloud for new tech only.
One or more of these reasons may ring true for your organisation, but we’d like to point out that you can have the best of all worlds – maximise the returns on your legacy investment, migrate your business-critical apps to the cloud and realise the cost, scale and availability benefits of cloud infrastructure.
‘Traditional’ vs. ‘cloud built’ applications
The business applications market has been experiencing its own revolution in recent years. Larger organisations are effectively re-writing traditional apps in a native cloud environment; creating cloud-scale, container-based applications, rather than an on-premises solution based within a single OS.
Cloud-scale, container-based apps (like Netflix or Salesforce) can run in hyper-scaler environments on public cloud infrastructure. The sheer volume of containers used (thousands) means these applications can be rapidly scaled up and down. It also means they are incredibly resilient, even if running on low-level SLA hardware, as they can tolerate a lot of the underlying hardware going offline without affecting performance.
In comparison, most small-medium sized organisations don’t have access to the budget or development resource required to transition their legacy apps in to cloud-scale apps. As a result, they are more likely to rely upon traditional software applications.
However, this does not mean your apps aren’t cloud ready. For traditional business-critical applications that require 100% uptime, private cloud infrastructure or colocation of your hardware in a third-party data centre can deliver the same benefits of scalability and availability.
A hybrid approach
With applications at different stages in their lifecycle, your cloud adoption strategy is likely to feature a phased migration. Between their current and desired state, organisations will migrate some systems early to take advantage of improvements in availability, security and scalability.
But there’s no need to stop there. Legacy applications are seen to hold companies back, but this shouldn’t be the case. Moving these apps now to a Private Cloud (eliminating the need to re-build them) provides a true cloud first strategy through this blended, hybrid approach.
Many of your applications can be moved sooner than you think and Thrive’s team is ready to advise you on just this. Speak to us to find out more about them.
Four vital criteria when choosing a virtual meetings solution While email remains the most ubiquitous form of communication, with worldwide traffic set to hit 281.1 billion emails per day by the end of 2018, it isn’t the ‘be all and end all’ of office communiqué. Information can get lost, messages misinterpreted and deadlines missed. This doesn’t exactly make for a collaborative environment.
As workforces are becoming widely dispersed, with team members working together in the office, from home and across borders, virtual meeting solutions are recognised as an excellent way for people to connect and collaborate irrespective of where they work.
You may think that deploying a solution out-of-the-box is a quick and easy way to achieve greater collaboration within your organisation, but without the correct planning and management it’s a goal you’ll struggle to achieve.
To help you on your way, we’ve put together a list of what you need to watch out for when choosing a virtual meetings solution for your business.
1. Don’t deploy a solution that doesn’t fit
Checking that your organisation would benefit from a virtual meetings solution may sound like an obvious first step, yet many decision makers will fall into the trap of assuming that a problem needs fixing without talking to their colleagues first. Inevitably, this leads to them implementing something that is poorly received and may not solve anything.
Asking your teams how they communicate on an every-day basis, where they struggle and what they think can be improved, ensures that the solution complements your own bespoke needs. It also helps you build your business case by demonstrating the value it can bring to staff.
2. Keep users top of mind – now and in the future
Making your users’ lives easy must be the top priority of your project; after all, they will use the technology every day. Providing them with a solution that can be used across all their devices, permits them to share files, thoughts and ideas securely and ties into other systems they use in their everyday working lives, will help drive adoption as well as increase productivity and satisfaction.
As this is a solution you’ll look to keep for years to come, you should make sure that it will suit the needs of your future workforce, which will be made up of tech-savvy millennials to whom flexibility and workplace satisfaction are key drivers.
3. Take time to form your strategy
Without a uniform strategy, there’s always a danger that your staff will go away and choose their own tools. This problem can be amplified when different teams all pick different tools from each other; sharing knowledge across these teams becomes even more difficult as individuals will not be willing to use a different tool for every project they work on.
Forming a strategy that promotes collaboration, using a defined set of tools, will minimise the use of ‘shadow IT’ and encourage much greater user adoption.
4. Think beyond collaboration tools
While the tools you implement form an important part of your strategy, you also need to look at your culture and working environments.
Promoting a culture that encourages collaborative working may be something you already do, in which case it’s a matter of ‘tweaking’ it to encourage the use of your new tools. However, if this cultural shift is new, you should involve your staff throughout the process to make sure they’re aware of how the solution will change the way they work for the better.
Alongside this, it’s also key that your workspaces are kitted out to encourage collaborative working. Think about quiet areas and huddle spaces in the office, coupled with the right applications for remote and mobile workers.
Need some help deciding on a collaboration tool for your business? Let us help.
Five things to avoid when moving office Moving office is a complex and time-consuming process that, if properly managed, can provide your organisation with more than just a new office – it can give you a better way of working. Your IT infrastructure forms a crucial part of this process, so how can you ensure you get it right?
The decision to move office is not taken lightly. Start-to-finish, the process can take major enterprises anywhere between 12 months and six years of careful planning and management. Apple’s move to its new Apple Park campus, for example, took over six years while UBS’ move to its new London office took around the same time and was coupled with a 12-weekend project that saw some 5,600 employees move into their new space.
You may think that a relocation is just about changing where you work, but it’s about so much more. By taking a little time and effort, it’s an opportunity to transform how you work too. There are few areas in your business where this transformation will have a larger impact than your IT. Modernising key systems, processes and infrastructure makes your staff more productive, your technology more cost-effective and your business more responsive. This ultimately helps IT to add more value to your business, which is what we’d all like at the end of the day.
Of course, taking on large-scale move projects doesn’t come without risk. This is why we’ve put together a list of the five biggest mistakes you should avoid when moving your IT to your new office.
1. Not conducting a thorough audit
It may sound obvious, but if you fail to take stock of what you’ve got then you aren’t going to be able to account for it later. Conducting a thorough audit is one of the most important steps you can take as it will help you understand the true size and scale of your network and show you the status of every device. Taking shortcuts will only create a recipe for disaster later on.
It’s also important to consider the lifecycle of your equipment and understand your contractual obligations – especially for services that you cannot move with you such as internet connectivity. Afraid it will take too long? There are network monitoring and product lifecycle tools that can help.
2. Not properly scoping your project
Your existing IT systems will be heavily entrenched in your day-to-day operations, so it may be tempting for you to leave them alone, but just because your existing setup is functional doesn’t mean it’s ‘right’. If your staff are complaining about slow network speeds, or your customers about siloed communications, the chances are that productivity is suffering.
It’s also the perfect time to think about the tasks that your IT team are undertaking on a regular basis and ask yourself: Are there better ways of doing these? Making your day-to-day tasks more efficient allows you to free up limited but valuable resource for larger scale projects.
By listening to the needs of key stakeholders, you’ll be surprised to find problems you didn’t even know existed. Discuss these with your IT provider so they can recommend solutions.
3. Not getting properly connected
With the proliferation of SaaS, colocation and hybrid networks it’s clear that a large proportion of your business will be based in the cloud. Couple this with your growing number of wireless devices and you begin to see the importance of installing the right connectivity into and around your new office.
It’s crucial that you don’t leave your connectivity as an afterthought; though you’ll be surprised how many project managers do. Failure to research the types of connectivity available at your new site, or to spec what you need correctly, can result in staff spending more time admiring the décor than actually working. Be sure to think about the devices you have, the tools you use, and of course the lead times for new services.
4. Keeping your old, failing IT equipment
Not all assets should be sweated, so moving them wherever you go might not get you far. Thankfully you have a range of options available; for equipment you’d like to keep you can opt for the ‘my kit, your place’ flexibility of colocation, if you wish to retire equipment you can put your IT in the cloud, or if you wish to blend both then hybrid networking is both a popular option.
If your applications are in the cloud already it’s unlikely they’ll require any change, while cloud ready applications can be moved into a ‘public cloud’ with minimal effort. Not all of your applications will be cloud ready, but this doesn’t mean they have to stay on-premises; instead, you can move them into your own ‘private cloud’ environment at a hosted data centre.
These approaches help save physical space, extend the lifecycle of your equipment and are cost-effective.
5. Not keeping your house in order
The final hurdle is always the most difficult. Even if you’ve performed your due diligence and finalised your connectivity and infrastructure, poor project management can undo all this work and, in the worst case, lead to delays or lengthy downtime.
When it comes to preventing this, partnering with an IT provider with experience of managing office moves is key, as they will be able to walk through your move project with you and help you avoid any potential stumbling points along the way.
IT RELOCATION SERVICES FROM THRIVE
Your moving process may seem complex and time-consuming, but it doesn’t have to be. With the right tools, partners and planning, the move to your new space can be a breeze. Thrive has extensive experience in scoping and managing office moves, so you’re in safe hands.
Like to find out more about how to manage your IT office move project? We’re here to help.
