Introduction

We have digital native start-ups; we have enterprises. In the last few years, the narrative has been one of the former disrupting the latter. According to a new report from IDC, that’s all about to change.

The next disruptor is not going to be another start-up, but what the analyst calls the digital-native enterprise. These are digitally transformed organizations that can innovate at pace, empower the workforce to make customer-centric decisions quickly, and take an ecosystem approach.

They’re powered by the adoption and integration of new tools and resources like public cloud, SaaS, unified communications, IoT, and Big Data analytics.

Decentralized operations need decentralized networks

There’s one area of transformation, however, that’s often overlooked: the enterprise network.

Networks are critical to application performance and security, with most being designed to work with apps residing in data centers. What happens when the apps leave the DC, as they do in digital native enterprises? This places increased complexity, bandwidth and security issues if the network is retrofitted to fit these new cloud-driven approaches.

Indeed, security, flexibility/agility, cost and traffic were the top four requirements for networks, according to IDC’s European Enterprise Communications Survey 2018.

Traditional networks are going to struggle to deliver security, flexibility and the capacity to cope with traffic demands while keeping costs under control. Enterprises need to recognise that to become a digital-native enterprise requires a digital-native network.

That means one that bridges the traditional gaps between LAN, WAN, data centers, and public clouds, while building in security across the network.

A virtual solution

It means network virtualization.

Virtualizing networks can deliver improvements in network performance and flexibility; simplify security through visibility into network traffic; and help apply patches across entire networks in minutes, rather than hours and days.

In other words, creating a network fit for a digital native enterprise.

For more information on how network virtualization can give enterprises the future-proofed network they need to become digital-native enterprises, download the report.

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Category: News & Highlights

Tags: Big Data Analytics, data center, Digital transformation, Enterprise, IDC, IDC report, IoT, Public Cloud, SaaS, unified communications, virtualization