C&L October 2017_LR (5)

Insight
G
Companies are
struggling with
legacy networks,
which are not
suited for today's
cloud based
applications
and their
accompanying
workloads
etting rid of old furniture is a little like
replacing your legacy infrastructure.
It isn't easy to let go.
According to 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 -
especially networks - are holding back
their cloud and digital strategies.
The survey found that 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.
Let's agree to the fact that
SD-WAN is a definite improvement
over the MPLS networks. In the
recent March 2017 "Market Guide
for WAN Edge Infrastructure"
report, Gartner evaluated the
SD-WAN market at USD 1.3 billion
annually by 2020.That is a really
short time. Considering some
common problems that SD-WAN
promises to solve a)Increase
flexibility and performance of your
network b) Manage costs c) Decrease
network complexity, the Riverbed
survey confirms that 92% of IT
decision makers in India plan to
migrate to SD-WAN within the next
four years - up from just 3% in 2017.
Other benefits for SD-WAN include:
Increase 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%)
Currently, the survey confirms that
performance pains experienced by
businesses are glaring, as 42% of the
respondents 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.
All this adds up to the fact that
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.
According to the survey, 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 – this,
compared to 69% globally.
However, there's still hope.
The survey indicates that within
two years SD-WAN technology will be
critical in next generation networks
to manage cloud and hybrid. And
while only 3% of those surveyed are
currently benefitting from SD-WAN
today, within two years 54% plan to
migrate to SD-WAN, and 92% within
four years.
October 2017 | CIO&LEADER
35