What is Network Modernization?
Agile and robust networks are necessary companions in the digital age. Network modernization, a process fueled by new technologies and optimized techniques, can unlock future business growth and help businesses make use of greater bandwidth and integration allowed by 5G and cloud connectivity. We’ll talk about the technologies, strategies, and benefits of this step in digital transformation.
What is Network Modernization?
Network modernization refers to the process of upgrading and transforming a company’s networking infrastructure to improve its efficiency, security, scalability, and manageability.
This type of transformation often involves moving away from traditional, hardware-centric network setups toward more flexible and secure solutions, such as a cloud-based wide-area network (WAN).
The goal of network modernization is to create a network that can better support current and future enterprise needs, adapt to modern technology landscapes, and provide a foundation for digital transformation initiatives.
By revamping your network, you can achieve greater agility, facilitating more proactive business management amid shifting market conditions.
Why is it important for businesses?
Regardless of the industry you operate in, technology undoubtedly plays a central role in your day-to-day operations.
You rely on digital tools for managing back-end processes, communicating with consumers, booking appointments, facilitating transactions, and relaying information to vendors. Think of your network as the scaffolding for the various technology tools you rely on every day.
As you grapple with ever-increasing data volumes, the demand for faster, more reliable, and more secure networks becomes undeniable. Modernizing your network infrastructure not only addresses these needs but also equips you with the ability to adapt to changing customer expectations and market dynamics.
Consider the retail industry, where the integration of online and in-store shopping experiences demands a robust network capable of handling real-time inventory updates. A modernized network ensures that retailers can offer a unified and personalized shopping experience.
Similarly, in the healthcare sector, modernized networks are crucial for supporting telemedicine services, electronic health records (EHR), and Internet of Things (IoT) devices in patient care. These technologies require fast, secure connectivity to ensure the timely delivery of care.
Manufacturing companies also benefit from network modernization by adopting Industry 4.0 technologies. Smart factories rely on interconnected devices and systems to optimize production processes, predict maintenance needs, and enhance supply chain efficiency.
How to modernize networks
There are different ways to modernize existing networks. It’s a costly and resource-heavy process, so you must choose the way that best aligns with your needs. To help you with this, here’s a list of common ways to modernize your current network:
Network function virtualization (NFV)
If your existing network relies on costly and complicated hardware solutions, you should modernize to Network function virtualization (NFV). This shift allows you to deploy new services faster and scale existing ones to meet customer demand.
You can also manage and scale your infrastructure without new hardware installations, making NFV a more flexible and cost-efficient option over traditional networks.
Traditional WAN is a hardware-based network that requires manual changes but it’s not scalable. So, if your business grows, you should move to software-defined WAN. It is a flexible network architecture that uses software to manage and optimize connectivity across various hardware and connection types.
Since SD-WAN lowers operational costs and improves resource usage for multisite deployments – its demand among businesses increased – generating revenue of more than $13 billion.
Network slicing allows you to design multiple networks on a single shared infrastructure. This network modernization type caters to users with diverse needs. For instance, you can build one network slice to deliver high latency and another to deliver low latency.
Key benefits of Network Modernization
Modernizing your network comes with several benefits, including adapting your legacy infrastructure, improving your scalability, making your system more secure and reliable, boosting your efficiency, future-proofing your infrastructure, and saving you money.
Addresses Legacy Infrastructure Challenges
It can feel easier to maintain legacy infrastructure with little fixes here and there, but eventually, the burden of maintaining infrastructure that isn’t modernized will be something that holds your business back. By focusing on network modernization, you can identify and remedy challenges with your current legacy framework and build better paths.
Improves Scalability for Business Growth
James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, said: “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” You can easily get penned in when your systems prevent business growth and scalability. By modernizing your network infrastructure, you improve your business’s ability to scale and grow.
Strengthens Security and Reliability
Older networks can also be prone to increased security and compliance issues. Network modernization can help your business resolve these issues, mitigate risks by bringing in enhanced security measures, and strengthen your infrastructure using the features inherent in modern networks.
Heightens Operational Efficiency
Modern network management tools offer central control, automation capabilities, and real-time insights. These features can significantly reduce the amount of time spent on administrative tasks, making your organization more operationally efficient. Monitoring and automation tools can also streamline your workflows and free up your IT resources for more pressing projects.
Promotes Long-Term Cost Savings
While network modernization can be a significant upfront investment, businesses can enjoy substantial long-term cost savings and see a strong return on investment. A study by NTT found that 70% of CEOs believe that their network is impeding their business growth. Improving business delivery by upgrading network infrastructure can lead to business growth, improve efficiencies, and save money over time.
Helps Future-Proof Infrastructure and Sustainability
Future-proofing your business stands in opposition to maintaining legacy systems. Modern network technologies, including MCN, NFV, and synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH), can allow businesses to adapt to future growth and evolving expectations at a faster rate. Many new network solutions are also more sustainable, placing priority on energy-efficient protocols and components, which is another way modernized infrastructure can result in cost savings.
Top challenges to network modernization
Depending on the network modernization platform of choice, organizations must still overcome a few challenges and barriers to maximize a modern enterprise network investment. These challenges may include the following:
- Integration of tools within existing networks. Brownfield sites may include multivendor services, protocols, and designs that are not supported by modern orchestration tools.
- Proprietary services. Some network vendors cater to supporting only their hardware, network OS, and nonstandard networking protocols.
- Multiple orchestration tools are potentially required. Most orchestration tools these days focus on the intelligent management of LANs, wireless LANs, data centers, and WANs independently. No single tool exists yet that can manage mixed-vendor networks through a single management dashboard.
- Escalating costs if not careful. An orchestration platform is yet another licensed tool to add to the list of existing network operations services. While, in some cases, this added expense can be offset by using open network OSes and white box or brite box hardware, careful consideration must be made to ensure sound ROI.
Building the right Network Modernization plan
Businesses need to see the whole picture before they can build the right network modernization plan that will align with their goals and the current status of their infrastructure. The planning process requires specialized skills, a holistic view of the current architecture, and a clear vision of future plans.