The findings of Viavi Solutions’ 13th annual State of the Network report can be summarized in one word: Disruption.
Networks are seeing “tremendous” and “dynamic disruption” as a result of “relentless technological advances, remote working reaching an all-time high and the expanding security threatscape,” Viavi concludes.
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, IT teams are tasked with supporting the transition to remote working at “unprecedented scale” while also making emerging technologies go mainstream, Viavi says. Those two things pose challenges for service delivery in terms of network operations and just to make things even more complicated, security threats are on the rise.
For the first time in the report’s 13-year history, “understanding end-user experience” was reported as the top challenge for troubleshooting applications, for nearly 47% of surveyed respondents. The previous 12-year leader, problem domain isolation, fell to third place, with 31% of participants reporting that as a problem.
In addition, Viavi said that its survey showed that monitoring bandwidth consumption was the top management challenge during the transition to large-scale remote work, with “lack of physical access to user device[s]” reported as the biggest service monitoring obstacle. While Viavi found a “moderate decline” in year-over-year bandwidth usage growth, growth is still expected — driven largely by remote user access and cloud hosting.
Viavi also said that infosec professionals are reporting a rise in cyberthreats. NetOps teams report that 35% of their time is now dedicated to resolving security issues, and nearly 75% said that they need more visibility into the network. Some of increasing attack surface comes from internet of things devices: 54% of survey respondents said they have already deployed IoT devices, and another 24% said they planned to deploy IoT devices within the coming year. But only 57% said they have a mechanism in place to monitor those devices. Meanwhile, software-defined WAN “has gone mainstream,” with businesses expecting benefits in cost savings and business continuity. In addition, Viavi found that 64% of businesses fo all sizes were leveraging artificial intelligence-driven operations, aiming to eliminate manual tasks and resolve issues faster — but four in 10 reported questions about data quality and a related skills gap.
Viavi’s State of the Network report is compiled on the basis of survey responses from more than 400 network engineers, IT directors, security engineers and CIOs around the world.
“As remote working becomes the new norm, IT teams are challenged to find and adapt technologies, such as flow-based reporting to manage bandwidth consumption, VPN oversubscription and troubleshooting applications. To guarantee the best performance and reduce cybersecurity threats, increasing network visibility is now a must for all businesses,” said Charles Thompson, senior director for enterprise and cloud at Viavi. “By empowering NetOps, as well as application and security teams with network visibility, IT can mitigate the impact of disruptive migrations, incidents and new technologies like SD-WAN to achieve consistent operational excellence. This year’s State of the Network study clearly demonstrates an increasing awareness of this fact among all IT stakeholders.”
