How can enterprise networks better meet the unique needs of hospitality, education, healthcare and other industries in 2024?
It’s admittedly a tall order. Networks are now expected to address a variety of use cases, each with unique performance demands, while delivering 24/7 accessibility. Engineering the network requires complex modern infrastructures that embrace Wi-Fi, Ethernet, 4G/5G, IoT and potentially other technologies — along with the respective skill sets that go with them.
That expertise is increasingly difficult to find. IT teams report that they already waste nearly 20% of their time and budgets using separate tools to manage their various wireless and wired networks.
Ideally, each network would automatically adapt its service levels to accommodate the performance requirements of any given connected device, from a warehouse robot to an office PC to a smart parking meter. In this way, networks become purpose-driven and minimize the amount of time and money IT expends trying to manage each access network independently. For these reasons, a growing number of enterprises will adopt the purpose-driven approach to network deployment, operation and management as 2024 unfolds.
‘Purpose-driven’ for network performance improvement
In a purpose-driven network, the identity of each onboarded device/user is paramount. AI and machine learning (ML) platforms enable the network to recognize a device’s identity and map that identity to a business value associated with a network policy. The policy specifies the throughput, latency, jitter and other performance metrics required for each connected device to deliver its intended value.
The AI/ML-driven platform can translate a command, business intent, key performance indicator (KPI), or policy into the automated allocation of network resources needed to enforce the service levels associated with each device’s identity. The network can monitor, analyze and dynamically learn from massive volumes of network-wide data to quickly identify patterns, anomalies and potentially service-impacting issues.
By analyzing and learning from aggregated network data, the network can auto-adjust to preempt any service degradation and continue to meet the stipulated service levels. Or, if the network is congested, it can follow a predefined policy for the level of priority treatment each connected device should receive when contending for bandwidth.
Network assurance minus complexity
The dynamic capabilities described require smart management platforms that know the business value of the devices coming onto the network, no matter where they’re located. Making the purpose-driven network even more compelling is the integration of AI-driven policy and network management across an enterprise’s Wi-Fi, 4G/5G cellular, Ethernet, IoT and other networks. Unified management allows businesses to deploy the network technology best able to serve each device and use case with defined service-level metrics minus the paralyzing complexity that running multiple types of networks from different vendors typically creates.
A recent study from ZK Research, for example, found that nearly three-fourths (73%) of 402 enterprises surveyed currently operate between two and five management systems to run their separate networks. Moreover, 91% said that having to use separate management tools wastes 17% of their time and 19% of their budget. It’s not surprising, then, that 88% said integrated management of their multiple access networks would be beneficial.
Wi-Fi, private 4G/5G, IoT and Ethernet networks each excel for certain situations, and it’s important to align them with the appropriate use cases. For example, Wi-Fi optimally serves local-area fixed wireless and mobile use cases that require high speeds and a low cost point but can tolerate some latency due to the shared nature of Wi-Fi spectrum. 4G/5G best supports ultra-reliable mobility and low-latency applications, such as industrial IoT, robotics and roaming use cases; it can also serve as a fixed last-mile broadband network. Ethernet, of course, accommodates stationary, often computer-to-computer terrestrial use cases that require maximum availability and speed, offering dedicated bandwidth per device of up to 400 Gbps.
Establishing identity-driven service-level agreements (SLAs) that correspond to the enterprise’s desired business outcome, value, or KPI calls for intent to be programmed into the unified AI-driven management platform, which centralizes policies and applies them throughout the distributed multi-access network. The platform can then automatically detect if SLAs are not being met and suggest possible reasons and modifications to bring service levels back into compliance.
Vertical market use cases and requirements
Each industry tends to have at least some specialized network use cases. Within a given business, there also may be varying performance requirements depending on whether network-connected devices are in carpeted office areas, warehouses, factory floors, retail stores, or somewhere else. An office space often has a fairly predictable number of users and traffic loads, for example, while public venues like sports arenas, hotels, stores and airports often have erratic numbers of concurrent users and unpredictable demand surges.
Consider the following sample situations and the associated network requirements.
- Hospitality. The customer experience in hotels, casinos, resorts, conference halls and restaurants reigns supreme, often dictating whether the venue will get repeat business from that customer. Enterprises in this market can deploy AI-powered, purpose-driven networking to establish standard SLAs across all branded properties, including those owned by franchisees.
- Education. The education sector now supports distance learning that demands always-on, equitable bandwidth for all students. To help support that requirement, IT can set bandwidth and performance SLAs for devices with student identities, and the purpose-driven network can enforce those SLAs. Moreover, service-validation tools might be used to test whether the network is “learning-ready” and/or “Zoom conferencing-ready” before the start of the school day. The network will likely also support targeted service-level metrics for other types of devices in the district, such as faculty computing devices.
- Healthcare. Hospitals in general and emergency rooms in particular are crowded, busy places with highly mobile caregivers and patients. IT departments in these organizations can create policies for differentiated network service levels based on the seriousness of each patient situation. An ER physician’s tablet or smartphone would likely have top-priority access and optimum service levels, for example. Upon check-in, the intake coordinator could flag the chart of a patient that needs immediate, possibly life-saving treatment, and the priority service level could follow that patient’s caregivers as they roam across network segments.
In all industries, each enterprise must have a way to check that the established SLAs are indeed being met. SLA verification should be achievable regardless of whether the network is built and managed by internal IT staff or by some combination of mobile network operators, equipment vendors and service providers. A unified AI-based management platform that delivers a customized dashboard showing dynamic network and per-device usage and service levels, for example, can allow businesses to check SLA compliance quickly and easily.
So long to best-effort networks
“Good enough” connectivity no longer meets business needs. Ultra-reliable network uptime has become table stakes for all types of access networks, and business decision-makers are now looking beyond mere uptime to measure the productivity, flexibility and innovation value their networks might deliver.
It’s become impossible for lean IT teams to effectively run large, complex and heavily loaded networks using manual processes to try to react to dynamic network demands. They now require automation that tunes the network to each use case and unpredictable traffic patterns so it can consistently meet the performance and business expectations of each connected device.
Unified, AI-driven management platforms that span multiple wireless and wired access networks deliver on these requirements while freeing enterprises from having to limit the network technologies they deploy in an effort to reduce complexity. They can now move forward with scalable, manageable multi-access environments that match each use case to the right network, whether that’s Wi-Fi, cellular, Ethernet or something else.
Table of Contents
