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Cloud-Based Networks: Why Is This Transition Necessary?

Companies across the world are leveraging cloud services as the prime enabler for completing their digital transformation. In fact, cloud transformation has become a major C-suite agenda item as companies transition from a traditional piecemeal approach to a more holistic end-to-end digital transformation with the cloud at its core. Businesses gearing up for success in the contemporary landscape are the ones to rapidly navigate this change, make the appropriate choices, and engage with the right partners to enhance their capabilities.

Cloud computing makes it easier to gather data from an expansive number of sources and allows for more meaningful and granular analytics by creating vast data lakes. The same is true for cloud-based networks. It allows network infrastructure to feed telemetry into just a single data lake for better analysis, while ML and AI services can be used for identifying abnormal patterns and assisting in troubleshooting.

Use Of Cloud-based Networks

The advantageous features and impact of cloud-managed services have made organizations transform the manner in which they function and deploy their services. Because of the growing number of connected devices used today, managing the network has traditionally been expensive and resource-intensive for businesses. Hence, it can be a prudent choice to move your networking infrastructure to the cloud. Cloud engineering and networks would help you keep pace with the ever-evolving requirements of the workforce. The cloud-managed network market is expected to reach $14.61 billion by the year 2027.

A cloud-based network aids in handling the network remotely while eradicating the need to have on-premises rack space, hardware, and cooling requirements. Such networks are easy to run and save money, and analytics services can be used to determine any issues proactively and make them more efficient. Automation can also be deployed in common configuration areas and for certain other parameters. The software and hardware are usually pretty advanced in cloud-managed networks and, hence, can deliver improved control, performance, reliance, and flexibility to accelerate business productivity and efficiency. It can drive agility and ensure faster delivery of services. Cloud-managed networking plays an important role in providing enhanced IT efficiencies and cost savings for office spaces, work-from-home environments, healthcare organizations, educational institutions, and so on.

What Makes Cloud Networking Better Than Traditional Networking? 

As cloud computing becomes increasingly prevalent, network architects decide whether they should move a company’s computing to the cloud or opt for traditional networking. While traditional IT models do provide businesses with absolute control over their information, their functionality does come at a cost. When opting for traditional networking, companies have to invest in diverse hardware pieces and upgrade them on a regular basis. This can prove to be a huge hassle for even most of the IT team. Very often, traditional networks are not able to meet the networking requirements of modern companies like server virtualization traffic, dynamic scalability, handling of network traffic, and more. The user experience can also be hampered with traditional models. Modern users expect access to resources and data in a manner similar to how they access data in their personal lives today, whenever and however they like.

Cloud networking, on the other hand, involves much less user-owned software and hardware. It is a type of IT infrastructure in which network capabilities, processes, and resources are hosted on the cloud and are available on demand. This cloud can be public, private, or hybrid. As resources are hosted in the cloud, it becomes possible to access a range of real-time features on an on-demand basis while paying as you go. Cloud networking resources may include bandwidth, load balancers, network management software, and virtual routers, which can be scaled as per the user’s requirements. Cloud networking allows businesses to create complex networks using only the internet while facilitating a sophisticated yet simplified user experience.

Keeping Pace With Digital Innovations

Modern businesses seek ways to gain competitive advantages by creating compelling experiences for employees and clients and facilitating cloud transformation. Networks play a critical role in the delivery of data, applications, and digital experiences to end-users. However, siloed, manually driven legacy networks can hold businesses back. Shifting to cloud-based networks, therefore, becomes a prudent choice as it can make your application accessible via the internet while providing seamless connectivity between applications and data centers, services, and workloads.

Unified, cloud-based networks, conversely, make deploying entirely new sites or services pretty hassle-free. Capabilities like zero-touch provisioning allow IT to pre-configure devices, including gateways, switches, and access points. Devices are plugged in, powered up, and automatically receive their configurations from the cloud. Network connectivity is up, and it runs within just a few moments.

Reduced downtime, high availability, and improved resilience are some of the prime advantages of cloud-based networks. The task of updating cloud networking resources and apps is managed by the relevant service provider, who assures prompt upgrades and ensures that business-critical apps always stay available. This frees up a lot of time for the internal IT team of a company and allows them to focus on other priorities, leading to better productivity.

Optimizing An Existing Cloud Network

In the contemporary cloud-based environment, the network has become more important than ever to the IT operations of a business. Even with important data and services hosted in the cloud, the network traffic of any growing business is likely to only go up. Hence, it becomes imperative for them to focus on ways to maximize the efficiency of their network.  

Business operations are affected by network delays, which might either involve different communication paths or be one-way. By optimizing latency, network teams can be assured of reduced congestion and better network speeds. Additionally, the security and performance of existing networks are closely tied to their proactive network diagnostics, traffic patterns, and bandwidth. Proper network management tools are required to identify the applications impacting the bandwidth, control rate-limiting configurations, and evolve traffic patterns.

Conclusion

Cloud-based networks go a long way in enabling companies to reduce their overhead expenses and management concerns. With centralized management capabilities, you can manage your network anytime and anywhere. In addition, it offers a whole new level of agility that is difficult to accomplish with a typical on-premises model.

FAQs

1. What are cloud-based networks?

Cloud-managed or cloud-based networking offers the scale, management, and visibility required to effectively operate the distributed cloud and on-premises network, location, and security infrastructure of today, along with user-specific services.

2. Which industry can benefit from cloud-based networks?

Almost any industry can find cloud engineering and closed-based industries useful, from manufacturing and retail to finance and transportation.

3. What is the difference between software updates in on-premise systems and cloud-based networks?

Software is updated whenever required in cloud-based systems, and features are added without impacting other services or release cycles. On the other hand, IT teams have to download updates and fixes, as well as adhere to fixed release cycles for on-premises systems.

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