For business leaders, the past two years have been among the most disruptive and unpredictable on record. Not only have they had to navigate their businesses through rapidly changing circumstances and adapt in order to survive, but they’ve also had to do so in a way that is sustainable and creates a foundation for the so-called new normal. This has led to the rapid acceleration of digital and cloud transformation strategies across the board. In something McKinsey dubbed The Quickening, a significant number of businesses had to cram nearly a decade’s worth of digital change into the space of three months at the start of the pandemic, and that pace of innovation is showing no signs of slowing.
Needless to say, connectivity has become the lynchpin holding businesses and economies together. But even prior to the pandemic, the quality, performance and reliability of that connectivity had a profound impact on a company’s productivity. For international organizations with offices and departments separated by oceans, connectivity has always been an agenda-topping concern. The same goes for businesses whose teams consist of virtually onboarded staff members, logging in instead of clocking in from wherever they are in the world. The need for stable, optimized connectivity has always been there; the pandemic has simply accelerated this need and pushed it higher up the agenda for more businesses. By all accounts, 2022 will be the year of connectivity.
#1: A basic internet connection will no longer suffice
Businesses have been using software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications for years, but as any remote worker will tell you, the experience of logging onto an application at home versus logging on in the office can differ greatly. Even just a several-second delay while waiting for a webpage to load or spreadsheet to populate can be enough to frustrate users and cripple their productivity. We shrug this off as normal, but we no longer need to put up with it.
It often surprises people to learn that there is more than one internet. The internet is actually comprised of hundreds of thousands of individual networks, all with varying degrees of performance degradation relative to the amount of traffic they’re handling. Today, businesses are able to tap into network-as-a-service (NaaS) solutions that optimize how their traffic is handled so that all users, no matter where they are, enjoy a priority network experience.
#2: Network-as-a-Service will be part of the new normal
According to a recent global survey, NaaS adoption will accelerate by more than 35% in the next two years alone, no doubt catering to the growing number of remote workers and distributed teams. With NaaS, organizations are delivered a wide area network (WAN) solution virtually via subscription, often using a private network where they pay for the capacity used. Instead of having a team of in-house experts on hand to configure routers, create protocols, identify LAN needs and generally build out network infrastructure, they can simply outsource to a third party and pay a monthly fee. NaaS adoption will sore, replacing things like virtual private networks (VPNs) and multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) as well as other legacy network configurations. Expereo’s suite of WAN optimization services does precisely this, allowing businesses and their users to optimize their connectivity using a regular internet connection instead of investing in a private network solution with a major telco provider. In other words, WAN optimization democratizes network optimization, making it affordable and accessible to businesses of all shapes and sizes. It’s part of an overall trend toward NaaS that is only going to speed up as we move into 2022 and beyond.
#3: Connectivity will become more about software than hardware
Embracing NaaS is one thing, but the variety of services on offer can make for some very different experiences. We’re therefore likely to see businesses start thinking about connectivity not only in terms of access but in terms of quality and performance. In other words, connectivity is about to become more app-centric and software-driven instead of being all about cables and hardware. This opens up new doors for businesses, potentially allowing their users to enjoy the spoils of superfast broadband without having to uproot everything and install new infrastructure. No more backhauling data over traditional WAN architectures resulting in bottlenecks and slow traffic, just a fast, scalable connectivity solution delivered via virtual subscription with no physical maintenance or local hardware involved.
The need for highly optimized connectivity that isn’t just office-centric has been present for years, but it’s only since the beginning of the pandemic that smaller and medium-sized businesses have started opening their eyes to the potential of virtual network optimization. We’re therefore likely to see NaaS adoption go from strength to strength as we move into 2022 and beyond, but just how well businesses capitalize on the advantages made possible by the technology remains to be seen.
