We live in a new world where everything runs on our networks. We have countless users, devices, applications, cloud services, and more, all connecting and consuming network resources worldwide. It’s no longer as simple as having everything – and everyone – in one corporate office. It’s not even a question of having a couple of corporate offices connected with MPLS. Employees are everywhere; applications and corporate data are in multiple clouds and the corporate data center; the number of devices and users connecting to your network can feel endless. It all creates so many potential points of failure and potential security risks that it’s virtually impossible to find the source of network or application performance issues – let alone find them proactively.
What can you do? You can hire more IT staff – though that’s unlikely amid a global recession with unprecedented inflation and a shortage of experienced network techs. But you also can’t do nothing. You’ll risk pushing your existing network professionals to the point of burnout.
You need a crystal ball to help you see everything on your network. While an actual crystal ball isn’t realistic, how about a cloud-based network management tool that does the same thing?
If it seems too good to be true, you don’t really understand the power of the cloud. At the very least, you’re probably not leveraging the cloud as much as you should, especially when it comes to your network.
The truth is IT traditionalists think the network needs to run entirely out of the corporate data center. After all, that’s the way it used to be. But that was a different era of networking, applications, and workforces. Today, you’re running countless workloads and applications in the cloud. You also need a network and management tools suitable for a cloud-driven world.
Start with a cloud-based network monitoring and management tool that unifies your entire network environment, from your remote users and branches to the cloud to the data center and your wired and wireless infrastructure to your cloud SD-WAN. Suddenly, you have a single platform that gives you full visibility into your entire network, including users, applications, and devices, without having to deal with multiple management applications and then trying to consolidate their data. Instead, you get a single application that delivers the complete performance, health, and security information for every user and device touching your network.
Now that you have all that data, what can you do with it? You need to be able to turn that data into actionable intelligence. Putting that burden on your IT team, where they have to sort through volumes of data to find relevant insights, is, at best, a drain on your resources. At worst, you risk your team getting burned out and quitting. Even if that doesn’t happen, there’s an increased risk of delayed response to any issues and key issues not being identified that could lead to more significant issues, like network outages or security risks.
What if you can bring ML and AI to analyze that endless data stream and deliver actionable intelligence and auditable solutions? Now, you’re easing the burden on IT and giving them only the information they need to troubleshoot issues faster and more effectively. Not only are you making their jobs easier, but you’re also creating better experiences for your network users and a largely autonomous network.
Security has to be top of mind for every IT team. The threats to any network are constant, and while there are countless security solutions out there, the more layers you can add to your security, the better. Leveraging AI/ML algorithms to detect network anomalies gives IT a leg up on threats, instantly notifying them of any abnormal network behavior and recommending remediation measures. You can even take security a step further with a cloud SD-WAN solution with an integrated firewall and other advanced security features.
There’s no way to simplify the network today. The demands of a cloud-driven economy are only going to create more complexity. There are too many connections, devices, and applications, all of which are error-prone. IT simply can’t see everything happening, making it virtually impossible for IT to deliver a consistent quality experience.
You can overcome those challenges, simplify the IT workload, and create a more reliable network by giving IT the tools to see everything at once.
The Infinite Enterprise doesn’t have to mean an infinite workload. ExtremeCloud IQ is designed for this very purpose – to streamline network operations, from deployment to maintenance. ExtremeCloud IQ CoPilot takes that monitoring, visibility, and optimization to the next level by adding machine learning algorithms to make sense of the data and make it easy for IT to manage your network – and still have time for other strategic projects.
Watch our webinar, where we cover how CoPilot can help IT teams be everywhere at once to ensure optimal user experiences: On-Demand Webinar
