A bridge over troubled water? Infrastructure truly essential for crisis-time business health

Sponsored Due to the impact of COVID-19, more than half of technology executives surveyed by KPMG International and HFS Research significantly changed their organisation’s strategic priorities. Survival became the immediate objective of their technology investments.

Business continuity plans are being tested, necessitating substantial business building and innovation. Enterprise leaders have invariably taken immediate steps toward digitisation, data analytics and virtual customer engagement.

Managing the inevitable transition to a digital business model is made more complicated at a time when investments are critical, but cash must be preserved, said Cliff Justice, KPMG global lead for Intelligent Automation. Yet, nearly 60 percent of executives polled agree that COVID-19 has created an impetus to accelerate digital transformation initiatives.

Despite tightening enterprise IT budgets, “supporting a suddenly remote workforce and enabling contactless operations has created new demand for network capabilities”, according to an IDC study. No longer can infrastructure be an afterthought.

“Enterprises are relying more heavily on networking technology, from enabling secure connectivity to supporting increased demand for collaboration platforms," said Rohit Mehra, vice president of Network Infrastructure at IDC. Since the pandemic began, investments have been focused on unified communications and collaboration tools, network management, and data centre networking.

In the KPMG survey, respondents considered cloud migration an absolute necessity. Over the next year, they are likely to invest in technologies such as 5G; artificial intelligence (AI); hybrid and/or multi-cloud; and edge computing.

Asia Pacific enterprises’ drive toward digital transformation has led to accelerating adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) and edge devices. The regional IoT market is expected to hit $424.2 billion by 2025. In China, one report highlighted that among enterprises in China with a desire to digitally transform, around 60% are investing in IoT and applications at the edge.

Infrastructure first

Amidst intensifying digitisation, the quality of service offered by an enterprise network infra-structure, comprising hardware, software and services, has the potential to make or break the business it supports.

The network has become an integral part of virtually every enterprise function in every department, including the manufacturing floor, distribution hubs and service centres. They are connecting more devices, IoT sensors, and mission-critical systems.

“Since the beginning of 2020 and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen the need for critical infrastructure in essential businesses such as healthcare where networks were stretched to their limit, just like vital employees,” wrote Jason Reasor, director of Strategy and Technology for Enterprise Systems at CommScope in a blog post.

To prepare for the evolving normal in how business is conducted, the immediate focus for enterprises should be to simplify the network portfolio so that a single network supports multiple applications, power and data. Clearly, such a network has to be made reliable, scalable and resilient to withstand volatile bandwidth demand or cyber attacks and to evolve as user demand requires.

That same essential infrastructure also needs to be adaptable. “Adaptable networks are flexible and expandable in all kinds of environments and with various types of applications. Indoors, outdoors, IT and OT networks – adaptable networks support them all,” Reasor added. Such an infrastructure must effectively serve the core needs of the organisation: business continuity, data security, physical safety.

In other words, enterprises of all sizes need to upgrade their infrastructure to deliver an engaging and collaborative experience to customers and stakeholders. This calls for a strategy that supports non-disruptive scaling and migration for network expansion and upgrades.

Hence, CommScope recommends critical infrastructural changes to establish network reliability. These encompass two key areas:

• Wired and wireless connectivity
• Cloud-managed network management and intelligence

Connectivity drivers

To drive long-term business success, CommScope’s network infrastructure solutions enable organisations to upgrade or update any connection and cable – from copper and fibre structured cabling to IoT access networks; from unified Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 6E and switching to intelligent automated infrastructure management; and from Power over Ethernet (PoE) to extendable powered fibre.

With simplicity, reliability and adaptability in mind, this may entail unifying discrete networks onto a converged PoE-enabled structured cabling platform with UPS backup or providing mobile support for Wi-Fi, 3G/LTE/5G, and multi-operator networks to expedite repairs and moves/adds/changes.

For example, enterprises seeking to deploy IoT solutions as part of digital transformation efforts face a complex, fragmented ecosystem of standards, devices and services, which leads to delays, infrastructure silos, and uncertain return-on-investment. An IoT access network enables your organization to more quickly realize benefits from IoT use cases by consolidating multiple physical-layer networks into a single converged network. This simplifies IoT endpoint onboarding, establishes uniform security protocols and converges IoT endpoint management and policy-setting.

A full-service hotel chain in Germany, for instance, have found it necessary to invest now and lay this technological foundation for services that will become the norm in the years ahead. These include mobile check-in, digital room keys via Bluetooth Low Energy technology, and smart control of air conditioning and lighting systems.

Management drivers

To help enterprise IT teams manage the evolving transformation that enterprises need to undergo to tide through the impact of Covid-19, migration to cloud-based solutions have become cost-effective, low-risk options.

For example, CommScope’s RUCKUS Cloud makes it easy to provision, manage, optimize and troubleshoot wired and wireless networks across multiple sites via a single web dash-board or mobile app. The platform is tightly coupled with RUCKUS Analytics, yielding an integrated management and network intelligence cloud service that requires no on-premises hardware.

These cloud-based solutions enable enterprises to deploy access points with dual-band support (2.4 GHz/5 GHz) to establish reliable Wi-Fi networks that are controlled by a cloud-based Wi-Fi controller. With minimal hardware to be installed on-site, procurement costs and expenditures are drastically reduced. A centralised, cloud-based solution also allows vendors to provide the necessary support remotely and respond much faster to changing requirements.

An intelligence system such as automated infrastructure management (AIM) helps to monitor the physical layer and receive real-time updates as connectivity information changes. The AIM system complements a structured cabling solution by providing better monitoring of efficiency in connectivity use and tighten overall costs amid COVID-19’s impact. AIM documents the data centre cabling infrastructure; captures detailed information of device locations and connections; and relays it to higher-level network management systems like RUCKUS Cloud.

A key consideration is that “the real damage is done by the smaller daily issues that consume the IT department’s time and resources and eat away at productivity and profits,” said Reasor. “For example: the wireless network goes down; a bad server connection knocks the CRM off line; or a power interruption disrupts the security access system, locking employees out of their offices.”

This reality underscores how a simplified, reliable and adaptable infrastructure can free IT to focus on the big IT issues that can make or break the business.

Sponsored by CommScope®