New Network Industry Trends Report Sheds Light on Key NetOps Priorities for 2021 and 2022
SD-WAN, Application Performance, AIOps and Collaboration are driving forces as network professionals look to increase digital agility, security and cost savings
PALO ALTO, Calif.–LiveAction, the leader in network performance management, today announced a new State of the Industry Network Trends Report for 2021. The report details the key network industry trends impacting NetOps professionals across network transformation planning, refining of network operations, technology decisions and business goals. This includes specific insights on SD-WAN, application performance, AIOps and NetOps/SecOps collaboration.
“The global events of the last two years have had a tremendous impact on network infrastructure as remote workforces and cloud have pushed the limits of NetOps teams,” said John Smith, CTO at LiveAction. “As a result, our team wanted to better understand the current trends and challenges these teams face as they look to ensure performance and transform their networks to support new business goals in 2022. Today’s modern networks are being optimized like never before, and the results of this survey can help our community better understand the challenges that lie ahead.”
Key findings of LiveAction’s State of the Industry Network Trends Report include:
- Deploying or expanding SD-WAN solutions remains the top network transformation priority – According to the survey, 23.5% of respondents claim that SD-WAN adoption is the top network transformation project of 2021, and 28% stated it will remain the top project for 2022. This is likely driven by increases in cloud-oriented deployments that drive complexity, leaving many NetOps teams struggling to gain the visibility needed to manage the performance of SD-WAN deployments.
- Improving application performance across the entire network is key to refining network operations – When it comes to improving network operations, 20.4% stated that application performance was the top priority. This was followed closely by end-to-end network monitoring. Again, highlighting that organizations have low tolerance for the disruption and downtime associated with poor application performance.
- Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AIOps) are driving most network technology decisions – Not surprisingly, technology decisions continue to be driven by advances in AI and ML technologies with more than 33% of respondents identifying it as a disruptive force that continues to influence their buying decisions. When looking to 2022, nearly 16% of respondents identified SASE as an area that will increasingly impact decisions.
- Business goals are heavily tied to collaboration between NetOps and SecOps – Security was overwhelmingly the leading factor among NetOps professionals concerned with meeting business goals. The survey found that nearly 45% of respondents are focused on improving security. In addition, 17.5% of respondents are focused on improving collaboration between NetOps and SecOps to be more agile and reduce operational costs. This need for more visibility across teams is crucial for collaboration around network performance and security.
This report is based on a survey of networking professionals that on average manage more than 500 networking devices at organizations with more than 600 employees. The job titles of those surveyed include network engineers, IT Managers, and Network Architects.
About LiveAction
LiveAction provides end-to-end visibility into network and application performance from a single pane of glass. This gives enterprises confidence that the network is meeting business objectives, offers IT administrators full visibility for better decision making, and reduces the overall cost of operations. By unifying and simplifying the collection, correlation and presentation of network and application data, LiveAction empowers network professionals to proactively and quickly identify, troubleshoot and resolve issues across increasingly large and complex networks. To learn more and see how LiveAction delivers unmatched network visibility, visit https://www.liveaction.com.