CAIRO, Egypt, 7th July, 2015:
Choosing the right applications can make the difference between
increased margin or missed goals, increased efficiency or poor
productivity. But the right applications alone are not enough.
To derive maximum
business value, these applications need to be highly responsive,
accessible and easily available. Each application may be deployed across
different sites and servers with different internal and external users
and each one may have different technical demands, complexities and
levels of priority; but all are subject to having the right connectivity
within the organization’s IT ecosystem.
Fayez Eweidat, regional sales manager, MENA
says that the deployment of new applications on legacy systems can be a
daunting and slow process. If employees and customers can’t get a
decent connection to the applications they need, or the application
itself can’t connect to the other resources it needs, productivity and
profitability can suffer.
With more applications
being developed and deployed all the time, the management of frequent
updates, upgrades and security patches can become a never-ending
challenge. According to a recent CIO survey commissioned by Brocade,
almost two thirds of CIOs rate providing fast deployment of new
applications as an ‘extreme’ or ‘significant’ concern, while 65 percent
say the same about delivering fast access to applications from multiple
devices.
The IT department’s
ability to keep priority software platforms (such as ERP, CRM, finance
or accounting) available and responsive, directly impacts the
enterprise. At the same time, business units are increasingly taking
matters into their own hands by accessing applications via cloud
platforms. While this approach is cost effective, it only temporarily
masks the real problem – the complexity, low bandwidth and rigidity of
the owned infrastructure.
Why Agility and Automation Matter
No application is an
island. To provide the services, processes or information they are
designed to deliver, the network must provide the bandwidth and
availability needed.
Unfortunately,
providing this level of support can become an arduous task. The inherent
complexity of legacy networks, combined with the complexity of the
enterprises’ IT eco-system often makes it a manual, resource intensive
and error-prone process.
Agility and automation
within the network can create the optimized, application centric,
application aware environment required. It also ensures adaptability
and scalability as the enterprises’ needs change. Applications can be
deployed and prioritized quickly based on business needs. However,
getting the right combination of hardware, virtualized assets and
software is the key.
Optimize Your Network for Applications Today
To support the
business’s application needs, you need to be free to manage your
network, not your network’s problems. To give your organization the
innovative, user centric and software-defined infrastructure it needs,
you need to reconsider your entire network - from storage through the
data centre and out to your LAN and WAN requirements. For example,
fabric network solutions provide a transitional approach while
optimizing your current network and facilitating east-west traffic
flows. With in-built intelligence, fabrics address complexity, cost
considerations and ensure always-on accessibility. Application
connectivity is delivered at all times and tasks such as deploying
updates across a system are simplified.
Fabrics are also the
ideal foundation for Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and
Software-defined networking (SDN). SDN makes management of the network
simple, giving you the power to control and adapt your network so it
remains optimized to application needs at any given time. NFV solutions
enable network capabilities and flows to adapt in line with application
needs in near to real-time, without re-provisioning devices or cabling,
or deploying additional physical devices. Security, sharing, and
prioritization of activities can be determined by activity or project to
improve the efficiency and speed of data transfer. Demand can be
balanced across the network as determined by application requirements at
a given point in time.
In short, the network is more adaptive, agile and responsive to changing demands.
What Now
Relatively small
changes can help you take a significant transitional step towards
optimizing your network for applications. It is also the first step
towards an application-centric and aware infrastructure.
Virtualized functions
and a software-enabled system are central components in this ‘New IP’
network. They are part of the transitional technologies that come
together to deliver an infrastructure that is agile, affordable, and
automated. By being able to put the application at the centre of your
ecosystem, you are in a far stronger position to help the business meet
its objectives.
