LiveAction recently released its new network industry trends report.  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.  To find out more, we reached out to industry expert, John Smith, CTO and Co-Founder at LiveAction.

VMblog:  How have networks changed over the past several years and what was the goal of this report?

John Smith:  Now more than ever business transformation is being driven by remote workforces, the proliferation of data, increasing complex IT systems, and decreasing resources and budgets. As more organizations migrate to public and hybrid clouds, and SD-WAN environments, visibility is becoming more challenging. This is putting added pressure on networking professionals to adapt to these changes to ensure performance and security of infrastructure. The goal of this report was to gain insights into the key network industry trends that are impacting NetOps professionals and better understand the technology decisions they're making as they plan and refine these networks to meet business goals.

VMblog:  In the report, what did network professionals identify as their top network transformation initiatives?

Smith:  It's not surprising that projects with the highest priority are moving towards optimizing digital agility, security and cost savings. Specifically, network professionals identified deploying or expanding SD-WAN solutions as their top network transformation priority (at 23.5%) - and 28% stated it will remain the top project for 2022. This shows that organizations are looking to SD-WAN for improved network performance and reduced communication costs across remote offices and distributed branches. But this trend was closely followed by 20% focusing on deploying or expanding multi-cloud network connectivity and 19% on deploying or expanding public cloud infrastructure. Which also demonstrates that cloud-oriented deployments are adding complexity and a continued focal area.

VMblog:  When it comes to improving and refining the network, what were the specific priorities? 

Smith:  The report shows that fast, secure, and reliable connections continue to be a foundational component for business success, with 20.4% of respondents stating that application performance was their top priority. This was followed closely by end-to-end network monitoring and improved collaboration between teams. However, improving network performance at remote sites and improving network reporting were also identified as key areas of focus.

VMblog:  What technology trends are impacting NetOps teams' tech decisions? 

Smith:  AI and ML continues to have a huge impact on all sectors of tech. The networking space is no different, with more than 33% of respondents identifying it as a disruptive force that continues to influence their buying decisions. This is likely because AIOps can help address complex challenges in real-time based on its ability to intelligently detect and recognize malicious or abnormal activities on the network. But it was followed by other security technology trends such as NDR, XDR and EDR. Interestingly enough, only 16% of respondents identified SASE as an area that will increasingly impact decisions.

VMblog:  As NetOps looks to support business goals, what are some of the key areas they're focused on?

Smith:  The network is a core component to business success and delivering on technology initiatives is critical for NetOps teams. Security was overwhelmingly the leading factor among NetOps professionals concerned with meeting business goals. According to the survey 45% of respondents are focused on improving security and additionally 17.5% of respondents are focused on improving collaboration between NetOps and SecOps. However, increasing visibility, creating a more secure environment, and expanding upon cloud-first strategies were all listed as high priorities for NetOps.

VMblog:  What are some of the tools and technologies NetOps teams should be looking at to help them capitalize on these networking shifts and goals?

Smith:  Networks have been undergoing monumental shifts over the last two years and NetOps teams are looking to achieve end-to-end performance and network visibility, all while increasing security. But they're having to optimize performance while reducing IT operations costs. That's putting pressure on them to deploy technologies like SD-WAN, AI/ML and SASE, while build systems that can support hybrid cloud services. And, while doing all of this, they're having to learn how to better collaborate with other teams, namely SecOps. When it comes to supporting this new network, visibility is absolutely critical, which is why organizations are leaning heavily on network monitoring solutions that can drive performance and help identify problems quickly.

VMblog:  Where can VMblog readers go to get their hands on the full report?

Smith:  Readers can access the full report on LiveAction's website through this link.

##