The survey says...

Vicki Vaughn

August 02, 2018

Security and manageability are biggest network infrastructure challenges identified in recent end-user survey.

Yeah, I hear ya…what, ANOTHER survey? Except you may actually find the information relevant and helpful in your work life if you deal with network issues on any sort of regular basis. If so, read on.

Recently, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE) commissioned emedia, part of publishing group Ziff Davis, to conduct a survey of IT decision makers in the education, hospitals and healthcare, hospitality and cruise, and transportation sectors. The goal was to get to the heart of the networking challenges facing enterprises of all sizes.  

Why do this survey?
The survey, completed in late 2017, was to better understand the current state of the market, the challenges and trends that will affect organizations in the future. Survey participants included companies with between 150 – 2499 employees from Australia, France, Germany, India, Singapore and the United Kingdom. 

Who replied?
Within the survey, larger enterprises, those with 1000-2499 employees, were the most responsive across all regions with just over half of the responses coming from these companies. As expected, larger enterprises will be the first to take on new technology to enable better connectivity and drive profit or improve guest or patient care.

Within those larger organizations, educational institutions were the most responsive section, which is not surprising since technology continues to play an increasingly important part in education delivery. Hospitality is another sector where technology has played a transformative role, enabling efficiency across procedures. Hospitality was also the second most responsive industry across most regions.

What’s your biggest challenge?
Security and manageability were shown to be the biggest challenges faced by IT decision makers, each representing 30 percent of the responses. Reliability was cited by 25 percent of respondents as another major challenge, followed by scalability at 15 percent of the responses. Answers across regions showed little variation, illustrating that regardless of industry, company size or area, companies are facing similar challenges with their current providers.

Security as a top concern comes as no surprise with data breaches of varying sizes happening every day. The cloud and the internet of things (IoT) are bringing large amounts of data to the enterprise and forcing IT decision makers to adjust to these constantly evolving security challenges.

Management through a cloud
Manageability has also become a big concern for enterprises as network management must address user mobility, BYOD and the IoT – all while prioritizing security and scalability. While this can be costly and complex, is emerging to meet the needs of IT decision makers. This network management as a service is designed to be flexible to meet manageability needs at a lower cost.

An example: Healthcare
In a healthcare setting – where there could be multiple buildings, hundreds of patients, doctors, nurses, and visitors – the network that supports the everyday communications operations needs to be easy to use and simple to maintain. It can be a life or death matter if the network isn’t working properly. The network must be able to address mobile healthcare providers’ need for access to data and communications, while still allowing visitors and patients to be able to use their own devices. Add all the new internet of things (IoT) devices and it can be very challenging to manage all securely and easily. And, it must be affordable.

Network management as a service
It is now possible to have a fuss-free, cloud-based network management system for your healthcare network with zero footprint, zero deployment, and zero maintenance. Network Management as a Service (NMaaS) is designed to flex to meet your needs – at a lower cost. Alcatel-Lucent OmniVista® Cirrus goes hand-in-hand with Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess® Stellar line of wireless access points. OmniVista Cirrus cloud-based management provides the security a healthcare setting needs, and with an affordable cost and minimal management on the IT department.

What’s your plan?
Do you have a plan for how to address network infrastructure challenges, such as security, manageability, reliability or scalability in your own business? Post your comments below on the challenges you’ve faced and what you are doing to tackle these issues.

I hope you found the survey results helpful. Maybe even provided you some food for thought on where you go next with your network. The good news is, you’re not alone in your struggle to stay a step ahead of security concerns while delivering the latest capabilities to your users. 

You can view the infographic that summarizes the survey results here. Stay tuned for the next blog that will cover the trends that IT decision makers foresee disrupting business as you know it.