However, in the discussions around the need to inject digital innovation into business, the role of the network is often overlooked. Yet, Gartner® shares in its 2024 Magic Quadrant™ for Global WAN Services that “as digital business initiatives increase the demands on the enterprise network, the need for reliable bandwidth continues to grow.”
Video, Internet Of Things (IoT) integration, as-a-service solutions and cloud-native applications are all increasingly critical to business today. In addition, emerging technologies like GenAI will bring new usage and therefore new dependencies on the network. What all these services have in common is that they depend on network quality and availability to deliver their business outcomes. And as business strategies rely more and more on these services, companies’ dependence on networks has never been higher.
Yet network services are not at par with the expectations that business users have today of other technologies. These include the attributes of a cloud experience, such as service composability, programmability and modularity. The network needs to evolve; it needs to connect users, workloads and applications in a way that supports their characteristics of flexibility, agility and scalability. And it needs to do so securely, reliably and rapidly.
Or, as Gartner mentions in the Magic Quadrant, “A reliable, agile, secure and high-performing WAN network is critical to support enterprise business operations. As a result, enterprises find it challenging to design and operate their networks to support dynamic business requirements, including hybrid work, and accelerating digital and cloud transformations.”
Additional challenges block the way
How do they overcome these challenges? Any solution should reflect the needs of the overlaying applications and workloads, as noted above. But it must also tackle other obstacles.
First, there’s the question of skills. Getting the capabilities needed to run this sort of advanced networking is challenging, whether enterprises upskill existing teams or recruit new staff.
Another aspect that enterprises struggle with is the difference between procuring network services on one hand and IT services on the other. With cloud and as-a-service solutions now the norm in IT, businesses have grown used to more composable approaches for deployment. That’s not common on the network side of technology, causing friction when acquiring and deploying that infrastructure to support IT.
Third, there’s security. The number of threats continues to increase, with the latest Orange Cyberdefense Security Navigator report noting that incidents had gone up by 30% year-on-year. Of the total number of incidents, 34% affected infrastructure assets, including servers, networks and clouds.
A digital infrastructure delivering a secure foundation
What’s the answer? At Orange Business, we believe it’s an integrated platform that combines security, connectivity and next-generation networking in a model that reflects the needs of enterprises.
And this approach is increasingly on the enterprise agenda. Over half of decision-makers, according to McKinsey, want an integrated offer with fixed and next-gen connectivity, cloud and security. Taking a combined approach also helps tackle the issue around talent and skills acquisition, as it includes the management of all aspects of the platform.
This is what has driven us to develop the core focus of our digital infrastructure approach: Evolution Platform. It is designed to combine network-as-a-service connectivity with a cloud-native experience that allows enterprises to build, deploy and operate services from the platform. Security is embedded throughout, turning what was a weak link into a protected backbone that constantly evolves with the latest cyberdefense practices and approaches.
A Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Global WAN Services
Gartner recognized Orange Business as a Leader in the most recent Magic Quadrant for Global WAN Services and positioned us highest for Ability to Execute. I&O leaders can use this research to evaluate and select optimal global network services partners.
As per Gartner, “Providers in the Leaders quadrant are performing well and maintaining a stable organization, with a clear vision of market direction. They deliver comprehensive portfolios of quality network services across the broadest geographies. They address the global networking needs of a broad range of enterprises in terms of size, geographic distribution and vertical industry. Leaders shape the direction of the market by extending their coverage, developing new class-leading capabilities and commercial models, and deploying them at scale.”
Laying the groundwork for digital innovation
As enterprises seek to unlock new digital opportunities, they need a foundational network layer that delivers a platform for ongoing success. This needs to be reliable, secure and scalable, but it also needs to be available in a way that aligns with how businesses acquire the rest of their technology.
That’s why we developed Evolution Platform, combining our global cloud, connectivity and cybersecurity capabilities with a composable model that offers network as a service in a cloud-native experience.
To learn more about the demand driving Global WAN Services and how Orange Business is a leader in the market, read Gartner Magic Quadrant for Global WAN Services. And read our eBook about how Orange Business is helping enterprises drive digital innovation with Evolution Platform.
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Jean-Noël Michel, VP Communication Services, has over 25 years of experience in the telecom industry. He is responsible for the Orange Business product portfolio and engineering of connectivity, communication, collaboration, contact centers and professional services. He drives transformation projects in this domain such as Evolution Platform, Product Portfolio Simplification, Voice to Cloud EX/CX and Copper to Fiber access transformations.