Digital Connectivity: The Backbone of a Future-Ready Enterprise

In the past, enterprises have treated networks as a critical, but not necessarily a value creating component of their IT infrastructure, due to the lack of direct correlation to business benefits. However, as enterprises accelerated their digital transformation journeys with cloud as the primary lever, they realised that the traditional networks were becoming a bottleneck.

The challenges associated with legacy connectivity infrastructure, coupled with changing business imperatives such as digital-driven demand, increasing competition, and changing customer expectations, have prompted the need for digital network transformation. COVID-19 has further amplified this need. The evolution from traditional to cloud-driven to a digitally connected enterprise encompasses adoption of technology levers such as SDN, SD-WAN, NFV, 5G, edge computing, and IoT, supported by operating model levers including managed network services, hybrid network support, and network-as-a-service.

To remain relevant, enterprises need to understand that digital transformation requires some upfront investments, so they should take a long-term view of the return on investment. In this paper, we discuss enablers and considerations for network transformation, recommend action steps to adopt digital connectivity, and propose metrics to measure its success.