Top Five Facts You May Not Know about Enterprise Networking
By Fady Masoud
Principal Product & Field Marketing
Fact #1: Connected Devices are on the Rise: Cloud-based applications are changing the way enterprises work, from the products they manufacture and the services they offer to the way their employees interact with each other, or with customers and partners. More “things” than ever are designed to be connected. Fifty billion devices are expected to connect to the internet in 2020. From connected cars to home appliances to smart sensors on city streets, manufactured products are becoming more and more sophisticated. Service enterprises are also elevating their portfolios by using both wireless and wireline connectivity to provide advanced services, such as remote monitoring, emergency response, and intelligent home and business surveillance, to name just a few. According to a recent report from Salesforce, 80 percent of business buyers agree or strongly agree that by 2020 they expect companies to provide products and services that are connected to the internet.
Fact #2: Enterprises Will Forever be in the Hackers’ Crosshairs: The estimated annual damage to the U.S. economy caused by cyber-attacks is up to $100 billion, according to CIO magazine. Data breaches can trigger irreparable damage to a company’s reputation and its ability to conduct business in the future, even drive some enterprises to bankruptcy. Cyber-attacks and data breaches are increasing at an alarming rate. According to the recent Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report, there were 64,199 security incidents in 2016, affecting organizations in 82 countries and a wide range of industries. Cyber-attacks affect businesses of all sizes — 36 percent of cyber-attacks are conducted against small and medium business (SMB), of which 60 percent go out of business within six months of the attack. Yet 77 percent of SMB owners believe their companies are safe from cyber security breaches.
Fact #3: Self-Driving Cars May Create a New Class of Enterprise Networks: The previously mild-mannered auto industry is now creating cars that require a new class of network. Connected vehicles use mobile data infrastructure to enhance driver assistance, power autonomous driving capabilities, accelerate emergency response, and enable remote diagnosis and support to name a few examples. However, vehicles that automatically download the latest software at night to fix bugs and turn up new features and enhancements demand networks that can provide scalable storage and computing power. Manufacturers like Toyota – the world’s largest automaker – are planning to build data centers to collect and analyze data from the next generation of connected vehicles. Toyota has also has created a new data analytics company in partnership with Microsoft, called Toyota Connect. This company will use Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform to develop smart products and services, such as vehicle-to-vehicle technology to enable cars to communicate with each other to observe hazards ahead, or a virtual assistant that uses predictive analytics to determine where the driver is headed and suggest the best route to avoid traffic or to provide favorite food suggestions. Other manufacturers like Hyundai have also announced investments to pave the way (no pun intended) for the next generation of connected vehicles.
Fact #4: 1 Millisecond Might be too Long to Wait: Financial institutions demand speed to process millions of transactions daily. Brokerages, for example, build ultra-low-latency optical networks to complete stock transactions within milliseconds of a market-impacting event. They deploy trading solutions to perform high-frequency trading (HFT) based on complex algorithms that analyze multiple markets, identify trends and execute orders based on market conditions. One major brokerage firm on Wall Street estimates that trading 1 millisecond (ms) faster in a trading application can be worth $100 million a year of revenue. Similarly, online retailers like Amazon have stated that every 100 ms of latency costs them 1 percent in sales, while Google has realized that an extra half second in search page generation time reduces profitable search traffic by 20 percent.
Fact #5: Network Outages Can Result in Bankruptcy: Network outages can be disastrous to enterprises, resulting in significant loss of revenue and massive disruption to business operations, and can have a devastating impact on customer loyalty. The average downtime costs vary across industries, from approximately $90,000 per hour in the media sector to about $6.48 million per hour for large online brokerages, according to Information Management magazine. In August 2016, tens of thousands of passengers were stranded across many airports after 451 Delta Air Lines flights were grounded around the globe due to a “major system-wide network outage.”
The network has never been more vital to enterprise success than it is today. High-performance optical networks are the launch pad for an organization’s ability to evolve and innovate in designing, building and managing tomorrow’s products and services. Infinera’s deep understanding of enterprise networking needs, coupled with the technology innovation built into its Intelligent Transport Networks, provides a path for enterprise networks to meet today’s requirements and those into the future.
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Related links:
- Application Note: The Top Three Reasons Enterprise Cloud Applications Need Intelligent Optical Networks
- Web page: Enterprise Networks
- Video: Introducing Infinera Infinite Capacity Engine
- Join Infinera at upcoming events where Infinera will be speaking, including WAN Summit, Data Center World Global 2017 and Interop Las Vegas – click here to learn more