Every enterprise in the world is now competing in the so-called experience economy. It’s a place where the quality of the experience — to the customer, employee, and business partner — is the driver of business value.
While the shift from industrial age models of value creation to this new experiential centricity is still underway, the speed at which it has altered the economics of how organizations go to market has been exceptional.
And it has left enterprise IT executives scrambling for ways to create a more agile and adaptable operational model to react and respond to shifts in experiential demand. As this need for greater agility and responsiveness has grown over the last decade, enterprise leaders have adopted a wide range of approaches to respond.
Much of the focus, however, has been on the development side of things — even as the “Ops” part of DevOps stands for operations. From agile development methodologies, to DevOps, to the evolution of CI/CD pipelines, enterprise teams have made great strides in building a more adaptable and flexible operational footprint.
As an enterprise executive, you’ve no doubt made significant investments in these areas — and probably have great results to show for it. But you’ve likely forgotten something big — something that might make all the difference as the stakes continue to increase: the network.
The Network as First-Class Citizen
I can almost see the twisted look on your face. “The network?” you’re saying to yourself.
I get it. The network is just plumbing, right? Well, not anymore.
The dynamic nature of today’s technology means that everything is fluid. Your data, your computing assets, your customers, your employees — all of them can be anywhere. And the relative importance of any of these elements can change moment-to-moment as the nature of experiential demands shifts.
The one thing that connects everything? You know the answer: the network.
As a result, the network needs to be a first-class citizen within your operational management model — just as much as your development capability and other operational components.
But it’s more than just elevating the importance of the network management function. Not only does it need to be executed at the same level as your DevOps and CI/CD functions, but it also needs to be integrated with them.
They must not only co-exist with a similar level of importance, but they also need to be part of a holistic, integrated management model.
That perspective, however, introduces a significant challenge.
Holistic, Experience-First Networking through a Universal Management Paradigm
There’s a simple reason that managing the network has remained a mostly stand-alone and siloed function within enterprise IT: it’s not really one thing.
While heterogeneity is a fact of enterprise life, it takes on a whole other dimension in the realm of network management. The need to meet specific technical requirements, the various forms of network infrastructure (core data center, edge, WAN, etc.), and the fact that business units often have different standards have resulted in a network comprised of numerous vendors and countless device types.
And every single one of them has their own management application to go with it.
Trying to bring this management mess into a fast-moving, agile process doesn’t sound very appealing, so most organizations have never seriously considered it. But “set it and forget it” is becoming a losing strategy with significant costs attached to it.
Thankfully, a recent evolution in network management approaches is offering enterprise leaders a better alternative.
Driven by an experience-first ethos, there is a movement afoot that seeks to break free of monolithic approaches to network management and, instead, establish a universal management layer that enables organizations to manage the network holistically as a single business asset.
By doing so, the platforms that support this approach are not only integrating the technical aspects of network management, but the philosophical ones as well. They enable network, operations, and development teams to share a common view of the network and see its relationship to and its impact on the entire technology stack — on a continual basis.
With this universal management layer applied, the network can take its place as a first-class citizen in IT’s operational management model. Even more importantly, this holistic management approach enables enterprise leaders to transform the network from a sunk cost into a strategic enabler.
The Intellyx Take: Intent at the Core of Business Advantage
While the term intent-based networking has been around for a while, the industry has largely presented it through the lens of operational efficiency — leveraging it reduces the cost of network management.
While this assertion is true, it misses the much more critical point. Intent-based networking transitions the nature of network management from a primarily technical bias to a business-oriented one. It allows organizations to begin to look at and manage the network from the perspective of the business value that it enables.
Intent-based networking is at the core of this holistic approach to network management and the idea of the universal management layer — and it’s what ultimately enables the concept of experience-first networking.
Without elevating network management to the business perspective, you will never be able to break it out of its silo and manage it in a continuous state — and this is something you must do to keep up with the speed of modern business.
Two forces are colliding that present both a risk and opportunity. On the one side, customer (and employee) expectations and experiential demands are changing continually. On the other hand (and in response), the technology stack is getting continuously more complex. The glue that binds these two together is the network.
Bring your network management capability on par with the other two forces, and you can seize a significant advantage by eliminating a potential bottleneck and weak link. Failing to do so leaves you at risk as the pressure on both sides of the equation rises.
The need to adopt this type of universal network management layer and integrate it into a broader organizational agility strategy is becoming an enterprise imperative. And it’s why leading enterprises are turning to companies, like Juniper Networks, which have adopted this experience-first approach to networking.
While network management may not have been on your radar when it comes to organizational agility and crafting a winning customer experience, it’s time to pay attention. You’re now living in the experience economy, and the stakes are just too high to let a disjointed and outdated approach to network management stand in your way.
Copyright © Intellyx LLC. Juniper Networks is an Intellyx client. None of the other companies mentioned in this article are Intellyx clients. Intellyx retains full editorial control over the content of this paper. Image credit: Steve Bittinger.
