Transforming the corporate WAN

Telia Carrier commissioned a survey in the second half of 2020 to understand the state of corporate-wide area networks. The survey was conducted online and included participants from the US, the UK, France and Germany. 78% of the survey respondents play are key stakeholders at enterprises and are the decision makes when it comes to network development decisions. All respondents work for companies that employ more than 3,000 people in the following industries:

• Manufacturing/engineering (58)
• Automotive (24)
• Pharmaceuticals (7)
• Banking (54)
• Finance/financial services (87)
• Fintech (9)
• Tech/business services (53)
• Engineering
• Services and consultancy (2)
• Information services and consultancy (120)

In total, 414 industry representatives participated in the survey.

See also: A Post-Pandemic Threat Landscape Report

This white paper looks at the main findings of the survey in three parts:

1. The current state of corporate WAN i.e what is the preferred method of connecting to the cloud; what are common problems organizations face and their pain points
2. The current mindset at organizations i.e what are the aims and expectations that business leaders have as the technology evolves, what the common misconceptions that can harm a network development strategy
3. The future of suppliers i.e what can be expected from network service delivery for organizations. The need for scalability, automation, flexibility, efficient energy use and customer experience

The main findings of the report are:

1. Cloud-based services and the public internet are most common when it comes to the corporate WAN landscape. Reliable connectivity is crucial for business performance. 90% of organizations today rely on the public internet for part or all of their WAB service. 48% of the survey respondents said that if there is a corporate WAN outage for more than 24 hours, that would be catastrophic for their business.
2. Quality customer support, high bandwidth, and flexibility were cited as the top three priorities that business leaders look for when selecting a local network partner to connect to their cloud service providers.

Enterprises need the bandwidth scalability and network footprint to adapt to changes in traffic volumes as they grow and expand across diverse geographies, bandwidth flexibility during spikes in traffic, optimal levels of data security throughout the ecosystem of providers, low latency that minimizes lag and delay, and a combination of self-provisioning tools and personalized, human-touch service and support.

The report concludes that there are seven key questions that organizations need to ask when selecting network service providers. Download this white paper by Telia Carrier to learn what those questions are. Subscribe to Whitepapers.online.