The Top 5 Trends in Enterprise Networking and Why They Matter: A Gartner Trend Insight Report

Madrid, 12 July 2023.- The network has become the key asset for the services of the future. Our present and future experiences rely on connectivity more than ever before. For this reason, there is an urgent need to revolutionize the management of communication networks, ensuring flexibility and agility while reducing expenses. With technology enabling increasingly personalzed and on-demand experiences, networks must accommodate this shift and provide support for even the most demanding applications.

According to Gartner, I&O leaders “face pressure to manage a growing mix of cloud applications and users that are dispersed across locations that are not necessarily corporate-controlled. This, in turn, drives the need to dynamically create and alter networking and applications access while also more quickly identifying and troubleshooting service issues.”

Let´s discover these 5 key trends with the potential to improve enterprise network infrastructure and operations in the next two years:

• Security Access Service Edge (SASE).
• Multicloud Networking.
• 5G
• NetDevOps
• NaaS

Gartner states: “SASE and multicloud networking are already seeing significant uptake among enterprise customers, while 5G, NetDevOps and NaaS are nascent trends with strong predicted growth during the next two years”.

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)

According to the report, “SASE is a key enabler of modern digital business transformation, including work from anywhere, zero trust, and the adoption of edge computing and cloud-delivered applications.” Further mentioning that, “By 2025, 50% of SD-WAN purchases will be part of a single vendor SASE offering, up from less than 10% in 2021.”

Multicloud Networking

In the move towards the cloud, the most common approach is to adopt a multi-cloud strategy due to the wide range of applications and their varying requirements, as well as the need to combine the use of public cloud services with on-premises solutions. “According to a Gartner survey, 76% of organizations that use the public cloud are using multiple public clouds. Consequently, the main driver for MCNs is the management consistency across multiple clouds.”

5G

5G is about much more than improving communication, it’s the fundamental enabler of the expansion of other technologies due to three key factors: speed, latency and high capacity and concurrency. In this report, Gartner claims that “the latest 5G standard version and beyond open the door for business use cases including autonomous vehicles, industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and a wider range of edge-delivered applications”.

NetDevOps

In relation with this key trend, Gartner predicts that “by 2025, 25% of enterprises will automate more than half of their network activities, an increase from less than 8% of enterprises from early 2022”.

NaaS

Connectivity is shifting from communication between headquarters and the data centre to communication primarily through cloud applications. Over the past decade, businesses have become familiar with “as a service” consumption models. Now these models are being applied to networking. Gartner says: “By the end of 2024, on-premises NaaS will be adopted by 15% of all enterprises, up from less than 1% in 2021”.

**READ THE FULL GARTNER TREND INSIGHT REPORT HERE**

Gartner, The Top 5 Trends in Enterprise Networking and Why They Matter: A Gartner Trend Insight Report. Karen Brown, Andrew Lerner, Jonathan Forest. 13 May 2022.


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