Improving the performance of applications and workloads that employees and customers engage with can have direct benefits to an organisation’s productivity and profit.

In this blog we look at 5 ways that an SDI platform which offers private connectivity can help IT teams streamline networking activities and navigate performance challenges very quickly.

IS THE PUBLIC INTERNET STILL GOOD ENOUGH?
The rush to digitalise employee and customer interactions meant modernising business applications and workloads and, in many cases, migrating to cloud-native applications. Numerous organisations found themselves ill prepared to manage this transition.

According to research from Frost & Sullivan, more than half (57%) of IT leaders say lack of in-house skill sets impedes cloud migration.

Despite these challenges, many organisations feel they had to engage cloud infrastructure to keep up with changing customer and employee needs.

Customer resource management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP), workloads that support privacy-dependent departments such as HR and finance, and customer-facing applications were among the many critical use cases that needed to be accessed remotely and within days.

Public cloud and internet made this transition achievable, but brought challenges in access, security, and compliance.

Download our new report on the evolution of cloud networking

PUBLIC INTERNET VERSUS PRIVATE NETWORKING 
IT managers are increasingly conscious of the gaps in security, compliance, and optimised operations that can emerge when critical apps and systems are run in public environments

This has prompted many businesses to consider private networking options for accessing their critical applications and workloads.

In a new Executive Brief, analyst firm Frost & Sullivan examine some of the pitfalls of the public internet, and explore the ways in which an SDI platform that offers private connectivity can benefit organisations in the following way:

1、Improved speed and latency
Online collaboration tools perform better with private network connectivity.

2、Privacy, security and compliance
Private connectivity provides enhanced network security and creates compliance-friendly data tracking.

3、Back-up and redundancy 
Private connectivity enables data back-up more quickly, cost effectively, and with greater security.

4、Cost
Private network connectivity can reduce costs related to egress fees, streamline IT operations, and help with security and compliance.

5、Short-term, high-traffic needs
Compared to the public internet, private connectivity can respond better to sudden shifts in network traffic with cloud-like agility and scalability, including better performance and a cost structure that mirrors usage.

According to Frost & Sullivan: “Cloud infrastructure and internet connectivity may have been the lynchpin that enabled businesses to survive, and even thrive, despite the obstacles of the last few years. However, they also created scenarios rife with potential risks and vulnerabilities that now must be addressed.

An advanced SDI solution can ensure that the rapid progress organisations made in accelerating their digital transformation continues to elevate operations, productivity, and customer experiences.”