INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cloud

Taken from a white paper, Gartner discusses how public cloud services and mobility are driving business needs where the Internet and MPLS play an equally important role for enterprise connectivity.

• Although branch offices still need to be connected to enterprise data centers, they now also need to be connected to various external cloud services. These cloud services are often sourced via separate projects for specific application needs that also lead to project-specific WAN connections, often based on the Internet.

• Enterprise employees’ typical method of conducting business and accessing applications is shifting from PC workstations to laptops, mobile phones and tablets. These are increasingly being used in a mobile context outside of the office both to access applications and to interact with colleagues, partners and customers via the Internet.

The result, as evident from Gartner client inquiries( see Note 1), is that enterprise WAN connectivity has evolved in an ad hoc manner based on project-by-project needs into what often are multiple independent solutions. This includes Internet used to offload MPLS, mobile broadband connecting to the Internet, and public cloud services added as application needs arise.

The problem arising from this ad hoc approach to enterprise connectivity is that the enterprise ends up with multiple point solutions with no allencompassing solution to manage, which makes it difficult to ensure consistently good application performance. Frequent inquiries with Gartner clients demonstrate that network planners focus too much on basic access connectivity— that is, connecting branch offices or remote users to the WAN. In that process, they often forget to consider how application traffic will flow in the WAN or consider how the end user experience is perceived from the client end.

The consequence is recurring application performance problems caused by incomplete WAN architectures that force high network

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