Is there a dichotomy here?

India stands on the threshold of a change with transformative capabilities. Rising adoption of wireless devices, cloud services, IoT, and other digital solutions, humongous amount of data generated, and growing demand for strong enterprise network connectivity amid an increase in adoption of work-from-home are driving enterprises to ramp up and strengthen their networking infrastructure and invest in network solutions.

A variety of market-destabilizing factors – including the pandemic, supply chain shortages, continuing cloud adoption, and growth in infrastructure-as-a-service options – have created a turning point and given enterprises more opportunities to form higher-value partnerships to help fill gaps, drive innovation, and disrupt entire industries.

The era of hybrid work is driving the need for new approaches to securely connect remote workers to corporate data and assets distributed across multi-cloud environments. The transition to applications deployed across multiple clouds and a highly distributed workforce makes traditional security models obsolete, identifying cloud security risks.

Agility has become table stakes for most organizations today. The biggest motivator for the move to multiple clouds is not cost, but the need for business agility, and innovation and the necessity to rapidly deploy new, high-quality applications and services, the ability to pivot quickly to take advantage of market trends has become a top priority.

The increased spend on cloud services, cyber-security, AI applications, robotics process automation, and Industry 4.0 create new value sources through digital products and experiences. These digital transformation use cases require an overhaul of enterprise connectivity infrastructure to integrate power and data.

Organizations are expanding their industry ecosystems to include an array of different participants that complement their skill sets or provide capabilities they may not possess.

Increased network complexity, constant security challenges, and talent shortages are driving enterprises to depend more on channel business partners, including managed service providers, system integrators, resellers, and other tech providers. And this trend is here to stay.

India’s digital public infrastructure is transforming the economy and people’s lives. Industrial businesses will be better positioned to benefit from the latest data-driven technological advancements. Data security is at the heart of digital transformation. It is embedded in every aspect of product development. Cyber hygiene is critical for protecting digital assets, maintaining regulatory compliance, and safeguarding public safety. Cyber security is no longer an afterthought; it is integrated from the early design stage. A robust data-protection framework is essential to protect citizens’ privacy.

As cyber threats continue to become more sophisticated, network security remains a top priority. Spending on cyber-security products and services that provide protection are projected to grow by 7 percent each year to USD 186 billion in 2026, driven by investment in areas such as cloud and identity security. Detection and response, meanwhile, are projected to grow by 34 percent each year to reach USD 112 billion in 2026, according to Canalys.

Adoption of blockchain technology enhances network security by providing a tamper-proof and decentralized ledger for transactional data. It provides a secure and decentralized platform for identity management.

The networking and security teams no longer work separately and approach their network as siloes. As technology gets abstracted to platforms, and enterprises adopt a platform approach, the disciplines are coming together. However, it is rare that any single vendor can offer, networking and security services, end to end. It is the managed service providers that are sought to provide secure network experiences that have observability layered on top so that the attacks may be detected before they happen.

Large enterprises, on the other hand, are more likely than smaller enterprises to manage their networks themselves, typically have more hybrid environments (workloads on-premises and in the cloud), and more feature complexity.

And while automation technologies, such as AI and machine learning play a vital role in network management, it is automation and orchestration that help reduce network downtime, improve network security, and increase network efficiency. It enables manage complex network infrastructure with minimal manual intervention.

They are driven by Wi-Fi 6 rollout to support hybrid working in offices, as well as digital transformation across education, healthcare, retail, and manufacturing.

Campuses will undergo a major refresh cycle over the next three years, as Wi-Fi 7 becomes commercially available. The new standard promises to boost speeds by up to four times compared to Wi-Fi 6. It will require networks to be re-architected with at least 50G access and 100G and even 400G core switches.

According to Statista’s projections, Networking sales are booming, and global enterprises are forecast to spend worldwide expenditure is expected to reach USD 3.4 trillion by 2026 in cloud services, cybersecurity, AI applications, robotics process automation, and Industry 4.0 to create new value sources through digital products and experiences. According to Markets and Markets, the market size is projected to grow at a CAGR of 19.1%, from USD 521.5 billion in 2021 to USD 127.5 billion in 2026. These digital transformation use cases require an overhaul of enterprise connectivity infrastructure to integrate power and data.

Today, the combined sales of switching, wireless LAN and routers account for 36 percent of infrastructure sales through the channel. This will grow to more than 40 percent over the next five years. No longer will servers be the largest IT infrastructure category for the channel. By 2027, they will be surpassed by networking products.

The maturing SD-WAN market is being transformed by secure access service edge (SASE), artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud adoption, according to Gartner’s latest Magic Quadrant report. This year, Gartner’s leaders in the SD-WAN market are Cisco, Fortinet, HPE’s Aruba Networks, Palo Alto Networks, Versa Networks and VMware.

SASE is typically comprised of an SD-WAN and a cloud-native suite of security features that include zero-trust network access (ZTNA), firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS), secure web gateway (SWG), and cloud access security broker (CASB), and is being seen as flexible for cloud applications, and for simplifying network and security management through convergence.

SASE convergence requires a strong SD-WAN foundation, combined with a rich cloud security or security service edge (SSE) solution. Only when these architectures are converged fully will IT organizations realize the full benefits of SASE. These benefits include a streamlined operational model to make the visibility, management, and control of securely connecting users anywhere as simple and as consistent as possible.

And single-vendor SASE are likely to emerge as acquisitions continue and SD-WAN and network security vendors consolidate. Gartner forecasts that by 2026, 60 percent of new SD-WAN purchases will be part of a single-vendor SASE offering, up from 15 percent in 2022.

SASE delivers the operational simplification and consistent security and performance that multi-cloud access and a hybrid workforce demands.

It does this by bringing together network and security domains to provide a much-needed framework for securely and seamlessly connecting users to applications in complex and highly distributed environments.

SASE is fast becoming the convergence architecture of choice for secure multi-cloud access. However, many organizations are struggling to realize the full potential of SASE because their solutions lack certain capabilities or fail to deliver a fully converged network and security solution.

Some companies are offering end-to-end solutions in fiber- and copper-cable connectivity, enabling enterprises to modernize and digitize their large-scale network infrastructure.

STL’s Estelan is one such end-to-end solution. Estelan is an end-to-end enterprise connectivity solution that combines in-office and optical connectivity infrastructure. Its plug-and-play modular system is designed for easy installation and system upgrades and can handle multiple network ports.

These solutions follow the highest health and safety standards and are certified by leading industry bodies like RoHS, ETL, UL, and CPR. Enterprises can achieve superior data transmission, upwards of 1000MHz bandwidth and 10Gbps speeds. These solutions have also been designed and developed with sustainable manufacturing practices, high optimization, and minimal wastage. It enables use cases like multi-service premise connectivity, enterprise networking, Wi-Fi, surveillance, intelligent building management, and Power-over-Ethernet for up to 90W applications.

That said, Tom Nolle, founder and principal analyst at Andover Intel, who has been providing consulting services and technology analysis for decades disagrees. His hypothesis is based on 83 CIOs he has input from. Enterprises want to pursue a unified virtual network strategy, but visibility challenges and pressure to curb cloud costs are complicating 2024 network planning. CIOs do not seem to be particularly positive about their network plans for the New Year. Their expectations for 2024 are worse than for any year in the past 20 years, other than during Covid. Those that are banking on having a specific unified virtual network strategy are somewhat better off than those that are still contemplating between moving some parts or wholly to the cloud since it is too expensive, or do not know how to tackle applications that are not in the SASE cloud domain, and the converging pressures and diverging strategies are getting to them!