The News: To better understand the future of cloud, it’s important to assess the major legacy networking challenges that organizations face today. An organization’s networking foundation is critical, and decisions made around network expansion to support modern applications, connect microservices, and harness data for business services are top of mind for IT leaders. Decisions made on this front will play an outsized role in determining the success of an organization’s cloud journey.
The pace of digital innovation is surging across the digital ecosystem in the post-pandemic era resulting in a sharp expansion of applications and cloud usage, warranting cloud networking’s primacy. Experiences such as 8K ultra-high-definition video streaming, immersive VR and AR apps, gaming, self-driving vehicles, high frequency stock trading, automation driven by AI/ML systems, and IoT use cases with 5G networks are expected by enterprises. In response, organizations are adopting hybrid or multi-cloud frameworks to attain cloud networking benefits and deliver these experiences, meet key performance indicators (KPIs), and service level objectives (SLOs).
The evolution of networking has spurred decades of groundbreaking innovations that underpin cloud services today. The network is also the foundation for modern applications, connecting microservices, functions, and data into mission-critical business services.
Based on our research, as well as the information and data available to us at this time, we believe the Cisco cloud networking portfolio should be on the consideration list for customers exploring network expansion and network modernization solutions. Organizations looking to help customers connect their teams and technologies to build applications and services that deliver scalable, sustainable, differentiated business value will find benefits afforded by the Cisco cloud networking portfolio that include automated secure connectivity, simplified operations and management, platform-based solutions, unified policy management, pervasive visibility and insights, and high-performance infrastructure.
The Future of Cloud is the Network – New Futurum Research Report
Analyst Take: In our newest research report, “The Future of Cloud is the Network” – done in partnership with Cisco – we examine the Cisco cloud networking portfolio and why we believe it is well-suited to enable the cloud neutral strategy key to maximizing value out of cloud both public and private. This includes delivering the hybrid or multi-cloud networking environments key to maximizing the cloud benefits of elasticity, speedier time to market, cost predictability, supporting performance-sensitive applications, and administering massive active data sets with ease.
Decision makers across all organizations in selecting cloud networking solutions must take a comprehensive approach in understanding the strategic portfolio resources essential to successfully advancing their cloud journeys. Cisco’s Cloud Networking portfolio has the cloud native constructs and networking in the cloud in its core that naturally expands from there onwards to securely connect on-demand and as-a-service across any multi-cloud scenario.
This includes aligning all hosting environments that fulfill the dynamically changing business needs of customers. As a result, we see Cisco as very well situated to ensure that organizations can merge their cloud networking operations with cloud-native architectures that spurs innovation and enhance the application experience.
As noted, applications are evolving into distributed, containerized components that need to communicate with each other. Since the network is the foundation for modern application innovation, consideration should be given to the fact that Cisco is well positioned to deliver the reliability, security, and agile development to support and scale the emerging application architecture vital to multi-cloud flexibility.
Since operations and app architectures continue to modernize, their paths are converging rapidly to a singular interwoven point. Specifically, we see operations evolving from data centers to cloud/DevOps and ultimately AI-powered operations. Cisco’s vision to merge cloud networking operations and cloud-native architectures is precisely what organizations seek in order to accelerate app velocity and augment app experience.
Key Takeaways on The Future of Cloud is the Network
From our assessment, we believe the Cisco Cloud Networking portfolio should claim a spot high on IT leaders’ consideration list as they make decisions about the future of their networks and their cloud transformation journeys. The Cisco solution can deliver significant value across the entire cloud ecosystem. The products offer a balance of capacity, performance, and features throughout 400G data center networking environments. Cisco delivers a solution that can help organizations advance innovation and power digital transformation excellence through cloud neutrality and comprehensive observability.
Disclosure: Futurum Research is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum Research as a whole.
Other insights from Futurum Research:
Cisco Pivots to Software and Posts Solid Q2 Results
Cisco Nexus 400G: Delivering Ecosystem-wide Data Center Networking Innovation
Image Credit: Cisco
Author Information
Ron is an experienced, customer-focused research expert and analyst, with over 20 years of experience in the digital and IT transformation markets, working with businesses to drive consistent revenue and sales growth.
Ron holds a Master of Arts in Public Policy from University of Nevada — Las Vegas and a Bachelor of Arts in political science/government from William and Mary.
