What Is A Key Benefit Of Network As A Service?

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What Is NaaS And How Can It Benefit Your business?

16 August, 2021 by

In this blog, nosotros await at why a Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) model has get more popular amidst enterprises, and how information technology helps improve network service provisioning and deject connectivity.

Following the mass adoption of subscription services past consumers - themselves enabled through the technological spring delivered by the deject - the 'as-a-service' model of consumption has grown in popularity amidst enterprises in the last decade.

In brusk, Networks-as-a-Service (NaaS), as with any 'X-as-a-Service', is the continuation of a trend towards renting rather than owning infrastructure and applications, which for businesses likewise means a shift from capex to opex and an increment in agility as digital transformation rolls on.

What is NaaS?

The virtualisation of various network and infrastructure assets has enabled a cloud delivery model for several functions. Yet, if we look at the Open Systems Interconnection 7 Layer network model (OSI model), the focus has been on transforming the iv 'upper' layers - between the Transport and Application layers to enable cloud delivery of things like applications, storage, and compute.

Only most enterprise functions still require physical hardware - switches and routers - and an MPLS network to transport data to-and-from endpoints within the data heart or across the cyberspace.

Server_colour These functions reside in network Layers 1 to 3 and historically, this meant owning or renting expensive pieces of hardware that will eventually become obsolete, and being locked in to multi-yr contracts for a bandwidth-specific excursion.

Provisioning of network services routinely required several months, which kept networking planned and budgeted for equally a fixed capital cost needing to exist apportioned over lengthy periods.

This meant that the network remained virtually in direct opposition to the potential of the cloud as a flexible, scalable, on-demand nugget. Being able to spin up a new Infrastructure-equally-a-Service (IaaS) instance in a public cloud in real fourth dimension loses some of its luster if the dedicated network connectivity to that asset takes weeks to organise.

All the same through developments in Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), the provisioning of networks is now possible on-demand and in real-time, through specialist interconnection platforms such as PCCW Global's Console Connect.

How has NaaS evolved?

Physical networks are built using fibre and copper trunks, switches and routers. Most are congenital past network operators although some big enterprises build their own, but in most cases a individual 'piece' of the network will exist rented from the service provider.

These networks are equanimous of hundreds of separate elements including routers, switches, firewalls and optical multiplexers, which for a long time were dedicated physical appliances with specific hardware and software components.

The principal drawbacks of these "airtight systems" is that they are fabricated up of several layered generations of engineering science fraught with operational complication, vendor lock-in, growing maintenance costs, and dull innovation due to a lack of flexibility. As cloud compute and storage exploded, connectivity became the antithesis of a cloud-first model.

Merely the promise of SDN and NFV was to break this image, non merely for the operators who build the networks but for the enterprise users besides.

Up-down_colour NFV enables closed networks to exist redesigned as various software functions running on commodity servers, while SDN separates and centralises the network control software from the network traffic forwarding function, both of which enable a new model of orchestration - existent-time network service provisioning and optimisation through software programmability.

This centralised software divers control function enables the creation and consumption of network services in an on-need fashion nosotros've come to wait from the cloud.

Network-as-a-Service has a lower cost structure - shifting from a capex to an opex model - thank you to the adoption of article hardware and open software, but besides offers a greater degree of operational automation with improve capabilities to builder and create new services.

In this way, the WAN shifts from being a static asset to a dynamic resource that delivers strategic advantages, non least because the network itself is more flexible but likewise considering it becomes a platform enabling a services marketplace.

Enterprises are no longer spring by the straight relationships their network provider has with partners, only instead have access to the unabridged cloud ecosystem.

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What are the benefits of using NaaS?

As the public cloud becomes the primary host for an increasing number of mission critical applications, network demands for security, speed and agility are growing speedily. NaaS can solve these problems with business-critical connections that are simple, secure and flexible - accessible when you need them and for however long you need them.

Ethernet connections are provisioned directly past the user in a client portal, bypassing the traditional manual service delivery processes and shrinking timeframes from weeks to minutes.

It gives customers full control of the network avails and the ability to flex bandwidth requirements up and down in real-time. This in plough gives greater command over cost, giving customers the selection to choose per-hour pricing plans much every bit they do with cloud services, or fixed term contract durations.

Inquiry carried out by CIMI Corp describes NaaS every bit: "A model of network service where connectivity is established where and when it's needed".

Simple-easy_colour NaaS becomes a more than efficient option than relying on WANs that crave abiding maintenance and often create bottlenecks for network traffic - something extremely prescient with a shift to remote working as cloud traffic is hair pinned back through the corporate WAN.

With NaaS, employees connect to their deject services directly through a virtual network managed by an external vendor but provisioned past the enterprise.

Primal benefits include:

Flexibility: Provision and decommission connections equally and when, as changes are fabricated to the network via software, not hardware.
Scalability: Enterprise NaaS customers can just increase capacity on their virtual network instead of purchasing and plugging in more hardware.
Global interconnection: Users access the network from anywhere, even without the need for a VPN. Connect to any partner in the cloud ecosystem direct.
No maintenance: The network provider owns and maintains the network, managing software and hardware upgrades.
Greater security: NaaS makes it possible to tightly integrate networking services and security services like firewalls, as well as simplifying management.
Cost control: Purchasing services instead of building your own services can effect in price savings every bit enterprises do non need to purchase and maintain hardware. Capacity tin can be increased, decreased, and moved around the network as required, giving more granular cost control.

Co-ordinate to manufacture analyst IDC, "Businesses are exploring consumption-based models in the network equally a means to speed upwardly digital transformation, reduce risk and upper-case letter costs, and raise scalability."

Merely equally the cloud has enabled a highly customisable, subscription-based approach to most everything, "Leveraging experience gained in the IT domain, organizations view the network as the adjacent logical step for a consumption-based approach," the annotator says.

Why choose Console Connect?

As a pioneering Network-as-a-Service platform, Panel Connect enables enterprises to connect to global information centres, clouds, applications and business concern partners in a more than unproblematic, fast and secure way.

Console-Connect-UI-1 Giving the network the same capabilities equally the deject, enterprises can self-provision loftier speed bandwidth on-demand, anywhere and manage and monitor in real-time.

The platform is underpinned by the PCCW Global's leading MPLS network, enabling organisations to turn upwards layer ii connectivity on-demand between 450+ data centres in l+ countries. The platform likewise helps businesses deeply connect to all major public cloud providers, Internet Exchanges, SaaS providers, IoT partners or other NaaS platforms.

Feature of the platform include:

Get set up in minutes and connect data centres, business partners, distributed IT infrastructure and the world's major public clouds in a few clicks.
Self-provision and manage your service in real-time via the Console Connect web application or interconnect via our open API.
Reduces the complexity of network and connection configuration so that you can focus on your cadre business.

In a digital economy, where you can guild food to your location, stream a film or arrange a taxi to get in in minutes, there's no reason why the same feel tin can't utilize to network connectivity, peculiarly when connecting to the cloud where many business-critical workloads now reside.

NaaS solves a crucial part of the puzzle in making your digital assets a strategic advantage.