2016 State of the Network Study
Enterprises Increasingly Turn to Cloud as Bandwidth Demand Surges. Finds Two-Thirds of Enterprises Have Deployed SDN
Full Study Results Point to Acceleration in Bandwidth Requirements and Adoption of Emerging Technologies, Including 100 GbE and Public Cloud.
Based on insight gathered from 740 CIOs, IT directors, and network engineers around the world, enterprises have significantly accelerated their adoption of nextgeneration infrastructure technologies, driven by skyrocketing bandwidth requirements. Fifty-four percent of respondents expect bandwidth requirements to grow by half in 2016, and 48 percent expect them to double by the end of 2017. Enterprises are significantly increasing deployment of 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100 GbE), public and private cloud, and software-defined networking (SDN). The study is now available for download.
“Data networks of all types, around the globe, are being strained by an explosion of traffic, from bandwidth-hungry video today to the Internet of Things tomorrow,” said Oleg Khaykin, President and Chief Executive Officer, Viavi Solutions. “As our State of the Network study shows, IT teams are responding by moving faster to implement emerging technologies, giving them the cost-effective scalability and flexibility they need. Of course there will be ensuing challenges, from the unique installation and maintenance requirements of 100 GbE, to the loss of performance monitoring capabilities for networks spread across physical, virtual and cloud segments.”
Results were compiled from the insights of 740 respondents—more than double the number of the previous study—including CIOs, IT directors and network engineers from around the world. In addition to geographic diversity, the study’s sample was evenly distributed among networks and business verticals of different sizes. Responses were collected from March 10 to March 28, 2016 via online surveys.
Study Highlights:
Cloud deployments climb: Almost 90 percent of enterprises have at least one application in the cloud, and 28 percent have the majority of their applications there.
Bandwidth demand accelerates: Fifty-four percent of respondents expect bandwidth requirements to grow by half in 2016, and 48 percent expect them to double by the end of 2017. One in four has deployed 100 GbE.
Technologies emerge: Two-thirds of enterprises have now deployed software-defined networking (SDN).