Security is another hurdle. More devices and distributed access points expand the attack surface, making networks harder to defend with legacy perimeter-based models. In addition, scalability and agility are top concerns. Organizations need to add new services or support spikes in traffic without lengthy reconfiguration or costly hardware upgrades.
To overcome these challenges, businesses are turning to cloud-managed networks, automation, and Zero Trust models that provide centralized control, adaptive policies, and real-time insights. The payoff is a network that keeps pace with innovation instead of holding it back.
Dan Ryan
Principal Solution Architect
Dan Ryan is a Principal Field Solution Architect specializing in wireless networking at Connection and a Certified Wireless Network Expert (CWNE #351). With nearly two decades in enterprise networking, he helps organizations design and operate reliable, scalable wireless networks that advance business goals. Dan is passionate about education, frequently speaks at industry events, and is known for making complex wireless concepts clear and practical.Read Full Transcript
You know what's funny is that most companies start their digital transformation journey thinking that the hardest part is going to be picking the right software or getting their employees to actually adopt these new tools. But then they hit the networking reality check, and suddenly everything gets a lot more complicated.
The biggest pain point we see is dealing with legacy systems. Picture this: you've got this networking equipment that's been serving you faithfully for years. But it was built for a world where everyone worked in the office and most apps lived on servers that were down the hall. Now you're trying to make it play nice with these cloud apps, remote workers, and mobile devices that are maybe in a coffee shop, somewhere like that.
Security becomes a massive headache too. Back in the day, you had this nice, neat networking perimeter. Everything inside was trusted. Everything outside was not. It was suspicious. But with digital transformation, your data is everywhere. It's in AWS. It's in O365. It's in your employees' home networks. It's again on those mobile devices in coffee shops. It's like trying to build a fence around a cloud. Your old security playbook just doesn't work anymore.
Another thing that catches most IT teams off guard is a skills gap. Your networking engineers might be wizards when it comes to routers and switches, but now they need to understand cloud networking, software-defined everything these days, and also automation tools that they've never touched before. And it's not their fault. The industry moved real fast, and obviously keeping up is tough.
The companies that get this right, though, they treat their network as part of their digital strategy. Because at the end of the day, you can have the best apps in the world, but if your network can't deliver them, your transformation is just turned into a very expensive way to frustrate everyone.
You know what's funny is that most companies start their digital transformation journey thinking that the hardest part is going to be picking the right software or getting their employees to actually adopt these new tools. But then they hit the networking reality check, and suddenly everything gets a lot more complicated.
The biggest pain point we see is dealing with legacy systems. Picture this: you've got this networking equipment that's been serving you faithfully for years. But it was built for a world where everyone worked in the office and most apps lived on servers that were down the hall. Now you're trying to make it play nice with these cloud apps, remote workers, and mobile devices that are maybe in a coffee shop, somewhere like that.
Security becomes a massive headache too. Back in the day, you had this nice, neat networking perimeter. Everything inside was trusted. Everything outside was not. It was suspicious. But with digital transformation, your data is everywhere. It's in AWS. It's in O365. It's in your employees' home networks. It's again on those mobile devices in coffee shops. It's like trying to build a fence around a cloud. Your old security playbook just doesn't work anymore.
Another thing that catches most IT teams off guard is a skills gap. Your networking engineers might be wizards when it comes to routers and switches, but now they need to understand cloud networking, software-defined everything these days, and also automation tools that they've never touched before. And it's not their fault. The industry moved real fast, and obviously keeping up is tough.
The companies that get this right, though, they treat their network as part of their digital strategy. Because at the end of the day, you can have the best apps in the world, but if your network can't deliver them, your transformation is just turned into a very expensive way to frustrate everyone.
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