Our Insight

As we celebrate a decade of creating value for our customers, we reflect on how much has changed in the market and how Ideal has adapted.

We constantly hear buzz words like digitisation and transformation, and there is no doubt technology is changing the way we work and live. It is not uncommon to see someone using a coffee shop, airport or their home as their ‘mobile’ place of work. The availability of fast, reliable internet means workers can use different devices (laptops, tablets, even mobile phones) at any location and at any time. Cloud services have removed the need to connect to a VPN we can join virtual meeting, access emails or data on SaaS applications on demand. But what does this mean for security?

Promising speed, bandwidth and latency opportunities, but what's the story behind Wi-Fi 6?

IT isn’t the same as it was 10 years ago. Besides traditional tasks that keep your organisation running, you’re asked to spearhead digital initiatives to make your business more relevant and competitive. And you’re not alone; in enterprises around the world, nearly a third of projects in the IT pipeline relate to digital transformation (DT)¹.

Our Security Expert explains what an Ideal Security Insight Report is, how it’s undertaken and how it can uncover hidden threats lurking on your network.

I want to tell a story to explain the origins of this blog post. It's one that I hear far too often recently. In the early days of working with a customer, some members of the Ideal team were onsite delivering a WAN project. They got chatting to our customer and it came as a massive surprise to them that the customer didn’t have a contact number for their Managed Service Provider. We’re not talking DDI to a dedicated account manager; they didn’t even have a switchboard number!

We know too well that technology is moving at a colossal speed and that demands on technology teams are getting out of control. Teams are expected to keep their skills and knowledge up-to-date with fast evolving technologies whilst doing more than just keeping the lights on. Now IT teams are expected to support the new-era of digital and truly dynamic businesses whilst keeping everything secure, achieving compliance and providing a seamless end-user experience. Oh, and all this needs to be delivered with squeezed resources and under cost scrutinisation!

Given the prediction that, by 2020, 80% of organisations will primarily use public cloud and there will be 10 billion mobile-connected devices¹, it’s no surprise that there’s a Software-Defined WAN boom. Many companies are using this advanced technology to simplify how they move workloads to any cloud, consume hosted applications and enable new services in remote locations. And the stats are compelling: SD-WAN offers 2.25x more bandwidth, software updates can be completed 51% faster and there’s 94% less unplanned downtime.² It’s essentially the enabler for digital transformation across hundreds of companies. 

Lewis joined Ideal in 2011, since then he's progressed from a Junior Engineer role to a Senior Project Engineer and has taken 18 months out to pursue a lifelong travelling ambition.

When starting with public cloud services in an organisation, the first conversations normally take place at a strategic level and are based around shifting from a CapEx to OpEx cost model. This is a great place to start, but it can create a lot of uncertainty around what those month-to-month costs are going to be for any given infrastructure footprint. 

While some network and infrastructure managers are gambling on ‘if it aint broke, don’t fix it’, many others are actively trying to find ways to improve WAN functionality and service levels while lowering costs. Which camp do you fall into? If you’ve realised SD-WAN is an essential part of your WAN strategy, then you’ve likely already moved onto weighing up the pros and cons.