Our Insight

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. 

Many of the snails which will appear around the city in mid-September will have their own stories and unique inspired designs. Discover why artist Rosie Apps wanted to get involved in Snailspace and why her tongue-in-cheek, bold designs are a good fit for Ideal. 

The direction of travel for IT infrastructure is undoubtedly - and quite rightly - towards automating as much as possible of deployment and maintenance. Automation is the driver towards real business benefits such as increased visibility, operational effectiveness and guaranteed compliance in technical operations, but like any approach it’s not a panacea. Successful approaches to automation require pragmatism rather than ideological inflexibility to really make it add value within an organisation.

DevOps is often thought of in a cloud context. But how can networking benefit from breaking down the silos of Development and IT Operations roles and introduce automation to achieve efficiencies, speed and agility? SD-WAN has the answer. 

It’s argued that there is a place for both SD-WAN and MPLS in modern WANs. But we’re backing SD-WAN and for good reason...

Purdey joined us from France to help progress her studies and her career in Sales. In Purdey's blog she shares her experiences of her time at Ideal and her impression of Brighton.