Secure Network Transformation

Modernise your network with a software-defined, cloud-first
approach to enable more agility, scalability, efficiency, and security.

The advent of mobile working models, new cyber threats, and business disruptions demand more agility, flexibility, efficiency, and security from the enterprise network. Needless to say, legacy systems are unresponsive to these needs, limiting businesses from achieving their network's true potential. This eBook examines this new era and reveals how our software-defined, internet-first network solutions are helping enterprises drive end-to-end network transformation to ensure business continuity and unlock new capabilities.

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Section 1
Evolving business realities in today's
cloud-first world
Section 2
Why traditional networks fall short?
Section 3
Modernise your network with our
blueprint to Network Transformation
Section 4
Key use cases and success stories for
Network Transformation
Section 5
Steps to unlocking meaningful
Network Transformation

Secure Network Transformation at the Center of the New Normal

Last year accelerated the speed at which enterprises made the shift to the cloud-first, internet-first approach, bringing sharp focus on how a robust network infrastructure can help businesses drive continuity and growth, through ubiquitous connectivity across locations, devices, and users.

Now, as we reimagine business as usual for the hybrid world, secure network transformation has never been so critical. With more employees connecting to the corporate network from home or remote locations, alongside the need to support those who are returning to physical premises, enterprises need to rearchitect towards a hybrid network that can support secure, performant and resilient access from anywhere, while ensuring superior customer experiences.

In this e-book on Secure Network Transformation, we will explore how an effective hybrid networking strategy can put enterprises at the forefront of their digital transformation efforts. We will also showcase how we have been partnering with customers globally to embark on a trusted journey to network transformation.

CIO goals driving network transformation investment

31% want to achieve internal efficiencies
23% have internet applications and user access management security requirements
17% want to reduce overall cost structure
17% want to enhance customer experience

Source:
IDC InfoBrief

It's become crucial for enterprises to build an agile, secure, and performant network for the cloud-first world, so as to build an Enterprise Future Blueprint.

Traditional Networks are not built for the cloud-first era

Today's hyper-connected digital world demands the adoption of new-age technologies such as cloud, mobility, and IoT, which increases the complexity of an enterprise's ecosystem. With a complex mesh of networks connecting to cloud apps, distributed data centres and hybrid workforces, connectivity is more important than ever and security more challenging.

However, traditional networks simply can’t keep up with the evolving demands of today's marketplace. Legacy networks are inherently neither architected for today's cloud era nor intended to facilitate digital transformation. These limitations prevent the enterprise network from achieving the agility, efficiency, and security needed to ensure growth.

Rigid and Difficult to Scale

Flexibility is a constant challenge while using traditional networks due to their hardware-based connectivity. Increasing network capacity and adding devices is often a task that requires hands-on access for each console and device.

A recent IDC research shows that only 35% of enterprises have indicated that their networks are ready to reap the most of emerging technologies.

Poor customer experience

Inefficient traffic management of a variety of cloud-based and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications results in an inferior user experience.

Operational Costs too high

Manual handling of regular network administration issues adds to overall operational costs. Hardware dependency doesn't allow the growth of administrative savings and needs constant maintenance and optimisation.

Less Secure

The security principle of defence-in-depth followed by traditional networks works only when employees are office-bound. The remote workforce using the public internet to access data and applications beyond the corporate network perimeter raises network security concerns, along with performance issues.

Building the Future Blueprint to modernise your enterprise network

Now more than ever, enterprises are fast-tracking digital transformation efforts and realigning their key priorities to succeed in the new world order. In these times of change, the importance of a trusted network partner is imperative to yield the maximum from your transformation efforts, including three essential impact parameters.

Performance & Visibility

Dependency on apps and data in the cloud pulls in massive internet-bound traffic that traditional network models can't handle. By securely transforming the network to a hybrid model with Tata Communications, enterprises can make the internet fit for the business.

Managing Risk

As enterprises transform their network from a traditional hub-and-spoke model to direct-to-internet and cloud, they are met with security threats and the need to consistently regulate security policies across the network, users, and cloud infrastructure. We help enterprises with zero-trust network access to applications, which ensures that only authenticated users can access the application and enterprise data.

Agility and Efficient IT

While scaling, connecting new sites to the corporate network can become strenuous due to excessive lead times spanning months, hindering business operations and continuity. We enable quicker provisioning over the internet to activate new sites faster, and the self-service capability to ensure changes are adopted within minutes.

Business Implications of a poorly designed Enterprise Network

Nearly one-third of IT decision-makers reported a cost of more than USD 1.2 MN due to a network outage (Opengear)
Slow internet costs an employee a week’s productivity, per year (Sandisk)
A 1-second delay in loading of a webpage leads to a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction and 7% loss in conversions (Quicksprout)
The average cost of a data breach in 2020
was USD 3.86 MN (IBM)
A DDoS attack lasting 7-12 hours can cost up to USD 2.3-4 MN (Comptia)

Key use case scenarios on the journey to Secure Network Transformation

As businesses navigate the new remote-first, hybrid era, they need to partner with a trusted network services provider with adequate industry know-how to align their network strategy.

Tata Communications’ comprehensive IZO™ WAN suite of services provides an open, extensible platform combining the best of both cloud and on-premises technology to deliver a differentiated experience. Our comprehensive approach keeps the understanding of your enterprise's challenges, current IT landscape, compliance requirements, and budgetary constraints at its core.

3,000+ Sites

Tata Communication has transformed network capabilities comprising 60+ enterprise customers

1 MILLION+

Users protected from cyber attacks

8 Major Cloud Providers

Connected businesses across the world with us

30 Countries

BroadBand Internet now available in 30 countries in 2020

8 Consecutive Years

As a leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Network Services, Global.

30% of the world’s internet routes

Are being carried by our network

Our secure network solutions facilitate a range of key
use-cases of today's digital era, including:

1. Cloud-First, Internet-First Network Architecture

Today, most enterprises have adopted a cloud-first strategy to facilitate business operations seamlessly. This results in increased internet-bound traffic, and hence, it affirms that centralised internet breakout from the hub locations increases network costs and application response time. We empower you to stick to your digital vision for borderless growth by seamlessly enabling cloud-first strategy by re-architecting the network to a hybrid model with direct access from branches/remote sites to clouds. This ensures performant and resilient access to corporate WAN from any location and device with the connectivity of choice.

Success Story:

One of Europe's leading brewery wanted to strengthen its core and position itself for growth in the digital business landscape. The only problem was that their legacy MPLS network wasn't responsive enough to cope with today's need for agility and scalability.

Driving an end-to-end network transformation leveraging our IZO™ Internet WAN and Global Virtual Private Network with an IZO™ SDWAN overlay, the company unlocked 10X more bandwidth, reduced costs by 25%, and halved the occurrence of network incidents. This has also led to 70% of their network traffic being on the internet, fueling their 'connected bar' initiative.

2. Rightsizing and
Optimising Network

With the increasing use of cloud, SaaS, and IaaS systems, traditional enterprise networks face unprecedented pressure and cannot optimise performance based on business priority. Most enterprises inefficiently use existing network capacity, which leads to performance issues and higher bandwidth costs.

We address this challenge by migrating your existing architecture to an agile, hybrid network supported by MPLS and end-to-end SLA-backed IZO™ Internet WAN. Application-aware routing also ensures that your network is optimised to deliver higher efficiency.

Success Story:

Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, a leading Indian multinational pharmaceutical company, wanted to transform its traditional network infrastructure into a hybrid network model. Tata Communications successfully re-architected and optimised the network as per their business requirements. We right-sized their network to best suit their growth objectives and provided 99.93 % uptime for all global sites.
Visteon, a global leader in automotive cockpit electronics, recognised us as a top supplier for our efforts to make their network agile and secure. With our next-gen hybrid network and Tata Communications IZO™ SDWAN, we empowered Visteon with an enhanced customer experience, seamless collaboration, and greater business flexibility.

3. Control your network

With a more hybrid working environment, enterprises seek flexibility to adjust their network performance, scale bandwidth in real-time, and pay per their usage. Currently, enterprises face a longer time to deploy and change resources, ultimately leading to subpar performance. Creating a consistent security posture for all users and devices inside and outside the corporate network is complex. Enterprises need flexibility to control the network to facilitate agile policy changes, on-demand network services, and a pay-per-use.

With Tata Communications’ IZO™ SDWAN self-service portal, you can effectively manage service and security policies, upgrade and downgrade network capacity and activate network functions on a pay-as-you-go basis. Our on-demand bandwidth empowers your IT managers to provision for scalable capacity
and virtual functions to meet the
varied business objectives.

Success Story:

Varroc Group, a leading global auto technology supplier, needed to upgrade its network to support its global expansion objectives while mitigating security risks, managing traffic, and minimising downtime.

Tata Communications deployed IZO™ SDWAN to drive end-to-end network transformation, allowing the company to shift from a legacy approach to a cloud-first architecture that allowed them to seamlessly onboard global clients.

4. Seamless Cloud-to-Cloud
Connectivity

In today's cloud age, an increasing number of cloud applications has resulted in multi-cloud diversity requirements. Enterprises need seamless cloud-to-cloud connectivity of workloads & data through a mesh of public and private networks, all in a highly secure manner. Cloud connect solutions need to link data centers to multi-clouds via private connections and users to multi-cloud using Internet WAN, and broadband.

Our IZO™ Private Cloud connect solution allows seamless and rapid connection between users, branches, and centers in a multi-cloud infrastructure.

Success Story:

India’s largest manufacturer of sweets and beverages, Haldiram chose AWS as its public cloud provider. But the company needed secure, high-speed connectivity from manufacturing plants and warehouses to the cloud. Direct links into the AWS cloud from each location were needed. However, leased lines’ high cost immediately ruled them out. The company was already using Tata Communications Global VPN in its wide area network, so IZO™ Private Connect was chosen to carry the AWS traffic over exclusive MPLS-based links.

5. Zero Trust Network
Security

Transitioning to a cloud-first network poses several security challenges concerning branches, remote workers, the public internet, and more. There is also the need to regulate consistent security controls across the network. Security must be built into your network design and delivered through the cloud, with both on-premises and cloud-based security, as well as secure access service edge (SASE) solution that enables zero-trust access for your users anywhere, on any device.

Success Story:

Business continuity for a power generation firm during the COVID-19 crisis depended on how fast it could give locked-down staff access to enterprise applications. Also, it was essential to provide unhindered application performance and the highest security levels against cyberattacks.

Tata Communications implemented a secure remote working solution based on NetFoundry for 300+ employees of a power generation company in less than six hours. No hardware procurement or installation was involved, and two data centers were connected in a few minutes. The Zero Trust Network Access solution gives three times faster application performance than a VPN and is 30% cheaper.

The State of Industry Challenges

Poor application performance

Retail: A popular outlet claimed slow performance of a new loud-based point-of-sale system. Consequently, it was only able to service 1/3 of customers, resulting in snaking queues and loss of revenue.

Banking/Finance: Slow execution of trades at a financial institution, resulted in late reaction to market movements and loss of millions

Frequent Network Outage

Fast-Moving Consumer Goods: A supermarket grocery chain faced a half-day closure due to its self-service checkouts not working following a network outage, leading to a significant loss of revenue.

Compromised Network Security

Finance: Fraudulent transactions conducted on behalf of a large trading firm resulted in investors losing billions of dollars.

Source: AN IDC INFOBRIEF | SECURE NETWORK TRANSFORMATION TO TURBOCHARGE YOUR DIGITAL JOURNEY

What industry leaders are trying to achieve?

Higher uptime across all locations to ensure reduction in production loss resulting from network outages.
Reduced latency to ensure faster delivery of services.
Reduced operating costs along with secure and reliable user experience.

The impact of our network transformation solutions

100% Network Uptime: Leading to Zero Production Loss and increased efficiency
10-15% Reduced Latency leading to enhanced customer experience
Up to 40% improved service delivery owing to a stable network
Up to 70% IMPROVED Network Bandwidth leading to enhanced performance of mission critical applications.

(Aforementioned information pertains to only specific customers of Tata Communications)

Steps to Unlocking your Secure Network Transformation

To meet your business objectives, it is imperative to focus on the key factors that can provide a meaningful transformation. So, what's the blueprint while moving from an on-premise, traditional network towards a fully hybrid and agile infrastructure?

Define Your Transformation Objectives - Take the leap by first defining the objectives behind your transformation goals. Focusing on the outcomes and understanding your IT efforts' impact on your core business objectives is crucial.

Key points to consider:

Presence in Gartner's Magic Quadrant.
Does their footprint align with your presence?
Look for independent recommendations for choosing a Managed Service Provider.
Can they deliver end-to-end services, including the underlay?
Do they have similar experiences in your domain?

Know Your Traffic Flows - It is imperative to understand your traffic flows and their effect on your network requirements. Get your IT and Network team together and start by asking questions:

What traffic is critical to the business, and what less so?
What traffic needs more compliance?
What connectivity should be used for different apps?
What are your latency requirements?

Unlike on-premise and legacy WANs, SDWANs can manage your entire network to the smallest degree.

Evaluate Solutions - Although evaluating and assessing available SDWAN and network solutions are often subject to vendors, demos and virtual POC environments can stimulate a solution's features effectively to allow you to compare them with other available options.

A Trusted Partner in Your Journey to Network Transformation

At Tata Communications, we have built the capabilities to transform your network as per your unique business goals. We provide reliable connectivity infrastructure by making the network fit for your business. You can leverage our predictable internet to support critical applications seamlessly, along with the support for Bring-Your-Own-Network (BYON) requirements in our managed IZO™ SDWAN service. As a global digital ecosystem enabler, we have the right experience, reach, and expertise to deliver future-proof network solutions for your bespoke needs.