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As mobile, BYOD, cloud and virtualisation reach a certain level of maturity a huge strain is created on corporate operations, IT sustainability and the bottom line. The sheer volume of data which is now flowing around organisations is threatening stability and competitiveness. As a result, network managers have evolved from their traditional support role and are becoming leaders of a mission critical function that influences whether a business grows or fails.

A major mission is controlling network capacity. It is one of the enterprise's biggest challenges, especially as employees become more expectant of cloud functionality, unified communications and data-centric technology. However, even with a range of intelligent platforms to help plan, manage and utilise capacity, many enterprises are unconfident in selecting the best solution and deploying it.

CAPACITY PLANNING MADE EASY
Undeniably attempting to future-proof capacity is certainly wise, but as current trends have shown, the network can experience huge pressures with little warning. To combat this, flexibility, scalability and visibility are network characteristics every manager should have an active eye on. A clear, controllable overview of the corporate IT ecosystem helps to manage constantly shifting bandwidth demands while creating the means to ensure profitability.

This functionality also assists in growth strategies. Workforces are clamouring for remote working, mobile infrastructure, wireless access and flawless global IT performance. The same performance requirements apply to cloud customers and virtualisation implementations.

With nearly every business decision ultimately relying to some degree on the network, expectations of consistency, quality of service and availability mean that infrastructure managers have to embrace this corporate cultural shift without causing damage elsewhere. As a result, there are a few things to consider:

• Real-time management - simulating, reacting and flexing capacity instantly can provide enormous competitive and control advantages
• Multiple classes of service - mission critical applications are protected from other bandwidth intensive UC and cloud solutions
• Cloud-native - a network that has been custom built with cloud and mobile in mind provides guaranteed performance, uptime and cost effectiveness
• High performance standards - strong SLAs built around a low-latency global infrastructure encourages business and IT growth.

REINING IN THE COSTS
It is worth noting that implementing network and management tools with the necessary security and future capacity can be prohibitively expensive when approached unwisely. Three aspects drive cost effectiveness and value. Businesses need to consider them as follows:

• Bespoke implementation - supporting legacy applications and technology that maximises existing infrastructure investment is the initial step. Next, a separation of UC/ mobile, cloud and mission critical functionality helps to avoid performance complications and costly bandwidth emergencies. Finally, address worldwide point-to-point connectivity cautiously to create a localised return on investment
• Agility through managed services - enlist your network provider to help drive adoption by controlling the entire network. If effectively aligned with your corporate objectives, managed network control is a cost-conscious way to free up management time while still aligning network capacity with fluctuating demands. The same applies to hosted unified communications
• Consolidation - if support, billing and control of remote and internal network solutions are under the remit of a single specialist, you can reduce fragmentation, provider-led errors and uncontrollable costs. This is particularly important when virtualising large IT estates.

UNLOCKING BUSINESS POTENTIAL
Cloud reliability and network capacity have become entwined with business transformation. Enhanced collaboration, productivity and communication through a hybrid environment or completely virtualised organisation is undeniably the future of corporate IT; but only if businesses prepare for a continued shift cloudwards. Network managers need to select the correct tools. If they do, they will be well positioned for the future and able to strongly influence business success and corporate transformation.