NETSCOUT’s Sanjay Radia says digital strategy is essential
Chief Solutions Architect at NETSCOUT
Now more than ever, it is crucial for telecommunication companies to have concrete digital transformation strategies to stay ahead of the curve.
With this in mind, we spoke with Sanjay Radia, Chief Solutions Architect at NETSCOUT, who heads up the company’s customer success programme. Radia offers insight into how he provides technical expertise in design and architecture to clients and resellers within the UK, Middle East and Africa for new and existing products.
NETSCOUT is a leading provider of performance management, cybersecurity and DDoS protection solutions. Based in Westford, Massachusetts, the company offers a broad range of performance management products.
What should telecommunications companies bear in mind when it comes to digital transformation?
Digital transformation is the adoption and implementation of digital technology into all areas of an organisation to drive fundamental change. As many telecommunication firms have come to realise in recent years, for business operations to improve, digital transformation is a necessity.
However, taking on any transformation initiative comes with a variety of limitations and unexpected challenges, especially when it comes to managing and transferring internal data.
Using packet-level data can expedite this process. It consists of small data fragments that are part of a much greater message and, once shared over the internet, these fragments are put back together by the receiving device. This allows users to consume a network's resources only when they are actually transferring data.
Lack of experience, staff shortages, budget restrictions, limited visibility into cloud environments, and limited packet analysis skills are all factors which limit the use of packet-level data – and hinder the digital transformation, as a result. Nevertheless, packet-level data is essential and, with the right tools, can help ensure the success of what can be a costly transformation project.
What are the biggest barriers to digital transformation?
Overall, telecoms businesses around the world have made significant strides in their digital transformation strategies and adoption of cloud and hybrid cloud environments by using packet-level data. Yet, there is still some reluctance to using packet-level data, according to a study by Omdia.
Findings revealed that 51% of respondents and 79% of those in senior-level management positions claimed that staff limitations or finding people with the correct skill set was the biggest hurdle impacting a transformation project. Respondents also cited poor query and analysis performance (32%), operational costs of packet capture and storage (31%), inability to see encrypted traffic (30%) and lack of scalability (28%) as additional factors hindering digital transformation.
To overcome these hurdles, telecoms organisations must re-evaluate and execute an established digital strategy to help them stay competitive.
How can telecoms organisations overcome these obstacles?
With the help of packet-level data, telecoms organisations can overcome the aforementioned challenges while also gaining broader visibility into their cloud environments to help accelerate the digital transformation process. Packet-level data only consumes network resources when it is being transferred. This facilitates high network performance, particularly when large amounts of data are being transferred and processed from one technology or environment to another.
Additionally, packet-level data sets a reliable foundation for the intelligence required to provide businesses with insight into what lies within their network infrastructure— including the cloud, edge, and on-premises. This is important as the intelligence will evolve over time to support the unique needs of the business. This intelligence can also be used by IT teams to both maintain network reliability and performance as well as to reinforce the level of data integrity and security.
By using packet-level data, telecoms organisations can benefit from many advantages, including faster investigation and resolution and an in-depth view of network traffic. From the Omdia study, respondents claimed to benefit the most from the simplicity of adapting operational processes to new environments (43%) and to fill gaps in visibility by deploying in network devices or environments when deploying endpoint detection and response (EDR) agents — like IoT devices — isn’t possible (35%).
What must businesses do to ensure a successful transformation project?
Digital transformation is not always a simple process as there is no one-size-fits-all method. In preparation and throughout this process, telecoms businesses will require optimum network performance, data security, and assured reliability of their digital infrastructures when evaluating their internal data. Therefore, when navigating the complexities of corporate networks, telecoms businesses should consider the use of an adaptive service solution to help ensure the success of their digital transformation initiatives.
Adaptive service solutions are a multi-faceted technology that can be integrated into any network environment. In real time, these solutions can transform raw packets of data into robust metadata – also known as smart data – which can be used towards overall cybersecurity posture and analysis of network or application performance. More advanced versions utilise these same capabilities to provide advanced, deep packet inspection (DPI)-based network detection and response (NDR) tools.
Additionally, adaptive service solutions can help telecommunication enterprises overcome the challenges and reduce the total cost of ownership of using packet-based data mentioned above. For example, by allowing immediate access to packets and metadata via shared consistent data sources, this removes existing data silos and enables IT teams to work together.
This rapid access to shared data and seamless collaboration can help businesses to overcome staff shortages by improving staff efficiency. This, combined with the use of compression technology to secure and store packets and metadata locally, can also help address issues regarding the operational costs of packet capture and storage.
Now, more than ever, it is important for telecoms businesses to take control of their future transformation initiatives and solve subsequent problems quickly. By using packet-level data, organisations can ensure both control and success of their transformation goals. Any digital transformation is only as good as the data it is provided with, and those with more actionable data will be able to adapt easily, make more informed decisions, and achieve increased success.
