The pandemic conditions have fuelled a change in how organizations view their data storage options. So, it seems this year, the Network-As-A-Service will grow in popularity.
A report by Cisco, titled 2022 Global Networking Report, further clarifies the possibilities of broader adoption of NaaS services. However, the report also hints at the prospect of apprehensive response in the IT department with respect to NaaS.
The reason is the presence of legacy technologies that may not be compatible with the NaaS services. The available investments or technologies that an enterprise employs have fallen on various depreciation schedules.
The Cisco report is based on extensive analysis that considered more than 1,500 IT experts. It also highlighted that many of the experts are pretty apprehensive of losing their control over the hardware as a result of the massive adoption of NaaS services.
What primarily happens due to switching to a NaaS based model is businesses of varying sizes lease network hardware. The lease applies to routers and switches and the entire network hardware of an organization.
The immediate results could be on-demand pricing or rapid scalability.
The concept of NaaS revolves around the fact that enterprises are now consuming network equipment as a service from networking vendors instead of investing in capital expenditure to procure networking equipment.
The NaaS model may especially suit SMEs as they can offload equipment maintenance on a daily basis. In addition, the time saved can be redirected to other tasks such as customer care and others.
Additionally, NaaS allows SMEs to experiment with new technologies such as AI at a much faster rate as compared to the conventional method of buying network equipment outright for years. In fact, technologies such as AI can be subscribed together with the NaaS subscription, yet another advantage through NaaS for SMEs.