5 Business Benefits of Networking-as-Service (NaaS)
With the rise of cloud computing comes a rise in “as-a-service” solutions. There’s such a range of technologies that are delivered as a service that they’ve earned the moniker: Anything-as-a-Service, or XaaS. Savvy companies realise that as-a-service models enable them to be more agile and resilient—versus the clunky, expensive, and not-always-needed individual products or licenses of yore. The XaaS model provides an ever-growing range of solutions that, in turn, give business leaders extreme flexibility, customisation, speed, and cost savings, irrespective of your size or vertical. Here, we look at one of the more popular XaaS solutions, Network-as-a-Service, or NaaS, and how it can benefit your business.
The Basics of NaaS
With Network-as-a-Service, an organisation outsources its networking services to a trusted vendor for a fixed-cost monthly subscription. NaaS solutions come with everything you need for your enterprise network, including all necessary hardware, software, management tools, monitoring, and licenses. NaaS brings you up to speed—it can replace VPNs, MPLS connections, and other legacy network configurations. It can even replace on-premise networking hardware, such as critical firewall appliances.
This enables you to reap the full benefits of enterprise networking without the cost and headache to own, build, and maintain your own infrastructure. And, because you pay a fixed monthly cost for only what you need and use, you can shift your technology resources and investments to higher-value projects that drive business growth.
5 NaaS Benefits for your Business
There are numerous ways that NaaS can improve your business. Here’s our top five.
1. Cost Savings
One of the most striking benefits of switching to a Network-as-a-Service model is the cost savings. NaaS is a scalable subscription-based model that enables you to consume only what you need through an affordable, flexible operating expense (OPEX). Alternatively, you could consume network infrastructure as a one-time capital expenditure (CAPEX) of hardware, software, licenses, and services, but this requires significant time to plan and deploy as well as in-house expertise to install and configure everything. Adding NaaS as an OPEX gives you a predictable, transparent cost which leads to better budgeting.
Finally, NaaS also saves you money from a talent recruitment and retention perspective. It’s a cost-effective alternative to running your enterprise network in-house, which requires you to maintain a full technology team.
2. Simplified Management
Technology teams are busy teams. When you’re not thinking about long-term strategic investments for productivity and security, you’re responding to and supporting user issues. Understandably, these teams often struggle to keep up with the necessary planning, deployment, and day-to-day operational management of a corporate network. Performance can suffer as a result.
When you switch to NaaS, you can lean on the expertise of a trusted partner for proactive monitoring and expert support for end-to-end networking services. You’ll essentially extend the capacity of your existing internal team. With NaaS, you’ll also experience faster deployment of new features and functions to enhance your network security and ensure it remains in a good state operating at peak performance.
3. Enhanced Security
As mentioned above, NaaS provides around-the-clock proactive monitoring by a team of experts. They’re not only trained to spot threats to your network, but also to quickly take action to avoid intrusions and minimise the cost and damage to your business. Chances are, you work with sensitive data at your business—NaaS protects this information by following the latest and most effective practices for network security.
4. Better Performance
You can always lean on your NaaS provider for other needs, too. For example, as you grow and scale, you can work with your vendor to select the right software and hardware to ensure your network can handle your traffic demands. Most NaaS partners will provide clear service level agreements (SLAs) which guarantee a certain bar of availability, network uptime, and response and resolution times for addressing performance issues. The result? A better user experience for both your internal and external customers.
5. Increased Agility
As your business grows, you need your network infrastructure to grow alongside it. With NaaS, you can easily scale your network up or down when and as you need to stay ahead of changing business requirements. NaaS is a highly scalable architecture that can quickly evolve with your business, not because of it. Because of the flexible, transparent, pay-as-you-go model, you can make adjustments in real time to meet your business requirements and cost constraints.
Are you ready to reap the benefits of Network-as-a-Service? At Optec, we’re thrilled to offer a best-in-class NaaS solution powered by Fortinet. Please get in touch with us today to learn more.
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