The Critical Role of the Business Edge Network

The Service Provider’s Challenge
Businesses are increasingly using service providers to host critical applications and data in order to better control the security and availability of the data and to mitigate the expenses associated with hosting and serving data locally to the entire business user base. They access these applications and data over the service provider’s business edge network. This creates a challenge for the service provider, because their customers measure the success of the network by its ability to handle critical data and provide a superior user experience. With more and more applications and data centralized, the importance of the network, and its role in the success of the business, becomes ever more critical.

Market forces have created an environment of unpredictability for the service provider. Mobile devices, new applications, and the flood of new content place a direct strain on the business edge network, forcing the business and the service provider to address the network in creative ways. Maintaining and evolving the end-user experience is critical to the success of the network and key to enabling the service provider to meet its business goals.

The business user base, places considerable expectations on the network. Users expect their business e-mail and voice over IP calls to work flawlessly, while also expecting mobile video and applications to perform seamlessly. The impact of network performance is real and must be factored into the design of future business networks. This challenges the business edge provider to optimize the design and find ways to reduce the cost in the face of the increasingly complex and growing demand for a high-quality end-user experience.