As network environments become more complex, network teams struggle to gain visibility across internet and cloud components, citing blind spots and a lack of skilled workers as contributing factors to slow problem resolution, according to a Broadcom report.
Broadcom’s research found that 98% of companies use or plan to use cloud infrastructure and 95% support remote workers—two factors that contribute to network complexity. The findings also show that 84% of respondents “regularly learn about network issues from users,” which means end users or customers are already experiencing performance problems when IT first realizes there is an issue. Among respondents, 84% have five or more network management tools today, while 42% said they have 11 or more. Some 64% of respondents stated that “poor network management tools impede the adoption of new technologies,” according to the report, Cloud and Internet Usage Generates Network Observability Blind Spots.
“While companies realistically have little choice about remote workers, the internet, and cloud operations, they need to find solutions to the lack of skilled workers and poor tools,” the report states.
Broadcom worked with Dimensional Research to survey 505 participants with networking, operations, and cloud responsibilities. And despite numerous tools, 95% of those surveyed said they don’t get all the information they want from internet or cloud infrastructure providers. And 80% reported that the internet and cloud environments create network blind spots, while 78% said that network complexity has “grown significantly over the last few years.”
“This lack of information led 76% [of respondents] to share that it slows issue resolution times,” the report reads. “While companies realistically have little choice about remote workers, the internet, and cloud operations, they need to find solutions to the lack of skilled workers and poor tools.”
Among the key challenges for network operations teams, cloud topped the list of the biggest hurdles. When asked what makes network operations most challenging today, respondents said:
- Cloud environments (public, private, hybrid): 62%
- Scale (numerous devices, traffic, schema, etc.): 55%
- Lack of needed skillsets: 41%
- False positive alerts: 41%
- Remote employees: 40%
- Alert storms (alerts causing other alerts, noise, etc): 39%
- Next-generation technology (5G, 400gE, SD-WAN, SDN, etc.): 34%
- Not enough network operations personnel: 34%
- Inadequate operations tools: 31%
- IoT devices: 30%
While survey respondents pointed to the technical factors making network observability difficult, the lack of available and skilled candidates also contributes greatly to the struggle to efficiently manage a complex, distributed network environment. The challenges often point enterprise companies to also rely on third-party resources for management and monitoring assistance, but that approach doesn’t alleviate the internal staffing challenges for the long term, the study explains.
The top contributors holding a network team back from growing and becoming more capable of managing increasing complexity and more tasks include:
- Lack of budget: 75%
- Candidates lack needed skillsets: 48%
- Politics (roadblocks, delays, etc.): 47%
- Lack of available candidates: 45%
- Inability to offer competitive compensation: 38%
- Moratorium on hiring: 31%
- Outsourcing strategy: 22%
“The issues of lacking and available skilled candidates are particularly difficult for a company to solve, and while growing expertise internally is a common approach it does mean that low-skilled new hires need a way to contribute,” the report reads. “To help mitigate the challenge, 65% [of respondents] admitted they rely on third-party resources for network operations, but that approach doesn’t often grow expertise internally, which can perpetuate the situation.”
Source:: Network World