Strategies for Future-Proofing a Network with AI-Driven Automation
If you don’t want to spend money completely redesigning your network every time the IT-landscape changes, then you need a future-proofed network.
This is easier said than done.
In today’s dynamic environment, with constantly increasing network demands and network complexity, future-proofing isn’t the simplest of tasks. It takes informed, strategic decision making, founded on comprehensive network and digital experience analytics.
You have to know your network as well as you know your business goals. You have to be able to act before there are problems, and predict your users’ future needs.
You need AI-driven automation, or you’ll wear yourself and your budget out. Let’s talk about it.
Understanding Future-Proofing in Networking
Future-proofing a network means designing and maintaining a network that is flexible enough to adapt to future requirements as they come along.
This process is essential for organizations that want to remain resilient amidst rapid technological changes, scalability issues, and more. The primary issues or key challenges facing organizations as they try to future-proof are:
- Increasing bandwidth demands
- The exponentially rising number of connected devices
- An ever more mobile workforce
The Role of AI-Driven Automation in Network Optimization
AI-driven network automation solutions use artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the notification, mitigation, and elimination of network performance and behavior issues.
The key future-proofing benefits of these solutions are:
- Scalability: These solutions can monitor the activity of hundreds or thousands of connected devices, and thousands of square feet of workspace. They scale as companies grow, no matter how fast that may be.
- Speed: AI-driven network automation solutions can analyze tens of thousands of data packets in real time. This enables them to understand the real time digital experience of every user, and what is needed to create and maintain an optimal experience.
- Improved Security: Because these solutions analyze all network traffic, they can alert IT to any suspicious activity in real time.
- Enhanced Efficiency: IT can outsource tasks such as regular network testing to these solutions. The solutions perform the task as-needed, automatically inform IT of results, and streamline any necessary troubleshooting, all while freeing IT to focus on other critical responsibilities. With these solutions, every one can do more, trusting that the network is optimized unless otherwise alerted.
Key Strategies for Future-Proofing Networks with AI Automation
Strategy 1: Implement Predictive Maintenance and Monitoring
Organizations can use AI-driven network automation to identify and resolve problems before users are impacted, keeping networks running reliably no matter what. Here’s how it works.
AI-driven network automation solutions learn to recognize what is normal and what is abnormal for each unique network to which they connect. They do this by analyzing all network activity, 24/7, and by analyzing the results of both scheduled and manually run network tests. Solutions then use this understanding to not only identify existing problems, but also to predict potential issues.
When IT is notified of these problems, teams can proactively implement resolutions to safeguard business continuity and protect the digital experience. Often, users remain unaware that there ever was a problem because of the quick resolution.
As an additional benefit, the combination of reduced downtime and reduced need for IT collaboration results in cost savings for organizations.
Strategy 2: Design Networks to Meet Users’ Needs
Optimized networks support the most engaged and most productive users, which is why every one wants one. However, networks are dynamic, and therefore don’t remain optimized without continual oversight.
Organizations that want to future-proof their optimization must keep eyes on the network – all infrastructure, connected devices, and applications – at all times. This is the only way to know exactly what users are experiencing, and what they need to maintain an optimal experience.
This requires real time analytics from a telemetry solution.
Telemetry is the automatic collection and transmission of data from remote or otherwise inaccessible sources to systems in other locations for analysis. Since IT cannot hang over users’ backs all day, recording their every network experience, telemetry solutions are an ideal technology to adopt. This is especially true for today’s mobile workforce.
AI-driven network automation solutions that collect end user experience metrics are, by design, telemetry solutions. They will automatically collect and analyze all user data, ensuring IT knows exactly what end users are experiencing and why. They can provide specifics, such as what software features are actually used and how often. This in turn enables decision makers to determine if the software they have is optimally meeting business goals, or if a change needs to be made.
This level of insight leads to networks that are future-proofed to provide exactly what end users need to meet or surpass all business goals.
Strategy 3: Enhance Decision-Making with AI-Driven Insights
We’ve discussed how AI-driven network automation solutions enable decision makers to look forward with predictive analytics and to focus on current experiences with real time analytics. The final piece of future-proofing is to look back with historical analytics.
These analytics provide actionable insights for better decision-making in regards to factors such as capacity planning and forecasting demand. They identify long-term performance trends that can be used to better predict future needs. These trends aren’t automatically identified with solutions that only provide real-time analytics.
With historical analytics, decision makers can better allocate resources as they decide what specific upgrades their network needs to better align with business objectives in the future and promote a seamless digital experience.
The Time to Future-Proof is Now
It’s never too early to focus on future-proofing. After all, you don’t want to back yourself into a network design that isn’t flexible or adaptable.
Assess your current network optimization and future-proofing approach. Does it allow you to proactively address issues, eliminate issues in real time, and design networks that meet your specific users’ needs?
If not, we recommend you consider adopting AI-driven network automation. Ask us today about our Wireless Intelligence Platform and the DEX Agent.
Wyebot is the leader in AI-driven WiFi Automation. Our sensor, cloud, and client device technologies eliminate wired and WiFi network issues and improve the digital experience for every user, independent of location. Our award-winning, first-to-market, innovative solutions are changing people’s lives in the enterprise, healthcare, manufacturing + warehousing, MSP, retail, and education industries.
