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Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy FierceMarkets Custom Publishing September 2015 share: 2 Introduction: The Rise of the Digital Transformation 3 Hybrid IT—Your Launchpad 5 Sponsored Content: Advancing in the Gigabit Economy 6 The Network—A Fundamental Asset 9 Technology Innovations Underpinning the 21st Century Network 12 Leveraging Your Network for Voice Services 13 Conclusion: Balance and Simplicity at the Core of Your Hybrid IT Environment

Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy · Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy // September 2015 share: Introduction: The Rise of the Digital Transformation

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Page 2: Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy · Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy // September 2015 share: Introduction: The Rise of the Digital Transformation

Introduction: The Rise of the Digital Transformation

Hybrid IT—Your Launchpad

Sponsored Content: Advancing in the Gigabit Economy

The Network—A Fundamental Asset

Technology Innovations Underpinning the 21st Century Network

Leveraging Your Network for Voice Services

Conclusion: Balance and Simplicity at the Core of Your Hybrid IT Environment

Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy // September 2015

share: FierceMarkets Custom Publishing

Introduction: The Rise of the Digital Transformation

Organizations everywhere are embarking on digital transformations—going beyond simple automation and cost savings to reaching into new areas, revolutionizing their business models, and discovering new growth opportunities by taking advantage of leading-edge technologies to do business differently. In doing so, they’re enhancing their processes, their value propositions, and their relationships with both internal and external customers.

Most businesses are understandably optimistic about this new reality, eager to dramatically transform their existing IT capabilities so that they can support a successful digital transformation or implement new

technologies immediately. In the “IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Digital Enterprise Strategy Consulting Services 2015 Vendor Assessment,” 40 percent of respondents valued stronger use of digital capabilities to improve their internal operations. After all, to realize all the benefits of a digital future, the enterprise needs a strong digital foundation—from the business model down to operational processes and network architecture.

Just like the core business above it, the enterprise IT environment is experiencing a digital revolution, and IT organizations are faced with all kinds of new expectations surrounding data, video, and voice. To meet the demands of a new digital reality, the network has to be faster, more powerful, more scalable, more reliable, and more flexible than ever. That might seem like a lot to digest and implement, but your transformation into a more agile infrastructure might be closer than you think. n

To realize all the benefits of a digital future, the enterprise needs a strong digital foundation.

Page 3: Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy · Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy // September 2015 share: Introduction: The Rise of the Digital Transformation

Introduction: The Rise of the Digital Transformation

Hybrid IT—Your Launchpad

Sponsored Content: Advancing in the Gigabit Economy

The Network—A Fundamental Asset

Technology Innovations Underpinning the 21st Century Network

Leveraging Your Network for Voice Services

Conclusion: Balance and Simplicity at the Core of Your Hybrid IT Environment

Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy // September 2015

share: FierceMarkets Custom Publishing

Hybrid IT—Your Launchpad

David Shacochis, CenturyLink’s vice president of platform enablement, attributes today’s growing number of digital transformations to the expectations set by consumer-oriented services. Many enterprise leaders realize that in order to be able to innovate at that same pace, their in-house IT needs to evolve into a “business agility platform.” Business innovators need a platform upon which they can experiment and take digital risks, paving the way toward a digital user experience that generates enterprise value.

The goal of any company on the verge of transformation is to focus on the user experience, where the business lives and breathes. “The emerging business agility platform,” says Shacochis, “is scalable, programmable, and self-service. It requires support for a range of deployment models that can be tuned to the nature of the user experience workload. This is the one thing we hear from our customers – how can we achieve the same level of user experience that we see from major players

5 Tips for Choosing a Colocation Provider

If your business is like so many others, your IT organization is dealing with a staggering growth rate in digital assets and a similarly massive increase in the number of devices that need access to that information. IT organizations have expanded responsibilities beyond managing technology and data centers by taking a leading role in discovering and implementing technology solutions that drive business goals around revenue and retention. Adding to those challenges, you need to ensure you are meeting the compliance and security mandates that are applied to your firm, all while being nimble enough to quickly respond to competitive actions and market changes. You can’t meet those challenges while

Page 4: Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy · Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy // September 2015 share: Introduction: The Rise of the Digital Transformation

Introduction: The Rise of the Digital Transformation

Hybrid IT—Your Launchpad

Sponsored Content: Advancing in the Gigabit Economy

The Network—A Fundamental Asset

Technology Innovations Underpinning the 21st Century Network

Leveraging Your Network for Voice Services

Conclusion: Balance and Simplicity at the Core of Your Hybrid IT Environment

Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy // September 2015

share: FierceMarkets Custom Publishing

of the cloud and mobile application industry? How does our IT platform support a rich digital user experience over the top?”

But how do you begin the journey of such a transition when you face so many challenges in your existing environment? You’re faced with legacy networks, an aging infrastructure, and expensive hardware and software, among other potential roadblocks. Meanwhile, the Internet is abuzz with concepts such as Big Data and the Cloud and the Internet of Things, and although those concepts have a place in a company’s digital transformation, they can be merely ephemeral buzzwords if you haven’t found your pathway toward a strong business agility platform. The challenge of “getting started” is probably even weightier than you realize.

Increasing numbers of organizations are considering a hybrid IT strategy to begin their digital transformation. A hybrid IT infrastructure is one that leverages a mix of two or more of the following: on-premises data center, data center colocation, managed hosting, or virtualized cloud infrastructure, all linked together via a robust network topology. The freedom introduced by a hybrid IT scenario allows you to build a business

>> Hybrid IT—Your Launchpad

The freedom introduced by a hybrid IT scenario allows you to innovate around a platform that integrates with your business in smart ways.

still using resources for the administration and management of data center facilities and locations.

In a colocation scenario, an enterprise houses its servers and devices in a provider’s data center. The benefits of the colocation approach include leveraging the depth and experience of the providers data center operations staff, access to more technologically advanced infrastructure, the ability to scale quickly without significant capital investment, the availability of greater bandwidth, access specialized services and systems, lower latency, and inherent security.

How do you choose the right colocation provider? There are a number of criteria to consider in this important decision.

1. Reliability—Reliability is probably the most essential characteristic of a colocation provider. Measured in 9s, the reliability or uptime of a provider should reach up to four and five 9s, equating to 99.99% or 99.999% uptime, backed by a 100% Uptime SLA. Power reliability is more than generators and UPS systems; the system design and operational methods are key in helping guarantee that kind of availability.

2. Network Breadth—When you choose data center colocation, the provider rack-mounts your enterprise servers in its data center, where you can access greater bandwidth and resiliency, including

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Introduction: The Rise of the Digital Transformation

Hybrid IT—Your Launchpad

Sponsored Content: Advancing in the Gigabit Economy

The Network—A Fundamental Asset

Technology Innovations Underpinning the 21st Century Network

Leveraging Your Network for Voice Services

Conclusion: Balance and Simplicity at the Core of Your Hybrid IT Environment

Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy // September 2015

share: FierceMarkets Custom Publishing

agility platform that transforms along with your strategy. You not only have access to agile computing and IT infrastructure resources, you also benefit from the immense information heritage built up across years of IT system runtime. With the right hybrid IT strategy and tools, Shacochis says, “IT leaders can produce an immensely transformative effect over time. Glib statements like ‘move everything to the cloud’ are daunting and problematic, but connecting everything together with a Hybrid IT lifecycle architecture can actually lead to value creation.”

The speed, agility, and scale that comes with a cloud-enabled, hybrid IT environment requires a connective network infrastructure that can scale and change in step with the IT platforms that run across it. n

>> Hybrid IT—Your Launchpad

access to multiple carriers, at a far lower cost than you could at your own facility. So be sure to learn about the provider’s connectivity options.

3. Location, Location, Location—Physical proximity to the data center is important for several reasons. In the rare event that you need to physically touch the equipment—for example, for an upgrade or service scenario—the ability to easily visit the facility is essential. Also, in the event of an emergency or disaster, is the data center easy to get to? For that matter, how susceptible is the area to disaster in the first place? Is the location renowned for earthquakes, tornadoes, or floods?

4. Scalability Potential—Even if a provider seems perfect for your needs today, it might not be equipped to handle your needs as you grow. Is the provider flexible enough—and powerful enough—to meet your needs 5 or 10 years from now? Seek tailored solutions from flexible partners rather than standard box solutions from impersonal providers.

5. Ever-Present Security—The provider should offer physical security inside and outside the facility. Perimeter and external areas need to be monitored by video camera. Also understand vendor security procedures, compliance measures and audits to assure they can support the needs of your business.

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Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy // September 2015

Analysts predict that half of enterprises will have hybrid cloud by 2017. The key word in that sentence is “hybrid.” Hybrid architecture—involving a mix of on-premise IT resources, cloud and managed services – is a trend that is at least as profound a change in enterprise computing as the well-documented emergence of the cloud.

Within the next two years, the leading companies in the global economy will run their businesses on IT infrastructure that extends beyond the four walls of the organization. They will own some of that infrastructure, but will more likely look to simply buy infrastructure as a service, converting major capital expenses to operating expenses.

The rising wave of this shift can be seen in the Software as a Service (SaaS) market. While the customer understandably might perceive this model as simply a different form of software purchase, there is more at work if we broaden the focus. The pay-per-use fee also includes the hardware that software is running on as well as

its maintenance, security and connectivity.

Any glitch in the software delivery—whether in the server performance, the network bandwidth or the last-mile connectivity with an ISP—is the responsibility of the vendor. It’s a very different risk profile, placing the risk for the integrity of the technology squarely on the vendor. The result is a real simplification of the consumption process.

Enterprises are now quite comfortable with the SaaS model and the “as a service” approach to IT is expanding. With this, a lot of things change.

Enterprises will not be constrained by the past IT model in which infrastructure had to be purchased, qualified and provisioned to support specific initiatives. Computer, storage, memory and network bandwidth will be purchased as needed services with no continuing commitments to that added infrastructure if needs change. The inherent value of IT will shift from serving employees to directly creating value for customers.

At CenturyLink, we call this new unconstrained era The Gigabit Economy. The overall IT ecosystem is shifting under our feet as the Gigabit Economy ushers in a new phase of cloud growth. The data supports the notion that things are not the same, and won’t be the same in enterprise IT going forward.

The Gigabit Economy opens the door to wholly new digital business models. Lines of business managers are taking advantage of a simpler, faster IT consumption process to speed up their time to value. Companies can focus on their core businesses and not get caught up in infrastructure. They can develop and deploy applications in the cloud, leveraging a host of options from dedicated servers to containers. The business unit gets what it wants more quickly and IT stops taking the unfair rap for being slow. n

Advancing in the Gigabit EconomyBy Shirish Lal, CMO, CenturyLink

Sponsored Content

Page 7: Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy · Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy // September 2015 share: Introduction: The Rise of the Digital Transformation

Introduction: The Rise of the Digital Transformation

Hybrid IT—Your Launchpad

Sponsored Content: Advancing in the Gigabit Economy

The Network—A Fundamental Asset

Technology Innovations Underpinning the 21st Century Network

Leveraging Your Network for Voice Services

Conclusion: Balance and Simplicity at the Core of Your Hybrid IT Environment

Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy // September 2015

share: FierceMarkets Custom Publishing

The Network—A Fundamental Asset

The network is the backbone of your digital transformation strategy, and it’s the nervous system of your entire organization. But let’s face it: For most businesses—from an executive management perspective—the network isn’t something you want to deal with every day. It’s an essential, necessary component of your company, which you simply want to work.

“Enterprises everywhere just want to put a physical infrastructure in place that is as invisible as the electrical wiring in your house, and then control it by software,” says Chris Janson, director of industry strategy at Alcatel-Lucent. “But you need that electrical wiring; it’s pretty important! That’s why the network matters.”

Unfortunately, the network has often been an afterthought in the application development process. Yet, with the growth of cloud-based Software as a

Service (SaaS) offerings such as Salesforce.com, Intuit QuickBooks and Microsoft Office 365—not to mention cloud providers like CenturyLink, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure—the network is more critical than ever to the success of the business. Additionally, enterprise users are increasingly on their mobile devices and working away from the office: This trend combined with the increasing use of SaaS providers means that more enterprise traffic than ever before is flowing over networks—both public and private.

“The network is not only an essential piece of your business,” says Janson. “It’s also a fundamental asset that enterprises should be using to leverage revenue growth.”

In Janson’s view, the network really should be viewed not as a cost center but as a strategic asset. “The point is that things have evolved,” he says. “In the past,

Page 8: Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy · Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy // September 2015 share: Introduction: The Rise of the Digital Transformation

Introduction: The Rise of the Digital Transformation

Hybrid IT—Your Launchpad

Sponsored Content: Advancing in the Gigabit Economy

The Network—A Fundamental Asset

Technology Innovations Underpinning the 21st Century Network

Leveraging Your Network for Voice Services

Conclusion: Balance and Simplicity at the Core of Your Hybrid IT Environment

Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy // September 2015

share: FierceMarkets Custom Publishing

the network was based on big pipes everywhere, and companies owning a lot of capital equipment that would depreciate over time. In many cases, the result was that those capital assets would end up impairing the business’s ability to grow.”

For this reason, companies are turning to what Eric Barrett, product management director at CenturyLink, calls hybrid networks. “What we’re starting to see is a move toward hybrid networks,” he says, “where customers are telling us they no longer want to deal with a large dedicated corporate network, in which they have to manage security, compliance, maintenance, and other network-management concerns via a series of task-specific appliances. Maybe they want to retain a small, private network for their core, important locations, but they want to hand off the bulk of their network concerns to a provider and take advantage of the broadband explosion providing network speeds to homes and small businesses once seen only at large corporate data centers at a fraction of the cost. So they’ve taken that hybrid approach.”

A hybrid network leverages a mix of transport technologies and providers to extend reach, increase speed, and reduce access costs. This collection of technologies and providers then requires an integrated,

centralized management platform to maintain security and compliance, automate change management, and maintain network operations.

One of the big drivers of this desire to hand off network functions is that businesses are looking for the right mix of price and simplification, yet building and managing a hybrid network might not be their core competency. Hybrid networks can bring both of those benefits, if designed and managed properly.

“In the traditional network scenario,” Barrett says, “you could build an Internet VPN, or purchase an MPLS network, establish your connections—but it can be a big maintenance pain point for an enterprise. Businesses are seeking a much easier and faster way to turn up those VPNs and essentially bring up the Internet. They want to be able to do it quickly over a Web portal.” From the customer perspective, the hybrid network approach is all about simplification, and that simplification brings agility and lower costs. n

>> The Network—A Fundamental Asset

With the growth of the cloud, the network is more critical than ever to the success of the business.

Page 9: Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy · Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy // September 2015 share: Introduction: The Rise of the Digital Transformation

Introduction: The Rise of the Digital Transformation

Hybrid IT—Your Launchpad

Sponsored Content: Advancing in the Gigabit Economy

The Network—A Fundamental Asset

Technology Innovations Underpinning the 21st Century Network

Leveraging Your Network for Voice Services

Conclusion: Balance and Simplicity at the Core of Your Hybrid IT Environment

Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy // September 2015

share: FierceMarkets Custom Publishing

Technology Innovations Underpinning the 21st Century Network

Just as computing models are being redefined by the cloud paradigm, networks too are changing through technological innovation, some of which are drawn from the cloud world. Technologies such as software-defined networking (SDN), network function virtualization (NFV), and network virtualization (NV) are foundations of the 21st century enterprise network. SDN, NFV, and NV introduce new ways to design, build, and operate networks. Twenty years’ worth of evolution and innovation has led to all-new ways to access our networks—in both devices and services—as well as new ways to manage and store the types of Big Data flowing through our systems every day. SDN, NFV, and NV are all part of the new network reality—but why? What do they offer to the large enterprise IT buyer?

New technologies such as SDN and NFV will allow networks to become more fluid and adaptive to user demands. The promise inherent in these technologies is greater reliability and flexibility, stronger automation

Even the Cloud Is Anchored to the Network

For enterprises everywhere, growth is the top business/IT imperative, and digital transformation is essential to making that happen. As part of this transformation, an ascension to the cloud is a crucial strategy for optimizing business efficiency.

According to a recent study by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the cloud is becoming the dominant model for IT service delivery. A third of organizations say that 60 percent or more of their technology is delivered through the cloud today, and 62 percent believe that this will be the case in 2 years. And impact of the cloud goes beyond IT

Continued on page 11

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Too many owners. Not enough ownership. Get end-to-end accountability with the right mix of infrastructure.

We get it. Finding the right combination of IT services for your business is tremendously difficult. But, no matter your workloads, CenturyLink can help you accelerate your business with a flexible, fully integrated hybrid IT services and network portfolio that spans infrastructure, applications, services and geographies.

TRANSFORM COMPLEXITY INTO AGILTY ›

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Introduction: The Rise of the Digital Transformation

Hybrid IT—Your Launchpad

Sponsored Content: Advancing in the Gigabit Economy

The Network—A Fundamental Asset

Technology Innovations Underpinning the 21st Century Network

Leveraging Your Network for Voice Services

Conclusion: Balance and Simplicity at the Core of Your Hybrid IT Environment

Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy // September 2015

share: FierceMarkets Custom Publishing

potential, better scalability, and increased ease of use. Network services are quicker to deploy and are more dependable and agile. Highly virtualized IP networks will rely on these technologies, and the result will be lower costs and new methods to monetize those networks.

“One of the reasons technologies like SDN have become so attractive to both enterprises and service providers,” says Barrett, “is that you can implement a set of commoditized network technologies and provision—through software—the precise services, bandwidth, and Quality of Service (QoS) you need, between different locations and on a constantly changing basis. So there’s less human touch involved, and less investment with respect to capital equipment. And whatever capital gets expended has a much longer shelf life and can endure depreciation cycles. That’s the big attraction: These technologies are driven by their ability to keep pace with accelerating technology and change.”

In many ways, SDN, NFV, and NV represent the next step in the digital transformation of the enterprise network. These technologies introduce an innovative way to virtualize whole networks, simplify configuration, and enable automated management. Customers can now interact with their networks with software rather than on complicated hardware. You want these technologies in your environment; they are some of the technological components that will empower the future of your organization’s network. They will help you gain a clear vision of how to move your business forward. They will help your IT infrastructure become more predictable and more reliable.

The best approach to deliver on the promise of this next generation network is to find a service provider with the breadth and depth of experience and services to help achieve your business goals and focus your IT resources in furthering the business, rather than developing and managing the foundational IT platform it runs on. n

>> Technology Innovations Underpinning the 21st Century Network

service delivery: More and more enterprises see the cloud driving their digital transformation and growth.

However, what many enterprises forget is that the cloud is not merely some ephemeral technology—it’s an accumulation of robustly built networks and computing infrastructure. The performance of the network equates to the performance of the cloud. Having an intelligent, reliable, and efficient network that provides next-generation technological innovations is essential for enterprises that want to evolve from traditional IT models to the cloud. For a cloud to deliver on its full potential, it needs to optimally utilize all available resources. However, many organizations tend to forget about the importance of network foundation.

“The cloud is nothing more than an interconnection of data centers,” says Janson. “Again, the network matters! In general, the robustness and reliability of the legacy network translates to a robustness in cloud infrastructure.”

Page 12: Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy · Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy // September 2015 share: Introduction: The Rise of the Digital Transformation

Introduction: The Rise of the Digital Transformation

Hybrid IT—Your Launchpad

Sponsored Content: Advancing in the Gigabit Economy

The Network—A Fundamental Asset

Technology Innovations Underpinning the 21st Century Network

Leveraging Your Network for Voice Services

Conclusion: Balance and Simplicity at the Core of Your Hybrid IT Environment

Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy // September 2015

share: FierceMarkets Custom Publishing

Leveraging Your Network for Voice Services

Often overlooked amid the buzz of cloud and hybrid IT is the need to evolve voice services for the business. Many businesses are still using traditional telephony PBX systems, key systems, and Centrex—even as they evolve their networks and computing platforms to modern technologies and models. However, a hybrid IT platform actually lends itself well to supporting voice services in the way that users want to consume them: mobile and fully integrated with other forms of communications.

Voice has become an application on the shared infrastructure rather than a dedicated hardware and network. Hosted Voice over IP (VoIP) solutions are essentially voice applications running on cloud computing platforms, connecting users over a hybrid network. As with the broader hybrid IT strategy, hybrid voice solutions follow a similar approach, combining on-premises (IP-PBX), cloud (hosted VoIP), and traditional PBXs served by SIP trunks to

form a corporate-wide voice solution that can grow and evolve as the business changes.

“Probably the number-one driver for people considering a move to VoIP,” says Brian Mistretta, director of product marketing at CenturyLink, “is a need to reduce IT complexity and cost. From a savings perspective, I’ve seen stats anywhere from 20 to 50 percent savings moving to VoIP, getting rid of separate networking, and gaining the ability to leverage voice and data together on the same network.” n

A hybrid IT platform actually lends itself well to supporting voice services in the way that users want to consume them: mobile and fully integrated with other forms of communications.

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Introduction: The Rise of the Digital Transformation

Hybrid IT—Your Launchpad

Sponsored Content: Advancing in the Gigabit Economy

The Network—A Fundamental Asset

Technology Innovations Underpinning the 21st Century Network

Leveraging Your Network for Voice Services

Conclusion: Balance and Simplicity at the Core of Your Hybrid IT Environment

Digital Transformation Demands a New Network Strategy // September 2015

share: FierceMarkets Custom Publishing

Conclusion: Balance and Simplicity at the Core of Your Hybrid IT Environment

New networking technologies such as SDN and NFV are only the tip of the iceberg, and the evolution of those kinds of technologies is accelerating so rapidly that it’s only a matter of time before they’re the accepted norm. Your future hybrid IT environment will be dynamic and highly customizable, and it will support the simple addition of new network, cloud, hosting, and managed services. In the ideal hybrid scenario, you will be able to configure network services with the click of a button. In many cases, IT management could become as easy as using your phone.

Automation, virtualization, optimization, the notion of getting more for less—from a network standpoint, there’s been a huge acceleration of opportunities for efficiency. Performing maintenance, applying patches, doing day-to-day upkeep—everything will be easier in the hybrid model. That’s the end state that people in IT have been wanting forever: How do we make technology

a growth engine and a profit center? How do we make these systems monetize Big Data, how do we make them drive growth, how do we profit from these systems already in place?

Technologies such as SDN and NFV will define how providers offer automation, and configurable services, and Just in Time (JIT) ways of dealing with the Internet of Everything. The future will involve those players that have proven capabilities to work in a hybrid, balanced way that lets them address the ever-growing needs of their customers. n

Your future hybrid IT environment will be dynamic and highly customizable, and it will support the simple addition of new network, cloud, hosting, and managed services.

©2015 CenturyLink. All Rights Reserved.

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