Complexity, Cloud, and Campus: Introducing Effortless Networking

Guest Blogger – Siva Valliappan

As users appetite for mobility, video, unified communications and virtual desktop solutions grow, they will increasingly look to IT to fix the weak link in deploying these technologies – the campus network. The campus network is the entry point and the main communications/information conduit for most organizations. Massive increases in access demand for increasingly diverse and demanding applications (such as video and data), is stretching legacy campus networks to the breaking point.

Add the transition to hosted cloud-enabled services and things start getting ugly. Poor reception on calls or video conferences, loss of connectivity, holes in network security, and a lack of adequate bandwidth—reducing application response to a crawl—is impacting business productivity and reducing businesses’ ability to compete at a time when efficiency gains and maximizing IT assets are critical to combating a negative economic environment.

A new approach is needed, one that recognizes the inherent value of the campus to the business, and balances that with the financial realities of IT investment. With new innovations and a new approach to campus design, this is more than possible. It’s something we call ‘Effortless Networking’.

The increases in video, VDI and UC—not to mention cloud and mobility—consumption will only continue, with the corresponding increases in data volumes. Campus issues need to be addressed before they hit that crunch-point.

As the challenge of balancing user demand, data increase, video, unified communications, security, access to applications, and anything else that gets thrown at the campus network (wireless or wired) continues, Brocade has developed a simple test to help customers review the many considerations they need to make and consider whether their networks can cope. Check out the Brocade Campus LAN TCO Calculator to see how the Brocade solution stacks up in specific environments.