The role of AI/ML in the future of enterprise networks

Advancements in network analytics are making it easier to manage SLAs

Networks are getting more and more complicated by the day, because they have to support more users, data, devices and device types than ever before. IT departments are asked to ensure that the network performs to high user expectations. Without the proper tools, they lack adequate visibility into network operations to be able to do so.

Tasks associated with routine service assurance for enterprise networks can become very arduous for IT. They find themselves manually sifting through data to troubleshoot network service issues or even to measure how the network is performing.

Thankfully, advancements in network analytics, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), are automating formerly manual process to make IT teams more efficient.

How analytics is shaping the future of networks and connectivity

Organisations with complex networks spend much of their time trying to figure out how to improve the user experience. AI and ML are making it easier to meet service level agreements (SLAs) by making sense of the data at considerably faster rates than any human could.

Often these technologies are deployed in the form of a cloud service for network intelligence and service assurance, and they are offered by major enterprise network vendors as part of their broader portfolio. These network analytics offerings work with the specific vendor's networking products—switches, control and management platforms (on-premises or cloud-based) and wireless access points. This form of network analytics is distinct from the category of network performance monitoring, which goes broader but not as deep as the analytics offered by leading networking vendors.

A recent Technology Spotlight from industry analyst firm IDC[1] called out the need for advanced network analytics. According to senior research analyst Brandon Butler, "enterprise network operators today have an unprecedented amount of network health and performance data. But harnessing that data for maximum benefit is an immense challenge and requires a modern cloud-supported, machine learning-powered analytics platform".

Modern network analytics can automatically identify service incidents that arise from network anomalies. The most advanced analytics services can also automatically classify incidents as to severity and determine root causes. They recommend remediation steps that IT can take to fix the problem. Leading vendors in this area are racing toward a better, future state of the world where the network makes these adjustments itself, becoming self-healing.

The more advanced network analytics services can also automatically monitor network health across a wide variety of metrics, such as connection success rate, time to connect, AP uptime, client throughput and more. They provide the capability to drill down into the connectivity experience of a specific client—things like connection failures and roaming events. These tools also include prepackaged reports and dashboards, with the ability to create custom dashboards. Ideally, they also provide a mechanism for ad hoc exploration of network data.

The benefits analytics can bring to an organisation's networks

By leveraging analytics, IT teams can become more efficient-conserving personnel resources and freeing up time to focus on strategic projects. This insight provided by analytics gives businesses levels of visibility across their networks, down to the individual component level that was previously impossible. Modern analytics services give IT teams the means to both know what is going on in their network and readily demonstrate it to others.

Accelerated troubleshooting means that any service disruptions are addressed more quickly than ever before and users experience service levels that meet and exceed expectations. Advanced network intelligence for service assurance holds great promise as the industry drives toward a future world of self-healing networks.

Ehab Kanary is vice president enterprise EMEA at CommScope.