these requirements are becoming critical to success.
Another area of importance is the deployment and day-
to-day operations of these technologies as well as how
they fit within the network environment. Some of these
technologies tend to disrupt typical operations and
present challenges in terms of how they will be
consumed by the business. Some advances in technology
are being adopted to reduce cost of operations as well as
complexity. It can be said that every network, to some
degree, has inherent complexity. Having tools to help
manage this burden is becoming a necessity.
Many in the industry are striving for automation to
handle networks as they become more and more
complicated. Businesses are often forced to operate with
lean IT staffs and flat or shrinking budgets; they must
struggle to find ways to increase the output of what the
network can do for the business. Another driver for the
adoption of these technologies is improving the overall
user experience within the environment. Users often
need the flexibility and capability to access any business-
critical application from anywhere in the network and
want to have an exceptional experience. In addition to
trying to improving user experience, operations staff
seek ways to simplify the operations of the network.
There are many inherent risks associated with manually
configuring networks. One risk is not being able to move
fast enough when deploying new applications or services
to the network. In addition, misconfigurations can cause
outages or suboptimal network performance, which can
impact business operations and potentially cause
financial repercussions. Finally, there is risk in that a
business relies on its network for business-critical
services but those services might not be available due to
the IT operations staff not being able to scale to keep up
with the demands of the business.
According to a 2016 Cisco Technical Assistance Center
(TAC) survey, 95% of Cisco customers are performing