Top Five Reasons to Optimize your Network for BYOD

Transcription

1 Top Five Reasons to Optimize your Network for BYOD March 2013 Prepared by: Zeus Kerravala

2 Top Five Reasons to Optimize your Network for BYOD by Zeus Kerravala March 2013 º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º Introduction: Making the Case for BYOD The mandate for yesterday s CIO was to deliver IT services to workers through tight control over the entire environment. This meant IT had final decision-making authority on everything from the desktop to the data center. Today, the role of the CIO is much different. The CIO s focus is helping to lower costs and increase productivity. This is one reason so many CIOs support consumer devices in the workplace (Exhibit 1). ZK Research A Division of Kerravala Consulting Exhibit 1: CIOs Are Supportive of BYOD Allowed with full IT support 20% High acceptance Consumer devices allowed with limited support 39% zeus@zkresearch.com We allow it but provide no support Do not allow any consumer devices 18% 23% No tolerance Cell: Office: Source: ZK Research, 2013 The promise of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) is the ability to do more with less: support fewer employee network devices and still unleash productivity amongst partners and employees. ZK Research studies show workers do feel more productive when they can use their personal technology. However, implementing BYOD strategy can be complex. IT departments often end up making large investments in network infrastructure to over-provision bandwidth and bolt-on additional features but never get the return they were looking for. While most BYOD solutions focus on access to the network, the reality is BYOD has an impact that spans the entire network, including the data center. The explosion in the number of devices combined with skyrocketing bandwidth needs of rich media applications (e.g., live video conferencing, webcasts) put new demands on the network resources. There are also a number of security-related issues, such as secure access, unified policies over wired and wireless, and access to sensitive corporate data. Moreover, networks must be available 24x7 to run business-critical applications smoothly and make sure they are accessible. This makes BYOD implementation much more challenging than most IT leaders expect. If not dealt with correctly, even the largest BYOD budgets dry up quickly. Influence and insight through social media The good news is, when implemented correctly, BYOD provides a great opportunity for raising corporate productivity to new heights. Additionally, it should be viewed as an opportunity to re-architect the enterprise network to make it more efficient.

3 A successful BYOD implementation is not necessarily about spending more to scale the network and enable new connections. It is not simply about increasing the number of devices such as wireless LAN access points, firewalls, switches and routers. A successful BYOD implementation is about how to leverage the network to get the best use out of consumer technology. This paper discusses the current trends around BYOD, the challenges IT leaders face and how the Juniper Networks Simply Connected solution helps users avoid pitfalls by providing alignment between BYOD principles and underlying network architecture. Section II: BYOD Is an Imperative This perfect storm in IT can significantly change how companies operate and how users work. Combined with cloud-based applications, personal device evolution and data center transformation, BYOD is an opportunity for companies to streamline or build the best network architecture with mobility in mind. While CIOs and other IT leaders have been hesitant to implement a formal BYOD program, the status quo creates a bigger risk than implementing BYOD. Users will bring devices in with or without a formal policy in place, creating a security vacuum and resource utilization over which IT has no control. Managing BYOD correctly is not only a matter of competitiveness; it is an integral part of growth strategy. This is one reason corporate support and attention to BYOD has reached the level it has. Organizations that move forward with a formal BYOD program will realize five critical benefits: 1. Increased employee productivity: Workers are more comfortable using a personal, familiar device vs. a corporate-issued one. Enabling workers to use the device of their choice to stay connected and accomplish their tasks, BYOD reduces employee time-to-response and increases the time employees spend being productive. This also enables them to stay connected during what was previously considered down time such as commute, evenings and weekends. In fact, 73 percent of workers feel they are more productive using their own technology (Exhibit 2). Only 10 percent of workers say they are afraid of new technologies, meaning most workers quickly adopt consumer tools in the workplace. 2. New business processes: Mobile devices have been through a tremendous evolution over the past few years. Mobility combined with cloud-based applications means organizations created new mobile-enabled business processes that streamline tasks or enable new functionality when workers are away from their desks. Salespeople can record new purchase orders directly from a customer s location. Vendors can receive status updates instantly no matter where they are, and intervene to support customers in real time. Management can remotely track the performance of business centers, no matter when their busy schedule allows it. 3. Better corporate collaboration: Competitive advantage is determined by harnessing the power of the entire organization, no matter where users are. With BYOD, workers can collaborate inside and outside corporate walls, leveraging mobile devices to become more efficient, no matter where they are located. 4. Improved employee satisfaction: Users want to work in progressive organizations that enable employees to be as productive as possible. Companies that enable personal devices will see an increase in attractiveness, and reduce turnover. 5. Consistent user experience across corporate and personal devices: The influx of multimedia-capable personal devices on a corporate network can limit the quality of user experience, because of the additional capacity required to support them. A formal BYOD policy can help IT managers understand the impact of BYOD and enhance the infrastructure, where necessary, to ensure a consistent user experience for everyone. For most companies, BYOD is a matter of when, rather than if. Even if an IT department is steadfast against BYOD, it s likely another corporate leader will push for it in the near future. To prepare, IT must fully understand the risks associated with BYOD and how to best mitigate them.

4 Exhibit 2: Employee Attitudes Towards BYOD Are Favorable I am more productive than two years ago I can work from anywhere 81% 87% Personal technology makes me more productive My personal tech is better than my workplace tech 51% 62% I am afraid of new technology 10% Source: ZK Research, 2013 Section III: Risks Associated with BYOD IT leaders are under immense pressure to allow consumer devices into the workplace. Despite the pressure, CIOs must reduce risks associated with BYOD. They must ensure proper security is in place to protect the company s resources and employees from any harm. There are five principal security concerns associated with BYOD: Device level threats: There are many security risks associated with devices. This includes identification and tracking of rogue devices, and the spread of malware. Devices also must be secured to protect local data that belongs to the company and the individual. Consumer service threats: There has been an explosion in consumer-oriented mobile applications over the past few years. These new services, oriented around social media, create new ways of allowing individuals to communicate with people or companies. While social media and other consumer services are great for marketing purposes, they do create new threat vectors if individuals use the services without understanding the risks. New threats arise from vulnerabilities created from the dual use of the product being both a consumer device and a professional one. Increased network complexity: Use of consumer devices puts new pressures on the corporate network. First, the network must handle many more devices. Currently the ratio of connected devices per user is about three to one. ZK Research predicts this will grow to seven to one within five years. This means, even with zero employee growth, the network must accommodate more than twice as many devices. Also, most new consumer devices offer high-quality video conferencing services that create an unprecedented simultaneous number of sessions and higher requirements for bandwidth performance: measured in throughput, availability and connectivity. The sheer number of sessions and higher bandwidth requirements reduce predictability on the network and increase complexity. Increased reliance on the network: One of the primary benefits of BYOD is that it allows workers to perform any task at any time, whether the worker is in the office, on the road or at home. However, most data and applications on these devices are located in corporate data centers. A 24x7 network is not only expected, it s a necessity if companies are to compete effectively in this new world of always-on, always-available applications. Additional IT blind spots: IT used to be inefficient, but simple to deploy. Applications were built in tightly coupled silos with infrastructure dedicated to each and every application. Each workstation consisted of a desktop PC connected to the network with an Ethernet cable. This gave IT control, but took away user flexibility. IT has changed, with more and more technology developed to give workers more flexibility, such as virtualization, wireless, unified communications and cloud computing (Exhibit 3). While it gives workers more flexibility, it created a growing complexity chasm without corresponding IT budget growth. This led to a number of blind spots as IT grapples with navigating this more flexible but complex IT model.

5 Endpoints on network Exhibit 3: IT Complexity Leads to Blind Spots Cloud computing MDM BYOD Virtualization Mobile apps Complexity chasm Wireless access UC IT budgets Building blocks of BYOD Source: ZK Research, 2013 The challenge for IT is to solve these problems and take advantage of new opportunities for improved business productivity, while scaling an increasingly mobile and complex environment. This means deploying a simpler infrastructure that is more resilient and secure. Section IV: Optimizing the Network for BYOD Implementing support for personal devices is a multifaceted challenge. Many organizations ZK Research interviewed are focused on on-boarding, ensuring each device attaches to the corporate network properly. While important, it s not the only consideration. The following issues must be overcome to implement BYOD: Security: This is among the biggest challenges for any BYOD implementation. IT must secure data that resides on or is accessed by the device. Security tools like secure VPN access, URL filtering and data leak prevention are critical to protecting the company and workers. estimates this ratio will grow to six devices per user within five years. Network access control: This means controlling network access with policies, including pre-admission endpoint security checks and post-admission controls. This limits where users and devices can go on a network, and what they can do. Seamless user experience across wired and wireless networks: BYOD drives the need to deliver more applications to more workers in more places. However, this can t be at the expense of high-quality user experience. IT must deliver a high-quality experience consistently on any device, wired or wireless. Compliance issues: Working from anywhere may sound great, but there are compliance issues, particularly in heavily regulated industries. IT must be concerned with content users can access, and be able to allow or deny access as policy dictates. Device profiling and fingerprinting, and ability to track every device on the network are important concerns. Mobile device management: This includes discovering, managing and inventorying mobile devices. Users carry an average of 2.5 devices as part of their worker toolkit. ZK Research Network capacity: Thousands of multimedia devices hitting the network can wreak havoc. Many devices enable real-time peer-to-peer video conferencing, causing unpredictable traffic flows.

6 Top Five Reasons to Optimize your Network for BYOD 6 Network visibility: No matter how extensive planning for BYOD is prior to deployment, problems will occur. IT must have visibility into network traffic flows to quickly isolate, identify and remedy problems. Network visibility can also address BYOD complexity. Granular network access: IT must set up levels of network access to accommodate employees, contractors, guests, business partners and others. With the multiplication of devices, sharing user IDs across devices improves the experience while ensuring the experience remains the same across devices. On-boarding devices is the first step in the process but other concerns, such as security authentication, are just as important. A network capable of supporting BYOD needs to be architected holistically to deliver the connectivity, availability, performance and security applications require. Section IV: Solving the BYOD Challenge Simply throwing more money at the network to upgrade infrastructure and accommodate faster network connections does not cut it: it does not reduce complexity and does not scale well. The multiplication of devices and the diversity of applications that run on these devices poses new challenges. The network must be scaled for the multiplication of applications, including cloud-based applications. A network s performance can no longer be measured by the number of devices connected. It must be measured by the types and diversity of the applications being enabled. How business-critical are these applications? How real-time must they be? How much interaction should these applications enable inside and outside of the company? It is critical IT leaders have a clear understanding of the full scope of what needs to be done to optimize the network for BYOD. The backbone network must enable a high quality application experience, secure data and handle a highly dense device environment. Orchestrated Management Manage and secure the entire campus network that encompasses wireless, wired and mobility. Network access, policy and security follow the user as they move within and outside the campus, and across wired and wireless networks. Automate provisioning to improve network operations: BYOD, cloud-based applications and mobility are dynamic in nature and the network must be equally dynamic. However, provisioning and on-going configurations are far too slow and error-prone to keep up with the dynamic nature of IT. ZK Research studies show 38 percent of downtime is due to human error, the single largest cause. Network managers need robust tools such as scripts and self-provisioning applications to automate network operations to keep the network fluid. Network agility is mandatory: A key initiative for CIOs is to build an IT environment capable of supporting greater business agility, to easily scale and allocate application resources based on changing business context. What is business-critical today may not be tomorrow, and the key to competitiveness is to remain agile and adapt to the changing environment. To fulfill this vision, IT has been building more agile compute, storage and application environments through use of virtualization technology. If the IT environment is going to achieve the necessary levels of agility, the network now must also become more agile. Single Network Architecture A tightly integrated, robust, future-proof network for any application, any device and all users, that handles voice, video, data, collaboration, SoA corporate or personal. Flatter is simpler: Legacy network architecture dictates overly complex multitier networks with unnecessarily high latency. Legacy multitier networks are an estimated 30 percent to 40 percent more expensive (ZK Research) than a two-tier network and do not offer the necessary levels of flexibility required to make network changes in a timely manner. A flat network provides a much simpler, more scalable design. Unified wired and wireless networks: Legacy networks are often architected with a highperformance wired core with a wireless network deployed as an overlay network. With this model, wired and wireless networks are managed independently, creating inconsistent user experience. For successful BYOD, the wireless network must look and act more like the wired network. Unified policy, performance and resiliency features are a key requirement to a successful BYOD implementation.

7 Top Five Reasons to Optimize your Network for BYOD 7 User Experience One experience that remains consistent and high quality no matter the connection type used: wired, wireless or mobile. Security levels: An important part of the experience is provided by security levels that must be calculated based on the user rather than the device, and must not waiver no matter where the user is accessing the data. End-to-end comprehensive security: This is critical for companies of all sizes. Managing security at the data level instead of per device allows IT to protect company resources without having to touch every end point or device. Section V: Juniper Networks Simply Connected Solution Optimizes BYOD Networks Juniper Networks is a leading supplier of service provider and enterprise network infrastructure. Juniper takes an architectural approach to building networks that are simple to deploy, easy to manage and scale as required. Juniper s approach is straightforward: implementing BYOD and overcoming its challenges on the enterprise network does not require large investments to increase the bandwidth or the scale of the network. BYOD is about rethinking how resources on the network are planned to free up capacity, scalability, and security. Juniper s solution meets BYOD challenges by implementing three core principles into the network: coordinated security, performance at scale and a highly resilient network, while protecting the company s assets. This includes: Any-point security and self-provisioning: Perceived security risks attached to enabling third-party devices and applications to a proprietary network are often what prevents IT from implementing BYOD strategies. With anypoint security and self-provisioning, Juniper Networks simplifies and secures any point on the network with point-and-click provisioning. Role-based access: Access depending on profile, identity, device and role, combined with nested application visibility and security enforcement provide IT with comprehensive control over the network to secure access to and utilization of network resources. Coordinated threat control and management: This is automated for wired and wireless environments and mobile devices. Juniper delivers a complete security suite with day zero attacks, loss/theft mitigation, and mobile device security and management. It delivers performance at scale, delivering scalability while keeping the network simple: Virtual network infrastructure: Switches in the Juniper EX line support Virtual Chassis technology, with all supporting eight QoS hardware queues. This simplifies network architecture by reducing the number of uplinks required for interswitch links. This enables better scaling, frees up workloads by enabling east-west communications within the virtual chassis and prioritizes important content for business critical applications that run on BYOD enabled devices. Holistic approach to the BYOD-enabled network: The Juniper EX series is based on open standards and works with third-party applications and devices to form a complete BYOD solution. Additionally, the solution is based on a holistic architecture and not pointto-point replacement of devices. It delivers highly resilient networks for automated uninterrupted service on business-critical applications: Continuity of business-critical applications: BYOD-enabled businesses are increasingly dependent on uninterrupted application availability regardless of device or location. Multiple levels of redundancy, high availability with Virtual Chassis and Virtual Cluster, and simplified operations that reduce human error and downtime are at the heart of resiliency and continuity for business-critical applications. Many solution providers offer parts of a BYOD solution, such as Virtual Chassis technology, access points and firewalls. However, Juniper has some unique attributes that make them ideally suited for an organization looking to implement BYOD. These attributes are: Separation of management and data planes: Juniper EX switches are architected with separate control and transport functions. This provides the deploying organization advanced routing controls, higher levels of scalability, and easier network management.

8 Top Five Reasons to Optimize your Network for BYOD 8 Switch virtualization: This achieves management abstraction of the topology over a number of switches. This provides better control of routing functions and network agility. With a single management plane shared over several virtualized devices, new devices can be added in a plug-and-play fashion while keeping the management of these devices simple. For example, combining an EX4200 and EX4500 in a Virtual Chassis is made possible because of the abstraction of the network and enables plug and play, seamless migration from Gig-E to 10 Gig-E as needed for the multiplication of devices or bandwidth requirements for the latest collaboration or video applications. Section VI: Conclusion and Recommendations BYOD was once considered a risky initiative useful to only a handful of technically savvy workers. However, the evolution of mobile devices, availability of cloud-based services, wireless advancements and integration of technology into our personal lives moved the vision of BYOD to a reality. Companies that formally adopt a BYOD policy will lower the cost of running IT, create new ways of working and bring corporate productivity to new heights. However, it s critical CIOs understand BYOD goes beyond mere connectivity and onboarding and requires new thinking about the enterprise network. To help companies get started, ZK Research recommends the following steps: Start with the end in mind: Determine what the goals are with BYOD. This will help reveal what is critical for the network and what devices and applications must be enabled. After the goals are set and the device and application strategy are determined, the network architecture must come last. Starting with the network architecture will limit the possibilities. Look for bottlenecks in the network: There are three types of bottlenecks that can hamper application performance: network performance, security bottlenecks and connectivity bottlenecks. Make sure the network remains agile: BYOD is better supported with a flexible and agile network to accommodate the changing landscape of devices, applications and business goals. : A Division of Kerravala Consulting All rights reserved. Reproduction or redistribution in any form without the express prior permission of ZK Research is expressly prohibited. For questions, comments or further information, zeus@zkresearch.com.