How to build a strong network during the COVID-19 pandemic?

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Maintaining a resilient network with minimal failures and downtime is a challenge for any organization at the best of times, but the current coronavirus pandemic has further exacerbated these challenges. With access to data centers, edge and colocation sites severely restricted, the ongoing pandemic and ensuing lockdowns have made it more difficult than ever for businesses to get engineers onsite to fix and resolve issues.

The urgent need for cyber resilience

While the COVID-19 pandemic has created enormous challenges, it has also highlighted the importance of addressing them quickly and effectively. By heightening the risk to enterprise networks, the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that high availability should be considered mission-critical for any IT business continuity plan. After all, what is the point of enabling employees to work from home if the corporate network that provides services to them and allows them to do so suddenly becomes inaccessible?

What’s needed in this context is a network that can provide true resiliency, in other words, one that helps minimize the mean time to fix any issues while keeping all mission-critical applications or services up and running with minimal downtime. Achieving this has become more difficult in the pandemic because of the difficulties that businesses are facing in moving IT and engineering to the same location or office more broadly.

Even for simple tasks like rebooting a device or applying a security patch, remote access through out-of-band management (OOB) is key. OOB has made great strides in recent years, from providing purely reactive emergency access to get an organization on track, to providing a more proactive approach to enhancing network resiliency and enhancing interactive network management through network operations (NetOps) workflows, orchestration, and automation.

This approach is expanding rapidly and will be key during this pandemic and beyond. It helps provide alternative paths for devices located at remote sites when the primary network is disconnected and facilitates access to edge infrastructure to ensure business continuity.

Building a stronger network

So, given the above, how can enterprises build a more resilient network in times of crisis, like the one we are experiencing today, with greater precision? Combining the latest intelligent out-of-band and NetOps tools, enterprises can configure and set up systems on day one, securely provisioning new locations through the network operations center (NOC) without sending engineers to the site, even before the WAN network is established. To do this, tools can be used to automate and orchestrate the NetOps workflow.

This effectively means that an organization can ship equipment to a site and quickly enable the site over a secure cellular connection using Smart OOB, allowing the equipment to be remotely configured and commissioned on-site. This can be a significant cost savings for many companies implementing new edge deployments, especially those trying to do it right away. Then, after deployment, if an issue occurs that causes a loss of connectivity to the production network and cannot be resolved immediately, the organization can maintain business continuity by continuously delivering any mission-critical network traffic over a secure OOB cellular connection.

But the combination of out-of-band and NetOps goes beyond day-one provisioning and remote remediation. Organizations can also use the approach to provide resilient ongoing network management during normal operations through always-on access provided by a secure gateway.

Additionally, using a separate management plane solution allows organizations to securely monitor and access all devices without impacting normal operations. This is what we call a “virtual hands” approach. Issues can be diagnosed quickly and efficiently; then, if and when a problem occurs at a remote site, an engineer will be alerted and then be able to proactively “go” to that device from their home office without having to get in a car or on a plane—a very important benefit during the current crisis.

Organizations need a central point of access and management to achieve network resiliency or a "single pane of glass" that provides complete visibility and control over the entire network, as well as real-time alerts of critical events and a means to remotely remediate those events. It can also provide secure connectivity through an out-of-band path and can act as the engine for NetOps automation and orchestration capabilities.

Finding solutions for now and tomorrow

From what we see today, as we continue to navigate the COVID-19 crisis, it is clear that enterprises need an OOB and NetOps-based approach. With always-active management, organizations can securely configure, monitor, and repair their infrastructure. They can resolve business issues during downtime while keeping the business up and running, and then be able to use NetOps automation and workflows at the edge of the network, eliminating errors in repetitive tasks and increasing efficiency in the data center and at the edge.

As time goes by, we also see machine learning and AI being used more and more extensively to further enhance network resilience. The journey has really only just begun, and in many ways, we are still accelerating now. However, the capabilities and technology to develop a truly resilient network infrastructure are available today, and enterprises that adopt this technology can ensure that even in these difficult times, no matter what challenges the future may bring, they can build, manage and maintain networks that are not only more scalable and secure, but also support ongoing business continuity.