BTEX 2024: How CDW Can Help Transform Multicloud Network Management

Although they are extremely useful, multicloud networks can be hard to manage, explained Puneet Duggal, Cisco Practice Lead and Principal Solution Architect at CDW. “The hybrid multicloud makes it very hard to identify what you do with your network so that the employees who are trying to access apps to do their job can have a great experience.”

Duggal cited some of the most common uncertainties network administrators deal with: “Do we have enough visibility? Does the network give us enough information? Do we have the security layers where they need to be?” But the struggle doesn’t affect exclusively IT employees, continued Duggal. “And that experience is frustrating, not only for the ones building and managing networks, but for the employees who are trying to use this network to do their job.”

The good news is there are solutions that help gain visibility over multicloud networks. “What we're trying to do is make sure that you have the toolbox to see into networks that aren't yours,” Duggal said.

“And we want to give you this visibility across the hybrid multicloud so that you can automate toward using this information to make a difference. You can have additional fault tolerance or resiliency and you're fundamentally able to have networks that you can say, ‘I now have visibility that I lost when it got out of my control.’”

The next speaker was Caius St. George, Head of Services Strategy & Development: Managed Services at CDW, who took the stage to talk about CDW’s robust managed services practice.

Internal IT departments possess an unmatched knowledge of their organization’s business. CDW can help manage the large complex networks so that internal talent can focus on mission-critical tasks without losing visibility or compromising security, explained St. George.

“When it comes to networking, we actually have a very broad and somewhat differentiated offering in the networking space. You can use SD-WAN, SASE or other technologies, but fundamentally, no matter where your data applications or users are, the communications between them can be secured and managed with full visibility.”

CDW can also include carrier services. “We can bundle all of this together into a single service tailored for your business, taking all that stuff that takes so much time, turning it around and saying, ‘I'm getting a service where I know exactly what I'm getting out of it and here are my metrics.’”   

St. George also addressed one of the most common issues IT departments face across Canada: being understaffed. Fortunately, CDW’s managed services can help amplify the IT capabilities of these organizations so that they cover all their networking needs.

“You might not have the full team. You might not be able to support your business. You get those calls at two o'clock in the morning from an executive who's got some presentation to do the next day and they can't print or whatever the problem is. You want to be able to support that. And with a managed service, you get access to more people and more talent. And you get to focus on your business and succeed.”

Duggal took back the microphone to share some insights into CDW’s way of building networks and how understanding the specific parts of the network, application perspectives and functional requirements are crucial for success.

 “We want to make sure that we're building networks that are relevant to what your business is trying to achieve. What part of the network are we talking about? Where are we going with this from an application perspective? What are the functional requirements? How are you making sure that we talk about operations quite early in the conversation? What are the metrics and attributes around what is driving your need to build a network?”

Networks are often built without clear communication from application teams, leading to challenges in scaling and meeting unforeseen requirements, said Duggal. “Sometimes you're building a network and it's just like, hey, we're building for what we're guessing. The application team is not talking to us, we don't know what we need to scale for.

“The big question is how you will bring this together in a unified way. Because the network can no longer operate in a silo, you need to consider all parts of the network, and you need to be building this from a reference architecture perspective, considering things from virtualization to observability to how you're securing this network.”

Lastly, Duggal explained how CDW is focused on providing our customers with visibility over their multicloud. “We're looking to give you back this visibility to manage your network end-to-end. We're looking to make sure it's high-performing. We want the network team to have the ability to decide on policies and performance and how you're going to make sure you have consistently built networks.”

Giving back time to customers is equally important for CDW, concluded Duggal. “What we give you back is time to focus on other projects. When was the last time you got time to go into training on how to build Azure networks? Or how do you consider an IoT network that someone might be coming to you with?

“We’ve been helping organizations to become their own internal ‘IT as a Service’ organization so that they can provide IT services, do internal chargebacks, stop the call centre, but fundamentally partner with us differently so that we can help them achieve the missions they are trying to achieve.”