The Future of Campus Networking With Nile

Campus networking infrastructure is a labor-intensive endeavor, having to securely connect everyone to centralized applications or data stores in a data center or cloud.  

Organizations traditionally invest significant resources in IT specialists, time, and money to design, build, implement, operate and maintain these infrastructures. Before developing a campus solution, you must add to this by researching solutions, evaluating, procuring, determining your configuration and testing against requirements.  

Nile simplifies campus networking by supporting the entire wired and wireless LAN network. Engineered around agility and automation, you pay only for what you use without any rigid upfront costs. Some impressive features include:

• Designed as genuine consumption-based billing model; only pay-per-user.
• Architected to remove complexities that burden IT.
• Engineered to guarantee network performance levels.
• Built to deliver zero trust security by default.
• Delivered with Day 0 to Day N lifecycle management.

Total cost of ownership

This equates to the actual cost of owning and operating technology resources, which includes the original cost of purchasing and installing software and hardware, as well as ongoing administration costs associated with upgrades, maintenance, technical support, training and facility cost. 

The total cost of ownership for networks can be used to analyze both direct and indirect costs to help companies determine the actual cost of implementing and maintaining technologies. 

The table below describes some of the components that should be considered when looking at the total cost of ownership.

Combining these factors, the total cost of ownership can easily exceed the initial purchase price of hardware and/or software.

Making wise infrastructure investments

The time investment for design, deployment, lifecycle and operational management of campus networking infrastructure is a significant cost for any organization.  Many organizations struggle to deploy newly acquired hardware due to complexity, integration and staffing challenges. These issues delay business benefits, including the impact that new features and technologies can provide to improve the performance, security and overall productivity of an organization. 

Nile addresses these challenges with an enterprise Network as a Service (NaaS) offering that eliminates the burden of network design, installation and ongoing lifecycle responsibilities, while still allowing the enterprise to perform configuration management. Nile also delivers guaranteed network performance with native zero-trust network access capabilities.      

Nile aims to provide a resiliently deployed, pay-per-user offering through a full OpEx subscription model for all equipment and services, where the customer owns nothing while consuming the service, analogous to utility services. 

The Nile model includes: 

• A turn-key switching and Wi-Fi solution that includes all design, installation and lifecycle management based on the number of buildings and users within an organization.
• Cloud based management, sensors for performance assurance, east-west segmentation, spanning-tree free redundancy and integrated security based on zero trust principle.
• AIOps, deployment automation and a "cookie-cutter" approach, based on the Nile Service Block (NSB); employing AIOps provides predictive failure detection and service assurance.

Solution benefits

The Nile Network as a Service solution drives benefits in the way a campus network operates; here's how…

On-premises connectivity 

Traditional network operations teams face challenges correlating real-time network, application, user and internet performance data to pinpoint root causes of connectivity issues and the scope of impact. These issues are further complicated by vast amounts of internet-based applications and confusion about when performance issues exist in the branch versus carrier and cloud networks.   

Nile delivers on-premises connectivity for every user (employee, guest) or device (IT-owned, BYOD or IoT). The Nile service guarantees network performance, via SLAs for availability, coverage and capacity. Using automation and AI, Nile utilizes deep instrumentation to continuously monitor the network performance, never waiting until it breaks. 

Network security 

Security has and continues to be a primary focus of network administrators around the world and is sometimes complicated by the numerous tools required to offer defense in depth. Among the many items that complicate the network security landscape are the numerous devices needing to connect to the campus network. 

Our campus networks need to connect devices like phones, tablets, laptops, printers, etc., to perform their jobs. Although these devices provide a level of freedom and mobility for network users, they often present security challenges for those looking to continually preserve security and access to network resources. 

Nile simplifies network security by starting with a trust-nothing approach and leverages your existing Identity Provider (IDP) to ensure that only trusted devices are provided access to the network. Additionally, all network elements (access points, sensors and switches) are physically designed against tampering and impersonation. 

The service takes a "trust nothing, verify everything" approach to ensure no users or devices are allowed access unless authorized. The architecture isolates communication between hosts and directs all traffic flows northbound to the firewall, centralizing the policy enforcement point.

Day 0 to Day N operations

Nile's NaaS, when partnered with WWT, delivers the complete enterprise Network as a Service solution, from Day 0 to Day N. The singular subscription service includes all aspects of the network lifecycle, from site survey and procurement/installation through monitoring and troubleshooting to hardware refreshes and software upgrades. By offloading these complex and tedious tasks, IT teams can focus on strategic initiatives propelling the business forward in its competitive edge.

Summary 

Nile brings flexibility, scale and simplicity to campus networks by removing IT CapEx, deployment and lifecycle management burdens while ensuring optimal network performance. Nile offers a host of benefits, including: 

• Guaranteed network performance and availability, full site Wi-Fi coverage and scalable network capacity to support a changing number of network users.
• Scalable usage-based, monthly adjusted consumption model to scale up or down with your business.
• AIOps performance assurance to predictively respond to network issues, differentiate between internet and campus network issues, as well as track user and application performance.
• Eliminate technology debt by quickly deploying your network and ensuring the delivery and lifecycle activities never burden your staff, allowing IT resources to focus on strategic initiatives.
• Zero trust based security capabilities out of the box, reducing security issues.

WWT can help you determine if Nile is right for your business. Explore what our Nile NaaS Foundations Lab has to offer, or to learn more about our Nile NaaS offering or other services  contact us today.