Network Control and Management: Why You Need It and Strategies for Making It Happen

More often than not, companies are looking for the ability to customize call routes while demanding the flexibility to do so in tandem with their organization's change and growth.

It's all part of enterprises' ongoing effort to optimize quality. You don't want your teams' telecommunications experiences to tank because routers are saddled with bandwidth-hungry content such as video. Network control and management makes up the pathway to keeping your system moving — providing insight into the root causes of how traffic flows — and highlighting what's driving latency and lower-quality performance whenever it crops up.

That being said, how does your organization optimize control and response capabilities? How does it ensure higher-quality calls more of the time? The answer starts with two key solutions: smart approaches to bringing call routes to a state of cutting-edge efficiency while preserving the ability to flex as your enterprise evolves and expands.

Achieving Network Control and Management: Strategies for Success

There was a clever meme going around titled "Conference Call Bingo." A lot of it had to do with the quirks callers bring to voice and video meetings, but some of what you'd find on the bingo grid were phrases such as "I think there's a lag" and "Sorry, you cut out there."

Do you know what's never funny to enterprise IT? Lag time and cut-outs. Nobody wants call routes that inspire jokes. With that in mind, what follows are two key ways to keep punchlines out of the network conversation — one focusing on governing packet movements, and the other spotlighting ways to sort data prioritization as traffic demands:

• Private Circuit to MPLS Network: If you can't control your data packets, you can't control your network. The core mission of your successful network control and management scenario is to govern the movements of these units, hop by hop. Multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) means assigning each packet a label — a forwarding equivalence class (FEC). Implemented within your organization's private circuit, MPLS networks can best empower routers to recognize different FECs, sending packets along the smartest routes and allowing enterprise IT leadership to further fine-tune and optimize traffic strategy. This drives speed and low latency, and bandwidth hogs get diverted to layers that keep unwanted slowdowns from affecting high-priority traffic.
• SD-WAN Solutions (Purposed for UCaaS): Efficiency is all about streamlining and consolidation. Why build and manage a network with a virtual hydra's head of disparate components governing security, routing, communications, and other solutions? Bringing all the answers to all these potential questions under one roof is what a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) does. Purposed for unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS), SD-WAN gives IT leadership a lens into real-time security with a baked-in firewall. Plus, it opens up options around how to sort and prioritize data based on user needs and experiences. All this horsepower is less expensive than modular iterations because it's all delivered in one package, with no need for discrete vendors or varying price points. And when the organization's needs develop due to complexity, the SD-WAN model is a single-provider scenario. You get to unify levels of control across private circuits, commercial broadband, and the whole spectrum. You get every answer in one place, with no patchwork solutions required.

Putting these two strategies to work creates a powerful solution set for enterprises across the board. The question, then, is when do you pull the trigger?

Right Time, Right Network Control and Management Solutions

It's not that SMBs are in a lesser class of network solutions. On the contrary, bring-your-own-broadband often works just fine for organizations of a certain size. MPLS and SD-WAN approaches are highly suited to companies that have started to scale toward the kind of network complexity that makes control and management issues of a different scope. Knowing where your SMB can go, when the time is right, is part of any successful long-term strategy. So take note, then explore these solutions when your network evolves to the point it needs them.

Do you know what's never funny to enterprise IT? Lag time and cut-outs. Nobody wants call routes that inspire jokes.

Meanwhile, enterprise-level IT has the answers at its fingertips in the short-term. Change and growth are a given, and best-case network strategies come down to controlling in-house costs and deploying technology that drives optimal call-route performance and top-of-class traffic outcomes. By implementing MPLS and SD-WAN purposed for UCaaS, data movement and prioritization are yours to command.

Find out if your enterprise is ready for network control best practices — including MPLS and SD-WAN purposed for UCaaS. Tap into Vonage Business resources and contact a representative for additional insights.