The cloud, IoT and SDN create the biggest complications on enterprise networks

Cloud adoption is still the "most vexing factor" in increased network complexity, according to a new report by Kentik.

The report, based on a poll of 203 IT professionals attending the Cisco Live 2017 annual conference, says cloud adoption is followed by IoT, SDN, and networks functions virtualization (NFV).

It also says that most organizations still aren’t ready for network automation, even though machine learning is seen as "important technology for network management."

More than a third (36 percent) of respondents said cloud adds the greatest network complexity to their organizations. They can still improve operational visibility for cloud and digital business networking, it was added.

According to the report, organizations need to be able to spot DDoS attacks better. A third (32 percent) said they’re using DDoS detection technology.

The majority of organizations (70 percent) says using the same stack of tools to manage both network performance and security hinders operational efficiency. More than half (59 percent), however, added that their organization is not yet using the same stack of tools.

"There is a lot of noise in our industry right now about intuitive systems and new-age machine learning that can monitor, identify and react to network conditions before issues occur. However, dozens of our largest customers have been telling us, and our survey results from Cisco Live support, that the key 2016 and 2017 enterprise efforts have focused on getting complete visibility into increasingly hybrid network complexity; detecting and preventing DDoS; and integrating tools that can provide operational and business value from network analytics," said Avi Freedman, co-founder and CEO of Kentik. "Full automation outside of constrained data centre and cloud topologies is still a vision that customers are tracking, but network operators say that they need deeper and comprehensive visibility into their network’s performance and security before they can let their networks run autonomously."

"Real-time network traffic intelligence is a critical component for network operators supporting their organizations with digital transformation," he added.

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