2023 State of the Network Study

The 15th consecutive VIAVI State of the Network (SOTN) survey captures the tenacity of IT teams

Find out how more than 300 IT professionals responded to key topics most on their minds as they continue their efforts to maintain peak service delivery, troubleshoot problems, and address the rapidly changing technological landscape. With these results, you can better plan your IT initiatives in the coming years.

This year’s survey sometimes captured well the adage “History Does Not Repeat Itself, But It Rhymes”.  Respondents called out large amounts of time being devoted—perhaps consumed is a better term—troubleshooting unified communications and collaboration (UCC) solutions. In 2007, the first SOTN respondents listed VoIP, the predecessor to today’s UCC as a top challenge.

Of course, some challenges are light years from the problems in 2007. Prime examples being cloud computing—now so pervasive that it is a given—and cybersecurity threats. Both today consume considerable IT team resources to manage effectively the goal being to limit negative impacts to users’ IT service experience.

Results were compiled from 307 respondents including network, security, and development operations professionals from around the world. In addition to geographic diversity, the study population was distributed by age, industry experience, current level, job function, department, revenue, employee count, and business verticals.

Study Highlights:

The Hamster Wheel of Network Application Troubleshooting: 15 years, Billions in investment and sourcing issues remains an issue

Failing To Communicate: VoIP and other real-time services remain a big headache for IT teams

Cloud & Off Premise Modernization Is The Answer And The Problem:Of the top five visibility challenges called out, four are tied to cloud or off-premises assets

It’s Expensive, But It’S Worth It: The majority of network managers say cloud is worth it and benefits outweigh cost