Enterprise Networking and Communications refers to the products and services that enable secure, scalable, and high-performance connectivity and communication across distributed enterprise environments. This category includes markets that focus on core and edge networking, unified communications, private and public mobile networks, and managed network services—supporting digital transformation, and operational efficiency.
Gartner defines global WAN services as points-of-presence (POP)-based services supporting multiregional corporate networks. Service providers own and operate their own global core networks and sell directly to the client. Services include transport-centric/unmanaged, managed, and co-managed network services, or network as a service via a monthly fixed or usage-based fee model. These services are measurable and consumable through customer-facing web portals and programmable APIs. Global WAN services consist of backbone network transport and last-mile access connections, providing connectivity to individual enterprise sites such as large offices or remote branches. WAN service providers are also offering more transformational capabilities, such as cloud fabrics and enhanced visibility enabled by the underlay service network, and adding more network-based security functions to their offerings. Ancillary services such as cloud interconnects, managed SD-WAN and secure access service edge (SASE) are now commonly offered. Gartner also sees providers increasingly investing in AI and automation to support more service processes across the WAN service life cycle, from network design to service assurance.
The managed network services (MNS) market focuses on externally provided network operations center (NOC) functionality, as well as relevant network and security life cycle services. Gartner defines the MNS market as globally capable providers of remote service management functions for the network and security operations of enterprise networks, including: Managed LAN services (MNS for LAN) must include the management of enterprise LAN customer premises equipment (CPE), such as campus switches and wireless access points. It provides single point of contact (SPOC) ownership for the life cycle management of these devices. These services may include the management of customer Internet of Things/Industrial IoT (IoT/IIoT) infrastructure and endpoints. These services may include managed operations services for other elements, such on-premises servers, storage, gateways and controllers. Managed WAN services (MNS for WAN) must include the management of site edge ingress and egress CPE and any WAN connections and service operations management. These services provide life cycle management for site edge CPE, such as routers, firewalls and software-defined WAN (SD-WAN), with or without security co-residency on site edge CPE. The services must include a SPOC, ownership for the life cycle management of these devices for site edge CPE and transport services connecting client sites to any destination. This includes hybrid cloud or other non-client-owned locations. These services may also include the operations management of enterprise customer IoT/IIoT infrastructure and endpoint management. Managed security services (MNS for security) supports branch offices, remote workers and on-premises general internet security, private application access and cloud service security functions for consumption use cases. Services include health, configuration and maintenance support for security technologies. Service delivery is for a single provider to enterprise clients of multiple vendors of converged network and security function life cycle management operations. These include the support of: (1) SD-WAN-embedded security functions; (2) secure web gateways (SWGs); (3) cloud access security brokers (CASBs); (4) network access control (NAC); (5) network firewalling, with or without intrusion prevention system/intrusion detection system (IPS/IDS); (6) universal/zero-touch network access (UZTNA/ZTNA) architectures.
MSSs provide organizations with a variety of management and operational services specific to security technologies and business outcomes for security. Capabilities include security monitoring, detection and response, exposure assessment and management as well as security consulting and security technology implementation. MSSs are delivered in a variety of modes, in the providers’ cloud infrastructure, as consultative engagements or through staff augmentation and on-premises. MSS providers offer a variety of different engagement models. These include heavily customized and consultancy-led models and commoditized technology management-driven experiences.
Software defined cloud interconnects (SDCI) provide private network connectivity between enterprises and public cloud service providers (CSPs). SDCIs pre-provision physical connectivity from their hubs to public cloud service providers, internet service providers (ISPs), and network service providers (NSPs). They serve as aggregators and intermediaries to quickly provision logical connectivity to cloud service providers and complement this with billing, monitoring/management, security, and administrative functions. For both performance and business continuity reasons, SDCI can be employed by enterprises with multi-cloud architecture.