Last October, I began researching trends for our United Communications Trends to Watch in 2021 report.  Everywhere I looked, including the major IT analyst firms, edge networking showed up as hot for 2021. Naturally, 8x8 does not make routers, switches and that kind of networking equipment, but it got me thinking about how connectivity can impact user experience for things like video conferencing and audio call quality.

A couple of sales people told me that it is quite common for customers to overlook bandwidth and traffic management when thinking about unified communications solution requirements.  After all, we are talking about SaaS, right?  As it turns out, when done correctly, networking capabilities can impact how successful a project can be whether for office or contact center communications.

With edge networking, 5G and Wi-Fi technologies emerging, I feel like we should be talking about networking more with clients as well as our partners so that we set up our customers for success from the get go.

I invited Mehdi Salour, 8x8 Senior Vice President of Global Network and DevOps, to author an essay on his take about networking trends and UCaaS/CCaaS performance.  Additionally, I interviewed Eric Ludwig from CDW, one of our top global IT partners. You can learn more about him in his Original Thinkers video (see below).

Eric was gracious with his time; and he agreed that networking capabilities impact communications performance. Below is an excerpt of our conversation.  Use it to inform conversations with your IT providers and encourage you to think about connectivity issues whether your employees are at home or are going back to the office. 

Me: What is Edge Networking and Does it matter for Unified Communications?

Eric:  Anytime an organization considers adding something new to the environment, it has to consider what that means for the network and what does the network mean for it.  This is particularly true for businesses that want consistently high quality and high-performing communications.

We consider edge networking to be software-defined WAN.  It is an evolution from the data center out. Software-defined networking began inside the data center and was a way to provide some intelligence and virtualized network functions.  Today, it takes that intelligence and functionality and sits at the edge of a client's network instead of a carrier backbone or, perhaps, a data center on the other side of the world.  One effect of this is that organizations can realize some of the same benefits on public networks that used to be limited to private networks.

Me:  Why is Edge Networking So Popular?

Eric: Three top reasons come to mind:

  • Flexibility — Clients want to deploy multiple services at the edge, and they don't want to be beholden to a particular supplier. So if there's a great fiber connection available at a location, clients want to use broadband and/or wireless in tandem with automated workflows so that a developer or a network manager doesn't have to write code or scripting to optimize circuit utilization.
  • Orchestration — How do we bring on a new location? How do we create templates?  Clients want efficiencies to scale up and down.  They want more automation that reduces burdens on their networking staff.
  • Prioritization —  Not all packets are the same. Edge networking provides users with premium capabilities to choose which ones are the most critically important from a network performance perspective. Unified communications is very sensitive to packet loss, latency and jitter. So you normally want to prioritize voice and video over, say an email. 

We are seeing more edge investments in software because they reduce capital expenses, are becoming easier to manage, and enable clients to benefit from more services, some of which used to be only available from traditional telecom suppliers. 

Me: Are edge networking benefits for small organizations as well as large enterprises?

Eric: Absolutely.  Small firms have some of the same challenges as big companies, just on a smaller scale, such as employees working from home, distributed offices etc.  They all want greater control to get the most value from their Internet bandwidth. Because most of the time, small businesses consider edge when their current support contract is up or their hardware is at end of life, we typically see them having no additional capital and operational expenses, they just get increased performance.  As cloud applications become a higher percentage of any org’s software mix, secure, high-performing Internet connections are becoming even more critical than ever for everyone.

Me: What impact will 5G have on businesses?

Eric: 5G without question is transformational due to the speed and the wideband capability that you can get over that technology. It's not a game changer yet. There's just not enough ubiquity of deployment around the country. 

However, 5G and wireless innovations in general are making wireless a more viable option for data backup.  In fact, businesses are increasingly conducting backup via wireless technologies especially in areas where fiber or wired options may be more expensive. 

I have a global retail firm, which is a joint CDW and 8x8 client, who is deploying 4G LTE as a backup technology for all their retail stores around the world. They use a primary wired connection, and they use a backup wireless connection. Plus, they are using intelligence of their edge device to determine what applications can access the network and in what order when they are in a lower, or a degraded state running over 4G LTE. 

We are still a bit away from 5G’s broader business impact.  But I think it's going to impact all of our communications. It is going to enable more video over the web, and it's going to create more traffic points just for sharing of information.  I suspect will do so in a bit more efficient manner and hopefully, in a more cost-efficient manner too.

Finally, I asked a question about whether UCaaS/CCaaS buyers are even considering networking issues.  He became so animated and passionate about this question (because he is a trusted advisor) that I want you to hear it for yourself.

Thank you to Eric and Mehdi for helping to elevate and inspire more conversations about networking.  If you do not have the right network, you may not get the results you deserve from unified communications.