Businesses are restricted by their current networks for workplace demands, despite their ongoing investment in the past three years, research has revealed.
They are experiencing increasing pressure with cost, complexity and performance as billions of devices connect over the internet.
UK and US users revealed that 75% of IT decision makers from large businesses have invested in their network over the last three years, of which 92% said the infrastructure is not agile enough to deliver services and applications.
One quarter of businesses admitted to having to attend to network outages several times a week, while a fifth stated that their network was "not fit for purpose."
Jason Nolet, VP of data centre switching and routing at Brocade, said: "Over the last ten years, the way we interact with data has evolved beyond anyone’s expectation. Billions of connected devices are overloading global networks with requests every second, and users demand always-on, instantaneous access to applications and services.
When asked what the biggest data centre challenges they faced, 20% cited complexity, 19% cost and 14% performance.
"All of these factors are placing pressure on an infrastructure that, frankly, was never designed to deal with such demands. While the problem itself is not new, the scale to which it is impacting businesses means that enterprises must address it immediately or face the real danger of becoming obsolete to their customers," said Nolet.
The research also revealed 65% of respondents said they are using or expect to use Ethernet fabric architectures in efforts to manage current costs and complexities while building infrastructure needed for software defined networking.
The Brocade survey, which was in collaboration with research firm Vanson Bourne, was based on a sample of 400 senior IT decision makers from large enterprises in the UK and US.
