This blog is based on Frost & Sullivan’s Voice of Customer Network & Wireless Services, Global, 2026, authored by Frost & Sullivan’s Growth Expert Stephen Thomas from the Enterprise Network Services team.
Executive Summary
Enterprise networking is evolving from a connectivity function into a strategic foundation for digital operations and business growth. As enterprises become more distributed and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven, networks must support greater security, performance, flexibility, and operational control across increasingly complex environments. This is reshaping both how networks are designed and how they are consumed, with greater emphasis on integrated, managed, and adaptable infrastructure. For enterprises and network providers, the strategic priority is shifting toward networks that can respond faster to changing business requirements, while strengthening resilience and enabling long-term growth.
What Is Enterprise Networking?
Enterprise networking connects an organization’s users, applications, branches, data centers, cloud environments, and devices through secure digital infrastructure. Modern enterprise networking is increasingly combining physical and wireless connectivity with software-defined capabilities, automation, network observability, cloud integration, and network security.
Unlike static network architectures, these environments are supporting distributed applications, multi-cloud operations, edge locations, and increasingly data-intensive AI workloads.
Understand What Is Shaping Enterprise Network Decisions
Explore the customer priorities influencing network strategy, service models, technology adoption, and provider selection across today’s evolving enterprise network environment.
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According to Frost & Sullivan, this convergence is increasing the strategic importance of enterprise network strategy as organizations support scalable digital growth.
Enterprise Connectivity Is Becoming More Diverse
Enterprise networks are being built across a broader mix of connectivity technologies rather than a single access model. Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) remains foundational, while broadband and wireless technologies are also widely used across enterprise locations. These technologies are increasingly being mixed and matched at the same location to strengthen resilience and provide greater connectivity flexibility.
|
Connectivity Model |
Enterprise Adoption |
What It Signals |
|
Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) |
81% |
Remains the most widely used connectivity technology across enterprise locations. |
|
Broadband |
62% |
Extends the connectivity mix beyond dedicated internet access. |
|
5G/Private 5G |
59% |
Shows wireless technology becoming a mainstream enterprise connectivity option. |
Strategic takeaway: Enterprise connectivity is becoming more heterogeneous, increasing the importance of managing different technologies, as part of a cohesive network strategy.
Top 3 Strategic Imperatives Transforming Enterprise Networking
- Transformative Megatrends: Distributed Operations Are Redefining the Enterprise Network
Business operations are becoming increasingly distributed across branches, cloud environments, applications, devices, and edge locations, changing the role of enterprise networking in supporting business continuity and digital operations.
- 48% of network and IT decision-makers expect their organization’s physical footprint to increase over the next two years.
- Branch locations are becoming digital edges that support security & corporate applications, data transfer, and endpoint monitoring.
- Customer support, visibility, and scalability are becoming increasingly important alongside reliable connectivity as enterprises manage more distributed network environments.
These enterprise networking trends are shifting the network from a connectivity layer toward infrastructure that is increasingly central to operational resilience.
- Disruptive Technologies: AI Is Reshaping Enterprise Network Requirements
AI adoption required flexible bandwidth, performance, and security across the enterprise IT network, creating new pressure on network architecture and capacity planning.
- AI and machine learning now rank as the top two drivers of bandwidth growth, signaling a notable change in enterprise network demand as AI-intensive applications become more embedded across business operations.
- Security remains firmly at the top of the enterprise network agenda: 59% of leaders prioritize increasing network security, while 54% are focused on converging network and security, highlighting the continued move toward more integrated approaches to connectivity and protection.
As AI adoption grows, network readiness will increasingly determine whether enterprises can translate data-intensive workloads business value.
- Innovative Business Models: Network Consumption Is Shifting Toward Managed and On-demand Models
Enterprises are changing not only what they expect from networks, but also how they want those networks to be delivered and managed.
- 80% of enterprise Software-defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) buyers prefer either fully managed or co-managed operating models, compared with 20% choosing a do-it-yourself approach.
- Multi-cloud interoperability ranks as one of the most appealing Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) attribute, reflecting the importance of connecting and managing increasingly distributed cloud environments.
- Within NaaS self-service environments, traffic prioritization, Application Programming Interface (API) integration, and on-demand capabilities rank ahead of conventional ordering functions, highlighting growing demand for greater control and flexibility.
This shift is broadening the role of enterprise networking services, with managed delivery and Network-as-a-Service creating more flexible models for how enterprises consume, control, and operate network infrastructure.
Business Implications to Keep in Mind
- Distributed operations: Organizations that expand across cloud, branch, wireless, and edge environments without strengthening network visibility and control may experience greater operational complexity, inconsistent performance, and reduced resilience.
- AI-driven network demand: Organizations that scale AI and data-intensive workloads without aligning network capacity, performance, and operations may experience infrastructure bottlenecks that constrain application performance and limit the value of AI investments.
- Changing consumption models: Organizations that continue relying on rigid, manually managed network models as demand shifts toward managed, programmable, and on-demand services may experience slower adaptation, higher management complexity, and difficulty responding to changing business requirements.
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Building Competitive Advantage Through Enterprise Network Transformation
Frost & Sullivan Perspective
The economics of content security are changing the investment conversation. As protection moves beyond compliance, the ability to prove return on investment is becoming as important as the technology itself. This is creating an opportunity for media leaders to evaluate content security against commercial outcomes; not simply the number of piracy incidents detected or removed.
Where Are New Growth Opportunities Emerging in Enterprise Networking?
- Differentiate Through End-to-end Network Accountability
As enterprise environments become more complex, the opportunity is shifting from selling individual network services toward taking greater responsibility for performance across the environment.
- Combining infrastructure ownership with managed and security capabilities
- Building stronger end-to-end service propositions around performance and operational accountability
- Using partnerships and portfolio expansion to close capability gaps
This creates a pathway for providers to compete on business outcomes and service accountability, rather than connectivity and pricing alone.
- Make Network-as-a-Service a Control Layer for the Distributed Enterprise
The opportunity around NaaS extends beyond digitizing how connectivity is purchased. Enterprise interest is concentrating around multi-cloud interoperability, operational control, API integration, and flexible network consumption.
- Connecting network and cloud environments through a more unified service model
- Embedding programmability and on-demand control into enterprise network operations
- Integrating NaaS with broader cloud, edge, and security ecosystems
This positions NaaS as a strategic layer for simplifying enterprise network management, rather than simply another consumption model.
- Reengineer the Network Buying Journey for Faster Growth
As network services become more software-defined and on-demand, traditional procurement and contracting processes can slow the path from customer interest to adoption. Internal approval, legal, contracting, and procurement processes can create friction in the digital buying journey.
- Simplifying quoting, contracting, and service activation
- Designing digital buying journeys around enterprise governance requirements
- Connecting commercial flexibility with faster service delivery
Reducing this friction can become a growth differentiator, helping providers shorten the path from customer demand to service adoption.
Future Outlook: From Network Transformation to Business Growth
The next phase of enterprise networking will be defined less by individual network technologies and more by how quickly infrastructure can respond to changing business requirements. As networks become more software-defined and service-led, enterprises will increasingly operate connectivity as a dynamic business resource; adjusting capacity, policies, security, and services as workloads and operating environments change. For providers, long-term growth will increasingly depend on moving higher in the value chain, from supplying connectivity to orchestrating complex network environments and assuming greater responsibility for business outcomes. The organizations positioned to lead will be those turning network infrastructure into an adaptable foundation for faster transformation, stronger resilience, and sustained competitive growth.
Which companies are best positioned to lead the next phase of enterprise network services?
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Frequently Asked Questions on Enterprise Networking Services
1. What is network observability, and how is it different from network monitoring?
Network observability gives IT teams a deeper understanding of network behavior by bringing together telemetry, traffic, logs, events, and performance data. Rather than simply identifying that an issue has occurred, it helps teams investigate why it happened, understand dependencies across the enterprise IT network, and identify potential causes of performance issues.
2. What are network security best practices for a distributed enterprise IT network?
Effective network security best practices include applying zero-trust principles, segmenting networks, continuously monitoring traffic, strengthening identity and access controls, encrypting data, and maintaining consistent policies across cloud, branch, and remote environments. For a distributed enterprise IT network, integrating security with network operations can also help teams identify threats without creating separate operational silos.
3. How can enterprises improve network management across hybrid and multi-cloud environments?
Effective enterprise network management requires unified visibility across on-premises infrastructure, cloud environments, branches, users, and applications. Organizations can strengthen control by centralizing policies, automating routine network tasks, integrating management platforms through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and monitoring application performance across environments. This reduces operational fragmentation as enterprise network infrastructure becomes increasingly distributed across multiple technology environments.
4. What should enterprises consider when evaluating managed SD WAN services?
When evaluating managed Software-defined Wide Area Network (SD WAN) services, enterprises can look beyond connectivity costs to assess application performance, provider management capabilities, security integration, cloud connectivity, visibility, policy control, and service-level commitments. The appropriate operating model will also depend on internal network expertise and how much operational responsibility the organization wants to retain versus transfer to its service provider.
5. How are enterprise networking services evolving to support modern digital operations?
Among important enterprise networking trends is the expansion beyond basic connectivity. Services are increasingly incorporating software-defined control, automation, cloud connectivity, security, analytics, and flexible consumption capabilities. This evolution gives enterprises more options for adapting network operations as applications, workforce models, cloud environments, and digital business requirements continue to change.
6. How do AIOps and traditional network monitoring tools differ?
The key difference in Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) vs traditional network monitoring tools is how network data is analyzed and acted upon. Traditional tools typically track predefined metrics and thresholds, while AIOps applies AI and machine learning to operational data to correlate events, identify patterns, detect anomalies, and help network teams diagnose and respond to issues across increasingly complex environments.
