The Business Value of Forward Networks
Study participants reported a diverse array of benefits from implementing Forward Networks, including, efficiency and accuracy in budgeting and licensing efforts, security and risk benefits, and business enablement with new Forward Networks functionalities. Forward Networks also provided a more stable and reliable network environment by improving MTTR and secured visibility across the network environment.
The detailed responses of interviewed organizations are as follows:
Budgeting and licensing accuracy (financial services):“Our organization uses Forward Networks for our monthly budgeting exercises. We were able to decommission other systems because of it. In communication with our vendors, in terms of licensing, we are able to accurately account for the components of our network. This translates to a higher accuracy of about 10%.”
Risk benefits and IT efficiency enablement (financial services):“Ensuring that the security posture is in line with what it is designed to be. A risk benefit is a business benefit for our organization. Forward Networks enables quicker time to market across the market, with new functionalities, new customers we’re onboarding, new counterparties we need to connect to — there are efficiencies across all of these. Largely, we are able to avoid IT for IT’s sake.”
MTTR and infrastructure delivery (financial technology):“Forward Networks reduces the mean time to resolution when an outage occurs, as well as the number of incidents caused by change, and it improves our ability to deliver infrastructure in a shorter time.”
Visibility across network provider environment (technology):“Forward Networks allowed us to validate our network supplier. On their side, some tasks are accomplished manually, while some with automation. Automation presented the challenge of configuring the devices correctly, and documentation often lacked consistency With Forward Networks, we gained visibility into both of these areas and can take action toward remediation programmatically.”
Overall, the average organization can expect $14.2 million worth of benefits annually with Forward Networks, broken down into staff productivity benefits totaling $2.9 million, unplanned downtime benefits (associated with network stability and reliability) of $7.7 million, and additional operational benefits valued at $3.6 million.
The structure of the researched benefits is as follows:
Staff productivity benefits:
- Network administrators
- Incident response and troubleshooting teams
- Regulatory compliance team
Unplanned downtime benefits:
- Productivity loss avoidance
Additional operational benefits:
- Additional team efficiency benefits
- Additional revenue benefits
- Avoided hires
When asked about the most significant IT-related benefits, organizations spoke about Forward Networks improving their ability to accurately track inventory in a multivendor network and accomplish change management tasks with greater efficiency. One organization stated that Forward Networks improved its ability to gather network data and helped create and update network-related documentation. The theme of network visibility, which was mentioned in the answers to the business benefits question, was also present here.
Organizations said the following:
Inventory and change management improvements (financial services):
“Forward Networks increased the accuracy of our inventory in an environment where our organization works with eight vendors. The process associated with change was also improved, from pre- to post-checks to validations. The NQE, initially the reason for implementing Forward Networks, allows us to query information from the network without being a developer.”
Control points and efficiency (financial services):
“We know where the control points in the network are. We can now effect change much more efficiently across the network. It has increased efficiencies, staff productivity, and saved a lot of time.”
Data gathering and documentation (financial technology):
“The most significant IT-related benefit is that Forward Networks reduces the cost of gathering network data. What would take an engineer hours, days, or even longer is now accomplished with Forward Networks within minutes, while the quality of the data is also superior. This ability to gather data improved our documentation effort. With Forward Networks, we know what we’re doing or what’s going on.”
Network visibility (technology):
“It’s visibility. With Forward Networks, we get massive efficiency from being able to programmatically query against the network to look for common patterns or common misconfigurations. Forward Networks’ path visualization helps us locate problems in an individual’s queries. When a user says, ‘I’m having problems communicating from here to here,’ Forward Networks gives us an idea of the path and indicates problems in it. This is hugely valuable.”
The first and the most significant staff group that organizations reported as benefiting from the implementation of Forward Networks is the incident response and troubleshooting team. IDC calculated that the members of the incident response and troubleshooting team increased their efficiency by 34.2% with Forward Networks. This represents a staff time gain of 35.8 FTE valued at $2.5 million with an IDC $70,000 annual salary assumption (see Table 3 below). This was enabled, among other factors, by the improvements in the initial phase of troubleshooting. Organizations reported that Forward Networks diagrams the whole network environment and makes the identification of the exact problem areas and its extent much easier. With Forward Networks, IT team members could complete network deployments 71% faster, identify and resolve network-related problems 44% faster, and plan, design, and test within network environments 36% faster (see Table 5).
To further illustrate the positive effect the implementation of Forward Networks had on the incident response and troubleshooting team, Figure 1 shows how, with a constant head count, a single team member can now be responsible for more of devices within the network, from 168.2 devices per FTE to 255.6 devices per FTE. This represents an increase of 34.2%, as shown in Table 2.
Compliance Benefits
Another researched benefit area was the effect of Forward Networks on interviewed organizations’ compliance efforts. In the quotes provided to IDC, organizations stated that Forward Networks is regularly reporting compliance-related problem areas, whereas in their previous environment, this would entail a lengthy process of information gathering. Forward Networks is also a source of data for communicating with regulators. Two of the interviewed organizations reported avoiding new hires for data gathering. Organizations said that information gathered with Forward Networks ensures audit compliance.
Organizations had the following to say about compliance:
Reporting and time savings (financial services):
“There is a reporting benefit for our organization. Forward Networks helps us by getting a nightly report on what our problem areas are, instead of finding out from our GSO or a third party. We can double-check generic vendor reports, and Forward Networks tells us specifically what part of the networks needs to be addressed to fix the problem. Internally, this took us 20 hours a month, each month, with Forward Networks, it’s done in an hour.”
Compliance data source (financial services):
“Our IT department is obligated to communicate with regulators. Forward Networks helps us by delivering data that shows that we comply with various regulations. We would need to hire an additional one or two FTEs to replace this Forward Networks functionality.”
Being compliant and avoiding new hires (financial technology):
“Our organization was unable to comply with regulatory requirements regarding audits and risk until we implemented Forward Networks. With Forward Networks, we were able to maintain a flat head count, whereas without, we would have to at least double or triple the size of the team to manage being compliant. This was one of the main drivers behind choosing Forward Networks, and it has delivered benefits not only for the compliance team but for the whole organization.”
Dealing with audits (financial technology):
“With Forward Networks, our organization is able to avoid a number of audit items because we can provide information about our compliance with certainty, as well as validate the progress of remediation. We are able to demonstrate to the auditors that we have validated, real-time information.”
Table 4 presents the results of IDC research on regulatory compliance staff efficiency with Forward Networks. On average, compliance teams were 10.4% more efficient, translating to a benefit of 4 FTEs. Coupled with a $100,000 IDC annual salary assumption, this translated into almost $400,000 of annual benefits. With Forward Networks, compliance teams were able to provide the requested information to regulators faster and with greater accuracy, enabling them to avoid audits in the process.
Unplanned Downtime and Network Performance Improvements
IDC also researched a number of KPIs associated with network administration, performance, and stability. With Forward Networks, the ability of the organizations to better understand their network environment and components meant that, on average, 33% fewer downtime incidents occurred than in an environment without Forward Networks, and if an incident occurred, it was resolved 55% faster than previously. These two groups of network KPIs are presented in Table 5.
Select findings from Table 5 are also provided in Figure 2.
A direct benefit of less frequent unplanned downtime and its quicker remediation is productivity loss avoidance. IDC calculated that the average organization avoided a loss of 95.8 FTEs of equivalent productivity owing to fewer unplanned downtime occurrences and faster remediation. Benefits such as faster problem remediation, better network visibility, and information gathering, in concert and resulted in a benefit of 83.3% compared to the earlier environment without Forward Networks. With a $70,000 IDC annual salary assumption across the organization, this translated into a benefit of $6.7 million in productivity loss avoidance (see Table 6).
The figures in Table 6 are further illustrated in Figure 3 (below) which shows the average annual reduction of unplanned downtime productivity loss calculated on a per organization basis. The average researched organization had 107,000 employees (see Table 1, above). Forward Networks helped reduce productivity loss caused by unplanned downtime per organization from 216,240 hours in the previous environment without Forward Networks to 36,045 hours. In other words, Forward Networks helped save the average organization 180,195 hours of productivity annually.
Business and Operational Benefits
IDC also asked the interviewed organizations to provide examples of use cases and possible secondary positive effects of Forward Networks implementation for operational and other teams. One organization talked about being able to administer pre- and post-deployment checks much more efficiently owing to these procedures being built in as opposed to being a separate task previously. Another organization reported a very significant improvement in the productivity and accuracy of application developers owing to Forward Networks’ enablement of firewall requests for specific SW deployments by the developers. Forward Networks helped one organization manage utilization by providing a report of device utilization, whereas in the previous environment, the responsible network administrator had to undertake a lengthy process of individual device assessment. Lastly, the interviewed organizations shared their Forward Networks use cases involving software updates across devices linked in a network. Forward Networks helped the organizations identify all the devices that could be updated simultaneously, avoiding time-consuming and labor-intensive analysis.
Organizations said the following about their use cases:
Pre-/post-deployment checks (financial services):
“The checkout procedures for our deployment and operational teams are now built out in their workspaces. Beforehand, what would have been up to the individuals’ pre-/post-checkout routines is now part of their procedure operationally. A normal pre-/post-check would take 30 minutes. Now, it takes 5 minutes. And it’s consistent and uniform among engineers.”
Firewall requests for application developers (financial technology):
Application developers are now able to easily get information because they put in firewall requests when needed. This enabled them to have open ports for their application work. Before Forward Networks, creating a firewall request was ‘a game of telephone.’ With data support from Forward Networks, we were able to create an internal portal, giving developers the information they need for their specific deployment. App developers are two to three times more productive and 90% more accurate.”
Reporting on device utilization (technology):
“The deploy team in network engineering is significantly more productive because instead of manually logging into every device and researching its utilization through used interfaces, they can just get a report from Forward Networks. This represents a time save of about 20 minutes for every single device.”
Software updates (financial services):
“Our organization fully embedded Forward Networks into its comprehensive software updating strategy. There are approximately 20,000 devices in our network. We’ve developed software that automates updates for these devices. Forward Networks plays a key role in delivering the data on what devices can be updated simultaneously. This is all done automatically and saves our organization weeks of planning each year.”
Table 7 contains other business and operational benefits IDC derived from figures interviewed organizations provided about Forward Networks use cases and business enablement. These organizations reported an additional revenue of $1.25 million annually due to Forward Networks implementation, which increased network resource productivity. Forward Networks enabled operational teams to keep a flat head count, which saved $560,000 annually per organization. Finally, IDC calculated that the average organization saved $560,000 annually due to various Forward Networks use cases for teams across the organization.
Challenges and Opportunities
As previous findings show, there is much to be gained by the proper use of the Forward Networks solution. Experienced customers point to a wealth of specific benefits and business value. The solution itself — and Forward Networks operating as a service partner — has certainly delivered on the promise of improved network resilience and responsiveness and, just as importantly, heightened the efficiency and effectiveness of networking staff. Beyond that, much has been gained across strategic business priorities. For example, reduced network downtime increases worker productivity and customer satisfaction. Solidified network change management enables the network to pivot more readily and reliably when matching IT and business innovation demands.
Of course, to realize these benefits, a strong commitment must be made by both the IT organization and Forward Networks. For the IT organization, proper training enables the full and proper use of the Forward Networks solution by all associated staff. Continual use ensures consistent governance and impact of solution capabilities. Although the IT organizations interviewed for this study all had very large staffs and networks, those operating with fewer employees and outside the highly intense financial services industry should still fully commit to the solution’s proper and continual use to realize all possible benefits. For Forward Networks, the growing expectations mentioned earlier apply. Services that drive the full and proper use of its solution are critical — regardless of the customer’s size, location, or industry. Also, solution advancements must continue to extend innovation and impact beyond the present capabilities highlighted in this study.
Conclusion
IDC’s research concluded that organizations using Forward Networks are realizing a diverse spectrum of benefits associated with the implementation of the solution. The benefits break down into three subcategories: unplanned downtime benefits, additional operational benefits, and staff productivity benefits. Organizations reported 33% fewer unplanned downtime incidents and 55% faster remediation of these incidents; with this, IDC calculated a $6.7 million annual staff productivity loss avoidance for the average interviewed organization. Organizations also reported an increase in productivity of network staff teams, valued at $2.7 million annually. Forward Networks helped its customers with business enablement, translating to $1.2 million of additional revenue annually. Besides direct financial impact, Forward Networks customers saw substantial improvements in the areas of network administration (44% faster problem identification and remediation) and network deployment (77% faster deployment of HW, SW, and services).
