Business network solutions: three strategies for success

Let’s face it, the world’s more complex than it was 15 years ago, and so are your networks. You face hybrid working patterns from your teams. SaaS migrations to hyperscale, multi-local, and private clouds. New markets, with different regulatory frameworks. And new capacity demands from AI applications. So change isn’t really optional, is it?

The good news: it’s also packed with positives, if you adopt the right mindset (and tools).

Your connectivity budget isn’t a sunk cost … if you see it as an investment offering returns. The risks of obsolescence and technical debt decrease … if you see your network as a flexible, adaptable system that changes with your needs. And management isn’t a chore … if you see it as a transparent and forward-looking way of controlling data, workflows, and permissions for best effect.

In other words, in a changing world, see your network as more than capacity or bandwidth. Instead, put it in strategic alignment with the rest of your business.

In this article, we’ll break down three proven strategies for businesses, large or small, to transform their networks from a cost sink into a profit center … simply by thinking about it differently.

Strategy 1: Treat connectivity as a strategic asset – by going beyond the basics

Let’s expand with that “mindset” idea. Many people – at all levels of the business – assume their network underlay is “simply there”, with no thought for the value some optimization might add. It’s the reason connectivity is still seen as a cost. So the first strategy for change begins with sensing the opportunities. Some examples:

• Companies discovered simply putting two screens instead of one on each coder’s desk made coders 9-50% more productive (1). A simple change – but which required a change in mindset.
• The rise of hybrid working forced companies to develop processes for remote deployment and maintenance. These new ways of working – cloud apps instead of local installs – ended up cutting resourcing costs across the board.
• AI tools like Cursor are letting “vibe coders” produce and deploy software faster than ever. It takes more bandwidth – but it leads to greater productivity.
• For GNX customers in China’s AI sector, specifying a mix of connectivity options allowed efficient use of budget and an improved user experience ­– with solutions like point-to-point connectivity significantly reducing latency between sites, improving their model training.

Like any technological tool, your business network solution can become a driver of innovation. So why not brainstorm what more bandwidth, broader reach, and new applications could achieve for your bottom line … by helping people collaborate, communicate, and share ideas more effectively?

That’s why the first strategy is to think of ROI, not sunk cost.

There’s one more part to this strategy: ensuring every solution works as a smooth whole worldwide – and this is where GNX shines. Deep-diving interaction points and looking for improvements, modeling usage patterns to avoid bottlenecks, making sure diversity is “real” diversity and not different ISPs on the same pipe. It’s why customers work with us for years – and it happens before we even make you a proposal.

Strategy 2: Design for flexibility, not just speed

One-and-done. Rip-and-replace. They might sound attractive, but buzzwords don’t describe the real world. Technology changes all the time, and every new product or service might offer you an advantage; staying with last decade’s tech is unlikely to be optimal.

So let’s look at our second strategy: thinking of upgrades and reworks as a business success factor, not a PITA (2). And building a deliberate policy of making them easy.

• MPLS was great for bandwidth. But as the world moved to the cloud, the real improvements today are in optimizing cloud applications, managing traffic, and capacity for better performance. A migration to internet-based WAN + SASE might be a major cost upfront – but a brilliant investment over time.
• Those same MPLS circuits had long contract periods – prompting many companies to simply “wait for the next proposal” from their big telco provider. But that carries costs of its own. Aggregators, like GNX, can novate and help with migrations to prepare for the post-MPLS future without wasting assets.
• Patterns of usage have changed in recent years, and measuring "bandwidth" is no longer enough. In a world of cloud apps, far-flung sites, and dispersed staff, best practice in network design means working out the best solution for each application and choosing the underlay that fits – whether that’s fiber in the ground, public mobile infrastructure, even microwave point-to-point.

The driver of this strategy: bandwidth alone isn’t the most important metric. It’s flexibility that matters – the ability to handle a thousand employees suddenly working from home, resolving the traffic spikes in a busy cloud app each morning, allocating scarce resources where they’re needed most. Networks must be fit for purpose – not just fast.

Case Study: looking at latency for an AI provider

One GNX client understood this – an AI company whose product demanded ultra-low latency. So our task became to design latency out of their connectivity – which wasn’t possible with an everyday internet connection.

The answer was a private circuit – combining fast fiber and service guarantees into a Wide Area Network that didn’t have to contend with other traffic. It wasn’t about bandwidth, or even capacity, but about the “gaps” between data transfers, billions of times each day, and seeking to minimize the time between them.

It’s how we work – making sure every solution is perfectly adapted for its application while keeping it flexible for the future. It’s why our networks often combine different approaches. And of course, the ability to manage it all from one single automated platform, no matter what goes on under the surface.

Strategy 3: Seek transparency and control – the cornerstones of reliability

If you outsource connectivity, it’s easy to think of your network as a single service – one dashboard to watch, one number to call if things go wrong. But real life is rarely that simple. Your “seamless” solution from a big telco provider may be made up of hundreds of local ISPs and infrastructure owners – each with its own processes and practices, and sometimes managed locally by your branch heads. That’s what our third strategy addresses – aim for seamlessness.

• Individually, 20 local ISPs may provide great service. But there may be bottlenecks where they interact. What if your point-to-point provider guarantees an immediate response to problems, but the fiber owner downstream states a three-day turnaround? That could mean a remote site unable to get work done.
• Even when ISPs are managed locally, problems can affect you globally. Imagine your German site is down while dealing with an international project. Downtime in a single key country can affect operations worldwide.
• SLAs can interact in unexpected ways. Contracts in unfamiliar languages, from countries with different legal frameworks, with conflicting levels of adherence to the letter and spirit of an agreement – the list goes on. And such inconsistencies lead to blind spots in performance monitoring: a small fault “here” may end up costing far more than a large error “there”.

All this means dashboards and data aren’t enough on their own – you need active control, so problems can be addressed with a standard approach no matter where they happen. At GNX, we take full ownership of the parts to make it one. While we work with hundreds of diverse providers, our offer to you is a single contract with a consistent SLA, across your whole network. Meaning a single point of contact when issues come up.

This highlights the key difference between a marketplace and a true aggregator. A marketplace can offer great prices, but the cost of dealing with a hundred local partners and managing diverse SLAs falls on you. 

A genuine aggregator like GNX takes responsibility for all your connectivity, no matter where they are. With full transparency too – ISPs and LMPs involved, local traffic disruption, even proactive contract renewals, so you can explore other options. And it is all available via GNX+.

The leap forward: Change your mindset, transform your business network

These are our three new ways to think about your connectivity, each offering opportunities when you change your mindset.

1. Treat connectivity as a strategic asset (opening you up to innovation opportunities)
2. Design for flexibility, not just speed (because in a world of cloud apps and diverse infrastructure, bandwidth headlines aren’t the main story)
3. Seek visibility and control (because life’s too short to deal with a hundred providers pointing fingers at each other whenever there’s a problem)

Our global connectivity solutions are built on these principles, with GNX+ giving you a carrier-agnostic platform for choosing and managing your network underlay. Whether you’re migrating to the cloud, dealing with AI compute demands, or expanding into new markets and need your network to perform smoothly, we are here for you.

Notes: 

(1) https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/two-screens-are-better-than-one/

(2) Pain in the … neck.