Expanding your business in APAC? Don't focus on hardware.

Asia is expected to lead global growth in 2022. For companies looking to expand in the region, opportunities are plenty. But a traditional hardware-centric approach could hold you back. Here’s why network virtualisation may be the answer.

As economies continue their slow recovery in 2022, one region may be more surefooted than the rest: Asia.

Experts expect Asia to lead global growth next year, buoyed by its equity markets’ stellar performance in the first half of 2021 and a string of initial public offerings (IPOs) in the third quarter of the year¹. The Asian population has also become overwhelmingly digital², which means there are plenty of growth opportunities for companies that can harness digital technologies.

For global enterprises with dreams of expansion in this region, 2022 may be a good time to push through with those plans.

But in today’s rapidly changing, increasingly digital environment, business as usual just won’t cut it. You’ll need to be agile, flexible, and fast. There must be systems in place to ensure business continuity in the event of disruptions, and you’ll want to keep up with customers who’ll demand anytime, anywhere access to services.

In other words, to grow your business, you—and your network—must be digitally resilient. You’ll need to ditch your traditional hardware-centric approach for a software-based one to do this. Network virtualisation is key.

Many are already realising the importance of this switch: from 2015 to 2020, the global network function virtualisation (NFV) market exhibited strong growth, driven mainly by significant uptake in banking, financial services, insurance, retail, healthcare, information technology (IT), and manufacturing. As these industries grew, so did their need for advanced network management and NFV systems to handle the rise in network traffic and data complexity. The overall outlook for the market is positive, potentially growing at a compound annual rate of 28% from 2021 to 2026.³

But what exactly is network virtualisation, and how can it help you expand your business?

Network virtualisation decouples the physical hardware from the network services running on top of it. So, although the software still uses the hardware’s resources, network administrators can segment, move, or change this software layer without having to touch the hardware layer⁴. This leads to faster and more efficient provisioning of network resources.

There are two main types of virtualisation: internal, which uses software containers to mimic a single-network setup, and external, which consolidates several networks into one virtual network. Some organisations are also incorporating cloud computing, relying on cloud-based resources to set up and run virtual networks⁵.

Because virtualisation replaces specialised physical appliances such as firewalls, routers, and load balancers with virtual ones, the result is a network that’s more stable, reliable, and scalable.

Having a virtualised network offers businesses several advantages.

For one, it reduces operating costs and simplifies the entire IT management process. It does so by eliminating the need to buy and maintain expensive hardware, as well as allowing for faster, more efficient provisioning of resources. This quick provisioning cuts application deployment time from weeks to mere minutes—yielding significant productivity gains and a shorter time-to-market.

The automated network configuration that comes with virtualisation also reduces the likelihood of errors, thereby lowering the potential costs of failed application deployments. Manual deployments, on the other hand, tend to be less accurate and prone to human error.

Virtualisation likewise gives administrators real-time network visibility and control, improving overall security by helping you catch and address vulnerabilities early. This becomes especially important as you scale because network traffic and data requirements will also increase significantly.

As your company widens its footprint in Asia, you’ll need a network that can handle your growing requirements. Virtualisation offers benefits that could give you a competitive advantage and help you navigate the tricky process of expansion.

Quick network resource provisioning, for instance, means a shorter time-to-market. You could launch new products and services faster, as well as deploy critical application updates on time. A more reliable network could even help you tap new customer segments, particularly those that have gotten used to 24/7 access to services. The ability to quickly deploy network functions is also something you’ll need as your business needs evolve during the expansion.

Business continuity and disaster recovery also improve with virtualisation. Compared to hardware-centric systems, virtualisation technologies tend to recover more quickly from sudden outages. If one server fails, administrators can swiftly switch their virtual machines to another server.

From these benefits, you could derive significant operating and capital cost reductions, and time savings that could spell the difference between thriving or losing in Asia’s competitive market.

One company’s experience with virtualisation sheds light on just how much more efficient businesses could be. The company had to roll out a network upgrade across 400 branches. Without a software-defined approach, they would have had to do one site installation per business day for about a year and a half. Virtualisation made the installation possible in just four months.

How? By circumventing the need to buy specialised firewall appliances and routers, ship these to all 400 branches, schedule integrators to install the hardware, and spend time testing and integrating the equipment. Instead, the company had white box appliances from their service provider shipped to approximately 100 branches every month, and remotely activated and tested 25 devices simultaneously every week.

Of course, network virtualisation is not a magic bullet. You may need to find employees with the right skills to manage the network, and there are costs associated with the shift to a software-based approach. But by partnering with service providers with extensive network virtualisation expertise and deep knowledge of the Asian business ecosystem, the process can be smooth and manageable.

Learn more about how an experienced, regional network provider can help you virtualise your network and prepare for an exciting expansion into this hyper-digital corner of the world.

¹ South China Morning Post, Asia set to lead global growth in 2022 as travel rebounds amid easing of Covid-19 pandemic restrictions, 2021.

² We Are Social, Southeast Asia: Digital Life Intensified, 2021.

³ Research and Markets, Network Function Virtualization (NFV) Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2021-2026, 2021.

⁴ SDxCentral, Network Virtualization and How It Works, 2021.

⁵ Gigamon, What Is Network Virtualization?, 2018.