A recent enterprise survey hinted that network-as-a-service (NaaS) could be the use case that cracks open the private network market.

The survey, conducted by ZK Research and commissioned by CommScope, found that 75% of enterprises run their wired, Wi-Fi and private 4G LTE/5G networks on multiple different management systems, with nearly half of those running them on at least three different systems.

Not surprisingly, nearly all of those surveyed stated that these different management systems waste both time and money.

Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst at ZK Research, explained in an interview with SDxCentral that this complexity has been growing over time.

“If you just roll back time, I'm not going to say networks were simple but they were pretty straightforward. You had a network, and things were wired and pretty easy to control and it was located in the corporate office,” Kerravala said. “Over time, networks have just gotten more and more complicated to the point where just running the network is consuming most of a company's budget, so there's not a lot of time left for innovation.”

The more recent push toward private networks using 4G LTE or 5G technology is only set to add to the complication. “There’s nothing to help the network managers simplify their job,” Kerravala added.

That simplification needs to be the key takeaway for an organization moving toward a NaaS model.

“Even if you have a fairly technical IT team, there's a lot of things in running the day-to-day operations that are just mundane tasks, that just I'm not sure they need to do anymore,” Kerravala said. “My advice to IT pros is always if you're doing things today that aren't really core to your resume, stop doing them. Find a way to either automate them out of your job or move it to a managed service provider.”

Tim Dyer, VP of market development at CommScope, added that the benefits of moving toward automation or relying on a managed service provider almost can’t be measured.

“Time really isn't money. Time can't be measured in many ways. Time is time,” Dyer said. “When I saw the survey results in that regard it was pretty eye-opening to me that if we can save these folks time, that will be the most valuable thing that we're going to provide to them.”

NaaS is often defined as a way for customers to gain the operational benefits of connectivity without having to deal with the deployment or management of that connectivity method. This basically removes the need for an enterprise or organization to have networking expertise and it can instead focus on business results.

This model also allows for greater financial flexibility as an organization can trade the capex that would have been required to install a network with an opex model of paying only for what they need.

ABI Research predicts that more than nine in 10 enterprises will select this usage-based consumption model for at least a quarter of their network services by 2030.

“I think this is a case where the use of network-as-a-service actually allows companies to focus on their core competency and focus on the business and leave a lot of the underlying complexity to the managed service provider. And, frankly, those are the types of companies that do it really well,” Kerravala said. “They will have seen all the issues that you're likely to run into, especially when you're dealing with a new technology.”

While NaaS seems like an EASY button for enterprises and organizations, it still requires some work in deciding who they partner with. Today, they can choose NaaS platforms from telecommunication operators, equipment vendors, hyperscalers and integrated service providers (ISVs), or any number of combinations.

“I will say that when it comes to network-as-a-service, here's a case where companies do need to do their homework,” Kerravala said. “While every vendor has a network-as-a-service offering, some of them are just a subscription model on the old hardware business. It can be as much as that all the way up to a true network service where you do buy and deploy as-a-service.

"I think NaaS is the answer for a lot of companies moving forward, but the way that NaaS offerings are built is quite different.”

Those differences are often based around either the technology being used – Wi-Fi or 5G – or the spectrum needed to support the service – licensed, lightly licensed or unlicensed.

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg recently said that the carrier’s initial private network efforts have been in cases where it’s replacing Wi-Fi systems that use unlicensed spectrum with 5G-based systems using licensed spectrum.

“They start pretty small,” Vestberg said of the carrier’s private network work. “They start as Wi-Fi substitution and then when it works, let’s say you have one big logistics company, they take the one logistics center and then they do it in all. We are in the phase of ramping that up to do one-to-many at the moment.”

Analyst firms see a place for both 5G-based and Wi-Fi NaaS and private network systems. They note that 5G-based systems can power more robust or quality-of-service (QoS) needy applications, while Wi-Fi can be used for less demanding situations.

“They're both wireless, but that's where the similarities stop,” Kerravala said. “They have different liability levels. They have different costs. They're used complementarily in nature and I think right now we're looking at a case where companies are figuring out exactly how to deploy them and where.”