Is a Single Vendor Network Better for the Enterprise?

Building out an enterprise network often involves including multiple networking hardware vendors as a way to leverage risk. According to a new study by Deloitte Consulting, Multivendor network architectures, TCO, and operational risk, having multiple vendors isn’t necessarily a good thing and, in fact, could increase your overall risk.

Deloitte is advocating for single vendor networks to help reduce operational, configuration and management complexity. By reducing that complexity, the idea is that the network risk profile is reduced.

“Networks are a part of the critical business delivery chain for enterprises and need to be considered as a single functional system,” Chris Weitz, director of Deloitte Consulting’s U.S. technology practice told InternetNews.com. “You can’t really look at networks from a component parts perspective; it’s really an end-to-end strategic asset.”

Deloitte considered a number of factors when comparing single vendor to multi-vendor networks. Those factors included cost, functionality and the business risk impact. From a cost perspective, Deloitte found that over a three to five year analysis period, there was no meaningful difference between having a single vendor and a multi-vendor network. While there are differences with the initial product cost, Weitz noted that there are operational and risk impacts that negate the initial difference over time.

“Functionally, single vendor networks are desirable as there is a direct correlation between vendor diversity and operational complexity,” Weitz said.

Read the full story at EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet:
Is a Single Vendor Network Better for the Enterprise?

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.