Workshop•4 hours
Data Center Networking Market Scan Workshop
The Data Center Networking Market Scan Workshop empowers organizations to make informed, strategic networking decisions. By aligning technology with business outcomes, it reduces risk and enhances operational efficiency. Ideal for leaders in technology and operations, it supports modernization, automation, and future-ready infrastructure planning.
What to Expect
This interactive workshop is typically delivered in a 4–8 hour session and is designed to combine customer discovery, platform evaluation, and collaborative decision support.
- Discovery and Current-State Alignment: We begin by reviewing your current data center networking strategy, operational model, and key business drivers. This includes understanding network infrastructure, underlay/overlay design approach, segmentation strategy, multi-site connectivity, operational pain points, resiliency requirements, automation goals, security posture, application connectivity demands, and future direction such as hybrid cloud, application modernization, or AI infrastructure readiness.
- Platform Capability Evaluation: Using a structured capability-based evaluation model, we compare leading data center networking platform options against your prioritized criteria. This evaluation incorporates validated platform capabilities, real-world implementation experience, and operational maturity across fabric architecture, policy management, segmentation enforcement, automation, security, observability, resiliency, and ecosystem integration.
- Customer-Weighted Platform Alignment Analysis: We apply customer-defined priority weighting to produce normalized platform alignment scores. This helps highlight platform strengths, trade-offs, and areas of strategic differentiation based on what matters most to your organization.
- Collaborative Review and Down-Selection Guidance: We review results together, interpret findings in the context of your environment, and help identify the options most aligned to your operational and business goals.
- Executive Readout and Next-Step Recommendations: You receive a summary of findings, key decision considerations, and recommended next steps, which may include proof-of-concept validation, architecture design sessions, segmentation strategy workshops, automation planning, or deeper technical design discussions.
Goals & Objectives
The Data Center Networking Market Scan Workshop is designed to help organizations make confident, evidence-based networking platform decisions aligned to real operational and business priorities.
Primary Objectives
- Establish a Clear Networking Platform Strategy: Identify which networking platforms align most closely with your organization's operational model, security strategy, automation goals, segmentation model, resiliency requirements, and future infrastructure direction.
- Reduce Platform Selection Risk: Move beyond feature checklists and vendor positioning to evaluate platforms based on real-world operational maturity, policy consistency, automation capability, lifecycle manageability, and ecosystem integration.
- Align Technology Decisions to Business Outcomes: Ensure network infrastructure decisions directly support business priorities such as uptime, security posture, operational efficiency, application performance, scalability, and cost predictability.
- Enable Confident Executive Decision-Making: Provide normalized, defensible comparison data that can be used to support architecture direction, budget planning, modernization initiatives, and long-term platform strategy discussions.
Strategic Outcomes
Organizations that complete this workshop typically gain:
- Clear understanding of platform trade-offs across operational, technical, security, and ecosystem domains
- Data-driven platform down-selection guidance
- Alignment between network strategy and future initiatives such as hybrid cloud, AI infrastructure, application modernization, and automation-first operations
- Reduced time spent in reactive architecture redesign during later deployment phases
- Stronger justification for networking platform investment decisions
This workshop is designed to accelerate informed decision-making while reducing technical, operational, and commercial risk across the network infrastructure lifecycle.
Who Should Attend?
This workshop is designed for technology and business leaders responsible for data center networking strategy, operational execution, and long-term infrastructure planning.
Business and Technology Leadership
- CIOs and CTOs: Seeking data-driven validation of networking platform strategy and long-term investment direction.
- VPs and Directors of Infrastructure, Networking, Cloud, or Platform Engineering: Responsible for platform standardization, lifecycle strategy, operational scalability, and cross-domain infrastructure alignment.
- Enterprise and Principal Architects: Evaluating platform trade-offs across fabric design, policy model, automation maturity, security integration, resiliency, observability, and future workload readiness.
Infrastructure and Operations Leadership
- Network Engineering and Data Center Infrastructure Leaders: Driving network modernization, fabric transformation, segmentation initiatives, or platform consolidation efforts.
- Cloud Platform Owners, SRE Leaders, and Operations Teams: Focused on operational consistency, policy automation, service reliability, and visibility across increasingly dynamic environments.
- Security and Risk Leadership: Ensuring network platforms align with security architecture, compliance requirements, segmentation strategy, and operational risk posture.
Best Fit Scenarios
This workshop is most valuable for organizations that are:
- Evaluating new data center networking platform standards
- Planning network refresh, fabric modernization, or architecture simplification initiatives
- Assessing alternatives to existing data center network operating models
- Standardizing automation, policy, and lifecycle management across environments
- Improving segmentation consistency, operational visibility, and Day 2 network operations across data center environments
- Preparing the network foundation for AI, high-performance compute, or large-scale east-west traffic demands
Benefits
Down-Select & Roadmap Narrow the field to the platforms best suited to your environment and define clear next steps — such as a proof-of-concept, lab validation, or migration planning engagement.