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Figure 1. The Complexity Multiplier Effect
Compared to a decade ago, you are now looking at 4x the types of users, 9x the types of devices, 4x the networks,
and twice the types of resources. Do the math, and that is 288 times the complexity of yesterday’s networks.
We call this the complexity multiplier effect. It has real consequences:
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It makes IT into a bottleneck for the enterprise.
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It drains productivity, because IT spends most of its time just trying to keep things running smoothly.
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It limits your business agility, because it takes much longer to adapt to change and get new applications up
and running.
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It makes it more difficult to scale IT services to keep up with the new markets, suppliers, and services your
company needs to support.
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It hinders innovation, because your smartest people and the bulk of your budget are focused on maintaining
complexity, instead of achieving business results.
As you know, IT budgets are not keeping pace with this growing complexity. In fact, the more IT investments
businesses make these days for things such as BYOD, the cloud, and the Internet of Things, the more that
complexity grows.
Simplify the Network
IT should not impede your business growth, but rather should accelerate it. But to get to a place where IT efforts are
focused on achieving results instead of managing complexity, the network needs to get much simpler. Cisco can