Just another Tuesday in network operations

It’s 2 a.m. The phone rings. You’re on call. Another outage. Another fire drill. Another night of scrambling to fix a broken network.

A junior engineer hesitantly confesses, "I applied a change. Thought it was non-impacting." You sigh. You’ve been here before. Misconfigurations, software bugs, legacy infrastructure and tool sprawl make every network change a potential disaster. The issue gets fixed, services are restored and executives breathe a sigh of relief. But you know the truth: This will happen again. Soon. Why do networks break so often?

Why are data center networks so fragile?

Data center networks are plagued by human error, poor visibility and complexity. Outages aren’t just frustrating; they’re symptoms of a deeper issue. The way we manage networks is fundamentally broken.

Human error is one of the biggest causes of network outages. According to IDC, human errors continue to create major problems, regardless of whether they stem from vendor product quality issues or the mistakes of network operators.  Misconfigurations, incorrect policy changes, “fat fingering” and lack of pre-production testing by network operators are significant causes of network outages.

Poor visibility into the state of the network is another problem. Without insight into traffic patterns, device performance and network state, IT teams are left operating in the dark, reacting to issues only after they have impacted customers. Troubleshooting becomes a slow, inefficient process because engineers are forced to manually correlate data across disconnected tools. This increases mean time to resolution (MTTR).

Tool sprawl is a problem because it overwhelms IT teams. When enterprises rely on a plethora of disjointed tools, it leads to blind spots, redundant data collection and alert fatigue. Engineers must manually correlate data, which increases MTTR and delays decisions. IDC survey research indicates that most organizations have ten or more tools that focus on observability alone.

Without unified observability, organizations struggle to detect issues early, optimize performance and ensure reliability. This leads to missed threats and costly downtime. Addressing these issues requires consolidation, standardization and AI-driven analytics to enhance automation and resilience in data center operations.

Network complexity in data centers is driven by multiple factors, including hybrid cloud/on-premises environments and legacy hardware integration. Maintaining consistent connectivity, enforcing security policies and ensuring seamless data flow across cloud providers and on-premises systems is challenging without automation and observability. Legacy hardware further complicates networks, as outdated protocols and proprietary configurations clash with modern API-driven and software-defined networking (SDN), creating operational inefficiencies and integration failures.

Why is product quality important?

Product quality has a big impact on network reliability. Whether the source is defective hardware or buggy software, poor quality in networking products causes unpredictable failures, disrupts operations and leaves organizations scrambling to fix problems they never saw coming.

Software quality issues are big pain points. Networking vendors frequently release new firmware, network operating systems and updates that promise to improve performance and security. Yet, all too often, hidden defects lurk within the code, waiting to surface at the worst possible time. One moment, everything is running smoothly. Then a seemingly routine network change triggers a bug that cripples an environment. Rigorous testing and robust quality assurance are essential for mitigating these risks.

Hardware quality is another major concern. Defective chips, faulty power supplies and unreliable memory modules can all contribute to unexpected downtime. To make matters worse, vendors may deny hardware defects until enough customers report them, leaving network operations teams to suffer through unexplained failures while waiting for a fix.

Addressing these challenges is no longer optional—it’s essential. Businesses that fail to modernize their network infrastructure, implement intelligent automation, and provide rich observability risk falling behind their competitors and suffering significant operational disruptions.

Operations teams suffer similar fates if they don’t modernize. Network engineers become trapped in an endless cycle of troubleshooting, reacting to problems rather than preventing them. They are so busy keeping the lights on and putting out fires that they don’t have time to work on more strategic initiatives that could benefit their careers and the business.

Why must data center networking evolve beyond outdated methods and unearned vendor trust? Organizations need robust observability, proactive automation, best-in-class product quality and a fail-safe pre- and post-change validation solution to mitigate risk.

IDC’s January 2025 report, Datacenter Operations for the Digital Era: Necessary Advances in Networking, highlights the evolving state of data center operations and the essential advances required to modernize networking infrastructure. IDC’s findings shed light on why emerging technologies—such as AI-driven automation, real-time observability and platform-based networking solutions—are pivotal for transforming today’s fragile networks into resilient, self-sustaining systems. By leveraging IDC’s research, IT leaders can better understand the strategic shifts they need to make to align with the future of networking and ensure that their data centers are ready to handle increasing digital demands.

The future of data center networking

IDC’s research makes one thing clear: data center networks must evolve. The focus should be on improving quality standards to enhance reliability. Here are three things the industry must do to make it happen:

1. Build self-healing networks

Traditional monitoring alerts teams after an issue occurs. But what if networks could detect problems and resolve them autonomously?

The Nokia Event-Driven Automation (EDA) solution does just that. By combining real-time observability, AI-driven insights and automated remediation, it enables networks to fix themselves before outages impact customers. Automation triggered by network conditions—not just static scripts—is the key to resilient networking. Nokia EDA automatically responds to failures and initiates corrective actions in real time.

2. Use platforms to make networking simpler

Among the enterprises surveyed by IDC, 60% prefer a platform approach to a collection of best-of-breed components. Why? Because complexity is the enemy of reliability.

Instead of juggling disjointed tools, enterprises need:

• Centralized management platforms that unify monitoring, security and automation

• AI-powered analytics to detect anomalies across hybrid environments

• Intent-based networking that aligns network behavior with business goals.

IDC’s research shows that companies investing in unified networking solutions see faster troubleshooting, fewer outages and improved efficiency across IT teams. The quality of a network management platform directly impacts reliability—better tools mean fewer errors and more uptime.

3. Embrace real automation

Many network teams fear automation because they don’t trust it. And rightly so: Most automation today is glorified scripting. Real automation is event-driven and adapts to changing conditions in real time. It can leverage state data to identify and autonomously fix problems before they become outages. The shift from reactive to proactive automation is happening, and enterprises that embrace it will see massive improvements in uptime and efficiency.

The road to a more reliable data center network

The rise of AI-powered workloads, hybrid cloud adoption and escalating security threats means that networks can no longer be managed the way they were a decade ago. IDC’s report identifies five key trends shaping the future:

1. Platforms that deliver simplicity and resiliency—at scale 
   Simplicity enhances networking efficiency by making integration, configuration and troubleshooting more seamless, reducing the risks and delays caused by complexity.

2. Observability: detailed intelligence, deep insights 
   Comprehensive network data and analytics are essential for ensuring visibility, control and service delivery in modern data centers.

3. Adaptive systems and services 
   Modern data center networks must rapidly adapt to evolving workloads and ensure seamless integration, efficient traffic management and reliable service delivery across private and public cloud platforms.

4. Automation: strictly governed and highly dynamic
   Network automation’s success hinges on strong governance that will ensure that automation moves beyond simple tasks to event-driven actions that enhance reliability, resource efficiency and staff productivity.

5. AI-powered engineering and operations 
   The IDC survey results show that AI is increasingly being used in data center network operations, as organizations prioritize AI-driven automation to enhance productivity, agility and uptime.

Is your network ready for reliability?

Data center networking must evolve to meet the demands of the digital age. Change freezes, reactive troubleshooting and excessive complexity are no longer viable.

The future is about:

• Self-healing networks that fix issues before outages occur

• Event-driven automation that eliminates human error

• Unrivaled quality in hardware and software.

Find out more

Read the full IDC report here to get more insights about how you can evolve your data center networks to keep pace with the demands of digital technologies, AI workloads and more.