What is NaaS? Providers, delivery models, and benefits explained

• Subscription hardware: Instead of making an outright purchase (Capex), a business pays a monthly subscription (OpEx) for the hardware but still handles the installation and operation of the equipment.
• Managed service: Subscription-based hardware plus a managed service to operate it.
• Pure NaaS: The provider owns, installs, and operates all equipment, and the business simply pays a monthly fee for the turnkey service.

Who sells NaaS?

The vendor landscape for NaaS can be broken down into multiple categories:

• Networking equipment vendors such as HPE-Aruba, Juniper Networks, Cisco and Dell
• Telecommunication and cloud service providers such as Google, Microsoft, Lumen Technologies and Verizon
• WAN transport and multi-cloud networking vendors such as Alkira, Aviatrix, Graphiant, Megaport, and Perimeter 81
• Startups with campus-focused NaaS such as Nile, Meter, Join Digital, and Ramen Networks

NaaS benefits

Among the benefits of NaaS are:

• IT flexibility: With the ability to scale up or down to meet fluctuating demands on the network, businesses can tailor performance optimization to specific workloads.
• Cost structure: Companies can treat infrastructure as an operational expense on the balance sheet rather than buying, maintaining, and upgrading physical equipment.
• Faster deployments: Organizations can take advantage of the expertise of NaaS partners and vendor specialists to expedite the planning process and smooth refresh cycles.
• Access to new technologies: The NaaS model can give customers a pathway to more frequent equipment refresh and upcycle opportunities, including access to infrastructure like Wi-Fi 6 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet.

The initial selling point for NaaS was that it enabled organizations to shift from a CapEx model to the more cloud-like OpEx, pay-as-you-go, subscription model. Today, network execs today have a fuller understanding of the potential benefits of NaaS, beyond simply a different payment model, said Shamus McGillicuddy, vice president of research at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA).

NaaS can deliver access to new technologies faster and keep enterprises up to date as technologies evolve over time, he said. In addition, NaaS can help mitigate skills gaps for organizations facing a shortage of networking talent. For example, in a retail scenario, an organization can offload deployment and management of its Wi-Fi networks at all of its stores to a NaaS vendor, freeing up IT staffers for higher-level activities, McGillicuddy said.

NaaS challenges

Security remains a challenge in any NaaS implementation because organizations may be reluctant to hand over security controls to a NaaS provider. “How will the customer still be able to do traffic inspection, or be able to feed security analytics tools with NetFlow, etc.? And who is liable for a breach, and how will it be remediated?” Anderson said.

In terms of deployment, migrating to NaaS can be difficult and time consuming for medium-to-large organizations with significant investments in existing remote, branch, campus, and data-center networking and security infrastructure. Multi-vendor environments will further complicate the matter.