Organizations are racing to scale AI, support distributed operations, and move data across clouds, edge environments and data centers—but their networks often aren’t keeping up.

AI-driven workloads are creating exponential traffic growth, new traffic patterns and stricter performance expectations. Many legacy network designs simply weren’t built for this level of scale or complexity. The result: Networks are becoming a bottleneck—impacting performance, resilience and the ability to operationalize AI.

According to IDC, the top enterprise networking challenges today center on security, reliability and the alignment of network infrastructure to optimize AI application performance. The IDC white paper, The future of enterprise networking: agile connectivity for the multicloud and AI era, goes beyond trends. It helps organizations understand what capabilities matter most and whether their networks are ready for what’s next.

At a high level, the research points to three fundamental shifts:

• Connectivity is now a strategic priority.
• AI workloads are raising the bar for performance.
• Networks must become more dynamic, resilient and intelligent.

Connectivity has become a strategic priority

Organizations aren’t just modernizing networks. They’re rethinking connectivity as a strategic capability. IDC found that 70% of North American businesses now view connectivity as a top priority.

What causes the shift? Enterprises now operate across hybrid and multicloud environments, connecting users, applications and data across dispersed locations. Supporting these environments requires connectivity that can scale, adapt and align to application needs—not static, one-size-fits-all architectures.

To keep pace, organizations need to rethink connectivity as a strategic platform that aligns network performance to app requirements, supports hybrid and multicloud architectures, and adapts in near real-time to changing demand.

AI, edge and multicloud are changing the rules

According to IDC, AI is introducing entirely new network demands across three fronts:

1. Massive data movement: Training models require moving petabyte-scale datasets across distributed environments.

2. Continuous, low-latency traffic: Inference isn’t bursty. It’s constant, requiring predictable, high-performance connectivity.

3. Edge-to-cloud data explosion: AI-powered apps ingest and generate massive data streams—from video to real-time analytics—driving unprecedented bandwidth demand.

Networks must evolve from static pipes to intelligent, high-performance fabrics that can handle dynamic, data-intensive workloads.

The shift to on-demand, cloud-like networking

To keep up, enterprises are moving away from rigid, hardware-heavy models. The IDC research highlights a shift toward consumption-based connectivity models, including Network-as-a-Service (NaaS), where organizations can access bandwidth, security and routing dynamically instead of provisioning fixed capacity.

This shift enables organizations to:

• Scale bandwidth based on real-time demand.
• Provision services rapidly.
• Align network resources to real-time needs.

This result, according to the IDC study, is a more “cloud-like experience, aligning with modern digital business requirements.”

Security, resiliency and visibility are now foundational

As networks become more distributed, complexity—and risk—grow.

The IDC study emphasizes that modern connectivity strategies must prioritize security embedded into the network fabric, resilience through redundancy and diverse architectures, and deep visibility across increasingly complex environments.

This is driven by the expansion of attack surfaces, the need for always-on access and the growing importance of real-time performance insights in distributed environments.

The future is intelligent, autonomous connectivity

The next generation of networking isn’t just faster—it’s also smarter. The IDC study points to a future where connectivity becomes:

• Predictive and self-optimizing.
• Application-aware and autonomous.
• Deeply integrated with AI and cloud ecosystems.

In this model, networks don’t just transport data. Instead, they actively adapt to performance needs, traffic patterns and security threats.

Get the full picture

The shift in enterprise networking is already underway, and the risks of relying on legacy network models are only increasing, while organizations that modernize connectivity will be better positioned to innovate.

Download the full IDC white paper, The future of enterprise networking: agile connectivity for the multicloud and AI era, to better understand the market changes happening now, the capabilities required to support AI and multicloud environments, and how to evaluate whether your network is ready for what’s next.

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