The company said that 80% of the 1,338 users it talked to expected substantial numbers to remain remote at the end of the end, as the pandemic continues.
As a result, most enterprises said the ability to move resources quickly between on-premise and remote to be very important.
The detailed results show that 21% of organisations surveyed said that the Covid-19 pandemic means more than half of staff will remain remote at the end of 2021; another 59% thought the fraction that will be remote as we enter 2022 will be between 25% and 50% of their workforce.
A further result is that 57% of businesses planning to end or reduce their use of MPLS network technology, said the Aryaka survey.
Aryaka said that 30% of enterprises would terminate some of their MPLS contracts in favour of broadband internet or other technologies. And 23% would terminate all of their MPLS contracts.
“Traditional technologies are no longer cutting it,” an Aryaka representative told Capacity. “Connectivity is at the heart of each business and with organisations relying more and more on remote working, MPLS has not stepped up to the task.”
The survey shows that the pandemic has resulted in changing priorities that also influenced overall purchasing plans, with 44% supporting a hybrid workplace and 53% focusing on digital transformation.
Remote worker enablement and remote worker security have taken more importance.
About one in six enterprises are looking to invest in SD-WAN, said the company, and 29% in the cloud.
Aryaka reported a slight slowdown in investment, with 21% planning a WAN refresh, compared with 26% in 2020. The same trend applies to the cloud, at 34% compared with 42% last year.
The figure for SD-WAN is 18% for this year compared with 25% in 2020. Aryaka added secure access service edge (SASE) to the mix, to simplify wide-area networking and security by delivering both as a cloud service. If adding SASE, a new entrant at 16%, the SD-WAN/SASE total is 34%, said Aryaka.
