New research commissioned by GTT Communications, Inc. and conducted by Hanover Research examines enterprise adoption of Network as a Service (NaaS) and managed network services (MNS), as organizations navigate increasingly complex multi-cloud environments and distributed IT infrastructures.

The white paper, How Enterprises Approach NaaS and MNS to Build Resilient, Future-Ready Networks, explores how enterprises are combining the two service models and identifies challenges related to network visibility, compliance, cost management, and workforce skills.

According to the survey, 78% of participating enterprises already use a combination of NaaS and MNS. The two models serve different operational needs. NaaS, defined in the study as an on-demand, cloud-native network fabric that supports the provisioning and decommissioning of services such as SD-WAN and SASE, provides flexibility and scalability. MNS typically involves a service provider managing network design, deployment, and ongoing operations.

The findings suggest that enterprises are using both approaches to balance flexibility with operational oversight and service reliability.

Long-term cost considerations also factor into adoption decisions. Sixty-one percent of respondents identified five-year total cost of ownership (TCO) as their primary metric for justifying NaaS adoption to their boards. By comparison, 19% cited three-year return on investment (ROI), 11% pointed to the earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) impact of shifting from capital expenditures (CapEx) to operating expenditures (OpEx), and 8% identified payback period.

"For most enterprises, the question is no longer whether to combine NaaS and MNS, but how to optimize the combination," said Claudio Scola, VP, Product Management, Connectivity and Voice Services, GTT.

Scola continues, "These aren't decisions companies can easily reverse, and the architecture an enterprise puts in place now will shape how its network performs for years to come. That's what makes the friction points our research uncovered, including observability, compliance, cost and talent, so consequential. You must be able to see, secure and control both environments and operate them as one.”

The research identified four areas that present challenges for enterprises adopting or operating NaaS and MNS.

Network Visibility and Observability

Lack of observability was identified as a barrier to NaaS adoption by 75% of enterprises surveyed. Among those respondents, 18% said the issue had stopped adoption more than once.

As enterprises operate networks spanning multiple service models, providers, and management platforms, identifying the source of an outage can become more difficult. Issues may originate within the NaaS environment, the MNS layer, or the connection between the two. Limited visibility across these environments can also complicate troubleshooting and the collection of information needed for audits.

Compliance, Audit Requirements, and Encryption Key Ownership

The survey found that 90% of respondents require high or very high standards of audit evidence from their network providers. In addition, 94% consider provider-maintained immutable logs valuable or extremely valuable.

Control over encryption keys is another consideration. According to the research, 91% of respondents want some level of ownership over their encryption keys. This includes 45% who favor full ownership and 46% who prefer a shared arrangement in which they own the keys while the provider manages them.

Compliance requirements also affect NaaS adoption, with 32% of enterprises identifying the inability to meet compliance requirements as a key concern related to network observability.

Cost Variability and Long-Term Economics

Consumption-based pricing models can introduce greater variability into network budgets. The survey examined how much fluctuation enterprises are willing to accept before involving financial operations (FinOps) teams.

Approximately half of respondents indicated they would tolerate budget variances of 6% to 10%, while another 39% would accept fluctuations of 11% to 15% before FinOps involvement.

The study also explored whether potential long-term savings would influence those thresholds. When presented with a NaaS solution offering approximately 30% lower five-year TCO, 92% of respondents said they would accept quarterly billing fluctuations of up to 15% in exchange for the projected long-term savings.

Workforce Skills and Network Automation

Talent shortages were identified by 37% of respondents as the single biggest external trend influencing their next network update cycle.

The research also examined how enterprises are addressing workforce constraints through automation and service-provider support. Among the approaches identified, 37% of respondents said they prefer AI-driven automated remediation when network performance issues occur. This approach can reduce the need for manual intervention in routine network operations.

The findings indicate that enterprises are evaluating NaaS and MNS not only in terms of network performance and flexibility, but also in relation to operational visibility, compliance requirements, cost predictability, and available technical expertise.

As organizations continue to combine cloud-based networking and managed services, addressing these considerations will be important to managing increasingly distributed network environments.

Source: GTT Communications, Inc.

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