New research conducted by TechTarget and sponsored by Level 3 Communications, Inc.  indicates enterprises will make major improvements to their network connectivity in 2017 to support hybrid IT, the flexible use of private and cloud-based IT resources to improve operational performance.

The study was based on responses from 150 technology professionals regarding how decision-makers are using and planning to use their networks more strategically and effectively under a hybrid IT framework.

Key Insights:

·   Hybrid IT is either very or somewhat familiar to the vast majority of IT and networking audiences, with its primary benefits being agility (59 percent), alignment between IT and business goals (53 percent), application availability/performance (42 percent) and security (37 percent).

·  Nearly half of survey respondents are using cloud services for tier one workloads, a strong indication that cloud computing is at the heart of many organizations' digital transformation efforts.

·  Security, reliable uptime, bandwidth capabilities and low latency are the top features respondents look for in their enterprise networks when accessing cloud services.

·  For the most part, enterprises are reasonably satisfied with how their networks deliver on their most-cited network requirements, although relatively few of them admit to being highly satisfied. Level 3 asked respondents to rate the importance of a variety of features as well as their satisfaction with service provider performance of those features, and found on average an 11 percent lower satisfaction rating than importance rating.

·   Enterprises have not yet dramatically transformed their network connectivity for cloud and hybrid IT, but they do expect to make major improvements to their network connectivity over the coming 12 months.