Keeping your network running isn’t enough anymore

Most managed network services are designed to support business operations by keeping your infrastructure steady — always available and compliant with SLAs.

But do they also enable business performance?

NTT DATA has been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Managed Network Services, for the third time, in recognition of our Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute.*

To us, this recognition reflects more than market leadership. It also validates our continued investment in AI-driven operations, automation, integrated security and cloud-native service delivery. More importantly, it signals a fundamental shift in how organizations should think about their networks.

Networks no longer simply connect users, devices and applications. They’re becoming the foundation that enables growth, innovation, resilience and competitive advantage. Yet many organizations are still managing their networks as infrastructure assets rather than business performance engines.

In this blog, we take a closer look at why that disconnect exists and where you should be heading.

• ALSO READ → Your network is now at the center of the AI conversation

Big business decisions rely on a strong network

For years, managed network services have simply been judged on operational metrics such as uptime, incident response times and ticket closure rates. Those metrics remain important, but they no longer provide a complete picture of network value.

As a business leader, you should be asking far more strategic questions:

• How quickly can we launch new digital products and services?
• Can we deliver a consistent customer experience in every market and region?
• How effectively can we manage cyber risk throughout our network estate?
• Is our infrastructure ready to support AI at scale?
• Can we scale innovation without increasing operational complexity?

Increasingly, the answers to these questions depend on your network.

The challenge is that organizations are making critical decisions regarding growth, customer experience, risk management and AI adoption without making sure their networks can support those ambitions.

On the surface, your network appears to be working normally. Behind the scenes, it remains constrained by fragmented architectures, siloed operations, limited visibility and a reactive support model.  As complexity increases, decision-making slows, transformation initiatives stall and operational risks multiply.

The result is a widening gap between your business expectations and the capabilities of your network.

Moving beyond uptime: Managing for business performance

The solution lies in changing how you measure and manage your network. Rather than focusing solely on infrastructure availability, you need to align your network operations directly with your desired business outcomes. This requires a different operating model:

• A platform-led approach reduces complexity, improves consistency and creates predictable operating costs across global environments.
• AI-driven operations speed up decision-making, automate routine activities and proactively prevent disruptions before they affect the business.
• Unified observability and telemetry provide real-time visibility of business-critical operations, enabling faster responses and informed decisions.
• Integrated security architectures limit enterprise risk by embedding protection into the network rather than treating security as a separate function.

Individually, these capabilities deliver value. Combined, they create a fundamentally different approach — one where the network actively enables business performance rather than simply supporting it.

Innovation must deliver results at scale

The managed services market is filled with promises of automation, AI and next-generation architectures.

In reality, many organizations struggle to translate those promises into measurable outcomes. Solutions that look compelling in a presentation prove difficult to operationalize when you add global environments, multiple vendors, legacy infrastructure and evolving security requirements into the mix. Success depends not only on innovation but also on the ability to deploy and operationalize innovation consistently at enterprise scale.

At NTT DATA, we’re embedding innovation directly into service delivery through a cloud-native operating platform that unifies network, cloud and security management. Combined with AI-powered automation and advanced AIOps capabilities, this approach helps you simplify complexity, speed up transformation and improve business performance.

The metrics that matter are business metrics

Organizations are increasingly evaluating managed network services based on outcomes rather than outputs. They want:

• Lower operating costs and less complexity
• Greater resilience and service availability
• Faster delivery of digital initiatives
• Reduced security and compliance risk
• Improved customer and employee experiences
• Infrastructure that can support enterprise AI adoption

These are business metrics, not network metrics. They influence revenue growth, customer retention, operational efficiency, risk exposure and shareholder value. 

Ultimately, the true measure of your network strategy is not how efficiently it manages infrastructure but how effectively it helps your business succeed.

The next evolution: Autonomous network operations

The future of managed network services is increasingly autonomous. Networks are becoming more intelligent, more adaptive and more capable of running themselves, even as people remain firmly in control.

With advances in AI, machine learning and emerging agentic capabilities, networks are becoming self-monitoring, self-optimizing and increasingly self-healing. Human oversight remains essential, but routine operational decisions and corrective actions can increasingly be handled automatically.

This creates a significant opportunity, as autonomous network operations can:

• Resolve issues before they affect users
• Reduce operational costs through automation
• Accelerate decision-making with real-time intelligence
• Improve resilience and service reliability
• Free IT teams to focus on innovation rather than maintenance
• Enable faster adoption of AI-powered business models

When you embrace this evolution, you’ll gain a significant advantage in speed, agility and operational efficiency.

The bottom line

You already know how well your network performs technically. But how much business value does it create?

As networks become the foundation to accelerate AI adoption, managing for uptime alone is no longer enough. The next generation of network services will be judged by how they reduce complexity, support business priorities and help create meaningful competitive advantage.

Realizing that value requires more than a strong network strategy. It depends on ensuring your network strategy is closely aligned with your business goals, giving you the foundation to adapt and thrive as expectations continue to evolve.

• ALSO READ → Decoded: The 5 priorities on every network manager’s wish list

* Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Managed Network Services, Karen Brown, Jon Dressel, 13 April 2026

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