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The Network You Don’t Buy Anymore - Why Enterprise Connectivity Is Becoming a Subscription—and What That Means for IT · Connectivity Without Chaos - The Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Hidden IT Tax Podcast from Provision Networks,
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: where we uncover the costs,
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: risks, and inefficiencies quietly draining your IT budget.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: In each episode,
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: we break down how to replace reactive decisions with engineered,
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: accountable systems.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Today,
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  SPEAKER_00: we're diving into why users are about to stop buying networks and start subscribing
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: to them.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so think about the single most expensive physical asset sitting
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: in your IT budget right now.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Probably the network hardware.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: And chances are, in just a few years, you won't even own it.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Which sounds crazy, right?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: But the mission for this deep dive is to look at why
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: that old model buying hardware every five years, why it's basically fading out.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and how switching to a network as a service or,
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: a NAS subscription actually eliminates those hidden operational costs
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  SPEAKER_01: that are bleeding your department dry.
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  SPEAKER_00: So when people hear NAS, they immediately think traditional managed services, right?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Just with better marketing.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
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  SPEAKER_01: They think you buy the routers and just pay an external company to manage them.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: But the sources we're looking at show this is a fundamentally different animal.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, totally.
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  SPEAKER_01: Because traditional managed services, they still anchor you to physical ownership.
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  SPEAKER_01: You still bought the box.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: But NAS is cloud native infrastructure,
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  SPEAKER_01: security, all the lifecycle ops delivered purely as a flexible subscription.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like you aren't buying the hardware at all.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like, well,
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  SPEAKER_00: think of it like buying a massive industrial power generator
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  SPEAKER_00: for your office versus just, you know, paying the utility bill.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's a really great way to put it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right.
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  SPEAKER_00: With a generator, you're paying this huge upfront CapEx.
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  SPEAKER_00: You have to maintain it, fix it, and eventually replace it.
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  SPEAKER_01: And with NAS, you're shifting to OpEx.
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  SPEAKER_01: You just pay the monthly bill and the power is just, it's there.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Why own a depreciating asset when you just need the lights on?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: And this shift is accelerating everywhere now because legacy hardware...
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it just can't keep up with modern data demands.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because of AI and things like that.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, AI-driven traffic, massive cloud sprawl, IoT expansion.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: All of that is just completely breaking the old five to seven year refresh cycle.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: It really is.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, an April 2026 survey found 60% of large enterprises have already adopted NAS.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, 60.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 60%.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: With another 31% currently evaluating it.
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  SPEAKER_01: Which makes total sense because data growth just isn't linear anymore.
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  SPEAKER_01: If you bought hardware based on a five-year baseline and suddenly you roll out
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  SPEAKER_01: an internal AI tool.
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  SPEAKER_00: You just physically can't process that spike.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
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  SPEAKER_01: And ordering, shipping, racking new boxes takes months.
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  SPEAKER_01: NAS lets you scale that capacity dynamically.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: But wait, let me push back a little here.
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  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
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  SPEAKER_00: If an organization is totally comfortable with their legacy CapEx budget,
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  SPEAKER_00: like they know exactly what they're spending,
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: isn't it just cheaper on paper to squeeze another year out of the existing hardware?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, maybe on a pure hardware spreadsheet.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: But you're missing the real hidden tax, which is operational rigidity.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: How so?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
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  SPEAKER_01: say it takes your team six weeks to provision a new site because you're waiting
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: on physical hardware to ship.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Ugh, yeah, supply chain nightmares.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right, or you just literally cannot hire enough network engineers to configure all those boxes.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: That inflexibility costs the business way more than the physical routers themselves.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but what if you do have the talent?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say I have a mature, highly credentialed, internal network engineering team.
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  SPEAKER_00: Do I just ignore NAS because I have it all in-house?
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  SPEAKER_01: Actually, no.
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  SPEAKER_01: Those mature teams are usually the ones begging for this shift.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, really?
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  SPEAKER_00: Why?
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  SPEAKER_01: Because they're suffering from severe life cycle fatigue.
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  SPEAKER_01: They want to offload all the low hanging fruit.
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  SPEAKER_00: Like manual patching and hunting down dropped connections.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
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  SPEAKER_01: The repetitive manual stuff.
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  SPEAKER_01: NAS providers bake in things like AI ops,
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  SPEAKER_01: so artificial intelligence that proactively monitors the network.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it basically self-heals the minor issues.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, before a human even notices a blip.
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  SPEAKER_01: So by subscribing,
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  SPEAKER_01: you free up your highly paid engineers to focus on,
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: you know, actual business strategy.
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  SPEAKER_00: That makes a lot of sense.
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  SPEAKER_00: We should clarify, though, it's not a blanket solution for literally everyone, right?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: No, of course not.
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  SPEAKER_01: If you're a cash rich organization with a super static environment, like nothing ever changes.
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  SPEAKER_00: Or like a heavily regulated government entity.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Right, where you have rigid clearance requirements.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: Then yeah, traditional ownership might still be necessary.
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  SPEAKER_00: But for most growing enterprises, agility is basically the new currency.
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  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
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  SPEAKER_00: So the next time an IT hardware refresh proposal lands on your desk,
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  SPEAKER_00: Look really closely at it.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: Ask yourself,
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  SPEAKER_01: are you buying necessary infrastructure
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  SPEAKER_01: or are you accidentally purchasing five years of operational and flexibility?
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  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
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  SPEAKER_00: And honestly,
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  SPEAKER_00: it makes you wonder what other physical assets
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  SPEAKER_00: in your IT stack are just hidden anchors,
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  SPEAKER_00: quietly dragging down your team's potential.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's a really good point for people to mull over.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you found this useful, you can find more at Connectivity Without Chaos on Substack.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: We publish weekly insights on eliminating the hidden IT tax
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  SPEAKER_00: and building more predictable, high-performing infrastructure.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And if there's a challenge you're dealing with right now, feel free to reach out.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Those often become future episodes.