As networks scale faster and AI-driven demands intensify, legacy on-premises management infrastructure is becoming a hidden constraint. Ciena’s Derek Edmiston explores how a hosted network control model can remove that burden and help teams focus on operating the network—not the IT infrastructure.

Keeping your network management and control infrastructure ready for rapidly evolving demands has never been more challenging. Expanding fiber footprints, highly dynamic service environments, and the expectation of always-on performance all raise the operational bar. At the same time, AI and automation are driving more intensive workloads that require sustained growth in available bandwidth and service agility.

Why legacy on-premises network management environments are becoming a constraint

Many organizations still rely on the same on-premises network management infrastructure they deployed years ago. As the network grows, these environments increasingly become an operational bottleneck and introduce business risk.

There are warning signs that your environment is approaching end of life: teams fall behind on software updates, security patches are delayed, and unsupported releases remain in production longer than planned. Capacity ceilings can also become real operational limits which restrict growth, reduce performance, and force manual onboarding of new devices with less visibility. Add competing CAPEX/OPEX priorities, and it becomes difficult to justify continued investment in servers, storage, power, and data center resources.

This is not simply an IT inconvenience. On-premises servers are static, while networks grow dynamically across devices, bandwidth, and service layers. Over time, IT and operations teams spend more effort maintaining the management infrastructure itself, including working around capacity limits, resolving compatibility issues with newer software and security releases, and compensating for limited scalability. The opportunity cost shows up as slower onboarding, delayed automation initiatives, and higher change risk at a time when networks are under the most pressure to deliver faster and more reliably.

Modernization options and what they demand from your team

For most network operators, the modernization decision centers around how much of the underlying IT and cloud infrastructure you want to own and operate, in addition to running network management software.

Moving network management to a public or private cloud addresses many lifecycle and capacity constraints. But a self-managed cloud move is not “lift and shift.” Your organization must choose a cloud platform, design the architecture and security model, and then take responsibility for configuring, securing, monitoring, and maintaining that environment. In practice, that means your teams end up operating cloud infrastructure in addition to operating the network management system.

For some network operators, building that capability is strategic. For many, it becomes an unnecessary distraction. Network organizations may gain elasticity, but they also take on new tools, new processes, and new skill requirements that compete with the outcomes executives measure: service performance, faster turn-up, fewer incidents, and predictable growth.

Ciena’s hosted Navigator Network Control Suite (Navigator NCS)

Ciena’s hosted Navigator NCS is a cloud network management operating model that eliminates the burden of architecting, deploying, and operating the hosting environment yourself. And gives you access to Navigator NCS powerful multi-layer network controller and analytics for comprehensive lifecycle operations. Ciena provides a fully hosted and monitored Navigator NCS environment, tailored to your network based on element counts, element types, and service mix.

The practical impact of moving to the cloud is that teams can shift their attention from “keeping the platform running” to “using the platform to run the network.” 

Ciena Services simplifies the migration from your on-premises Navigator NCS to a hosted deployment. A certified project manager leads the transition end to end, so you maintain full visibility and control of your network throughout the process. During migration, your network elements are dual-enrolled in both the on-premises and hosted Navigator NCS environments, ensuring continuity and minimizing risk. When you’re satisfied with the hosted configuration, you seamlessly retire the on-premises instance. With Ciena Services, you accelerate time to value and fully realize the operational and business benefits of your hosted Navigator solution.

Furthermore, the hosted offer provides subscription-based deployment, management, and maintenance of your Navigator NCS cloud instance on a right-sized, scalable architecture designed to forecast and accommodate future growth. Also, software remains current with access to the latest Navigator NCS features and security updates. Additionally, the platform supports a high-availability multi-server architecture with optional geographic redundancy for added resilience, and secure, encrypted connectivity that extends your network into the cloud. The offer also includes an expert-led migration taking you from your current deployment to the cloud, ensuring you avoid service disruption and reduce implementation risk.

Operational and financial outcomes

The practical impact of moving to the cloud is that teams can shift their attention from “keeping the platform running” to “using the platform to run the network.” With a hosted model, operations and IT teams move away from maintaining infrastructure and focus instead on using the platform to operate the network more effectively. The benefits of this approach include the following:

  • Dependency on aging on-premises servers and unsupported software is removed, hardware lifecycle management is eliminated, and time spent on patching, upgrades, and capacity planning is significantly reduced.
  • Security posture also improves as the environment stays aligned with current security standards and patch levels.
  • Faster onboarding, improved visibility, and broader automation across optical, packet, and IP layers make it easier to scale services and standardize operations.
  • Innovation accelerates as well. Consistent operations across domains support more advanced assurance, faster service delivery, and a clearer path toward higher levels of automation.

The economics are often decisive. Moving from an on-premises model to a hosted cloud deployment helps avoid additional capital costs and reduces reliance on scarce IT resources to deploy servers and commission software and network elements. The analysis for hosted Navigator NCS also cites potential average total cost-of-ownership savings of up to 19% over three years, depending on the starting environment and growth assumptions. And the TCO savings are even higher when you include the cost of servers required in a premises-based model.

Ciena Services can help you

With network growth accelerating and AI-driven services pushing operational limits, legacy on-premises network management infrastructure becomes increasingly difficult to sustain. Ciena’s hosted Navigator NCS provides a faster, safer, and more cost-effective path to modernization without the burden of managing cloud infrastructure yourself. The result is full access to the industry’s leading domain controller and applications on a hosted platform designed to scale with your network.

If you are evaluating next steps, reach out to your Ciena account representative to help you size the hosted environment for your current network, forecast expected growth of your network, and define a migration plan aligned to your operational requirements. Read our infobrief to learn more.