Networking Technology Cost Optimization

Evidence and data. Portnox Cloud enabled interviewees’ organizations to reduce infrastructure and operational costs significantly by eliminating the need for on-premises appliances, complex licensing models, and high-maintenance legacy systems. The shift to a cloud-native architecture removed expenses related to server hardware, lifecycle management, and specialized support. In some cases, organizations reported savings and other optimizations from:

• Reducing capital expenditures for hardware. Portnox significantly reduced capital outlays by eliminating the need for on-premises network hardware, including servers, routers, switches, and associated storage and energy costs.

  • The network engineering manager at the technology company explained that their organization experienced a 40% decrease in network hardware costs for servers, switches, etc. They also indicated that their organization could avoid costs to ship, store, and recycle hardware for additional savings across the product lifecycle and said, “Our costs with Portnox are about 40% lower than they would be with all other competitors, [and] I don’t have to buy servers.”

• Lowering software and SaaS costs with fewer requirements. By consolidating multiple tools into a single cloud-native solution, interviewees’ organizations avoided complex infrastructure investments, reduced the need for virtual infrastructure to manage their modernized networks, and cut software licensing and SaaS expenses. Interviewees credited those savings with needing fewer tools for the same functionalities at a lower, more flexible cost basis than the prior environment.

  • The information security manager at the entertainment company indicated that their organization avoided significant costs by investing in Portnox rather than several other tools with similar functionality (e.g., a legacy NAC solution, malware protection, and internet and web app security): “Our on-prem for Portnox was just in docker containers, that’s it. Before, with our legacy solution, we had three to four VMs, each one with 64 gigs of RAM running 20-something virtual CPUs with two terabytes of storage each, and of course, every one of those nodes had to be licensed and it was not fun.”

• Dramatically reducing labor hours required for system management. Portnox reduced the time and effort required for network and server maintenance, allowing teams to free up valuable engineering resources and focus on higher-priority initiatives instead of routine system upkeep. Organizations reported a dramatic drop in maintenance time, as the platform’s “set it and forget it” nature allowed administrators to focus on higher-value activities such as security enforcement, network optimization, and user support. Features for MAC address and API integrations with identity providers and ticketing systems and real-time monitoring further minimized manual intervention. In some cases, automation and centralized visibility eliminated the need for one to two FTEs who would have managed access control at scale. These efficiencies translated to substantial cost savings and improved operational agility.

  • The network engineering manager at the technology company shared how Portnox Cloud helped reduce maintenance time and effort tending to servers that were burning out and reaching end of life. They shared that their network team went from dedicating more than 60 hours per week across three networking FTEs down to around 1 hour of management per week: “[With Portnox Cloud], I don’t need to be in the server maintenance business. … Maintenance [by our] engineering resources literally went down to about 1 hour a week; that’s [a] big [difference].”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• In the prior environment, the composite organization spent $2.6 million on networking hardware, software, and SaaS costs.

• With Portnox Cloud, the composite organization reduces capital outlays for on-premises network hardware and associated licensing, storage, and energy costs. It consolidates multiple tools into its single Portnox Cloud environment and reduces the need for virtual infrastructure. This decreases networking hardware, software, and SaaS costs by 40%.

• In the prior environment, the composite organization dedicated three resources to maintaining the legacy network security stack.

• With Portnox Cloud, the composite organization reduces the number of tools in its stack and switches to vendor-managed updates. This allows the composite organization to reallocate 90% NAC management labor to higher-value activities.             

• The fully burdened annual salary for a technical resource is $143,520.

Risks. The following risks may impact this benefit:

• An organization’s size, networking and security maturity, number of legacy tools, and internal labor effort to manage them can all influence IT spend.

• An organization’s use of Portnox Cloud services and actual costs for required capabilities and existing contractual terms, including support and/or warranty costs.

• Prevailing labor rates and the skill sets available.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $2.8 million.

Improved Business Agility

Evidence and data. Portnox’s cloud-native foundation allowed interviewees’ organizations to scale rapidly across geographies and business units without requiring additional infrastructure. Organizations opened and onboarded new sites without needing physical infrastructure or complex logistics, meaning they had minimal technical overhead for new sites, offices, and acquisitions. This reduction in effort and complexity allowed teams to expand or contract operations effortlessly, reducing waste and accelerating time to market.

• The network manager at the utility company indicated that their organization was acquisitive, merging up to 20 acquired companies annually. They shared how Portnox Cloud helped their organization reduce onboarding time from days to hours: “We have an acquisition team that [used to] spend two business days getting the site converted for the average-sized site. But for Portnox, … the total time [is] about 5 hours.”

• The network engineering manager at the technology company shared that their company was opening one or two offices a year and that Portnox accelerated business agility by enabling faster, more streamlined deployments across newly acquired sites and global offices. It rapidly reduced onboarding time, allowing teams to integrate new environments with minimal disruption and labor. They told Forrester: “I can add another 2,000 employees without asking for another new IT hire because I’m using Portnox right now, so I can scale really fast. Plus, I can use our engineering time to do what really matters, which is optimizing the end-office experience; improving productivity for the software engineering, QA, and testing teams; and having more time to spend one-on-one with people with issues than basically just telling them to open a ticket.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization opens or acquires two new sites annually.

• In the prior environment, the composite organization generated 1% of its revenue, or $160,256 per week, from growth activities (e.g., expanding and opening new sites, M&A).

• In the prior environment, the composite organization took 24 weeks to deploy or integrate new sites due to site and capacity planning, hardware appliance purchasing and procurement cycles, third-party expertise, and internal labor hours dedicated to training on and deploying systems.

• With Portnox Cloud, the composite streamlines processes for opening and onboarding news sites, reducing hardware and deployment time from two full weeks to just 5 hours per location, enabling faster and more efficient integration with minimal labor. Portnox improves business agility by enabling rapid deployments and seamless scalability across globally distributed locations, decreasing the time it takes the composite to open new sites by 90%.

• The composite organization’s operating margin is 11%.

Risks. The following risks may impact this benefit:

• An organization’s revenue, operating margin, and portion of revenue earned from companies acquired and/or new sites.

• The number of companies acquired and/or new sites opened throughout the investment period and the legacy processes required to absorb a new company and/or open a new site in the prior environment.

• Prevailing labor rates and the skill sets available.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $1.5 million.

Reduced Costs Of A Material Data Breach

Evidence and data. Portnox Cloud strengthened interviewees’ network security by enforcing network-level access controls and device authentication, significantly reducing the risk of unauthorized access and lateral movement. Their organizations gained visibility into connected devices and proactively blocked rogue or unmanaged endpoints, which enhanced their security posture and contributed to measurable risk reductions.

• The IT director at the healthcare organization said: “[In the prior environment], we found out people were bringing in personal laptops, [which was] a massive issue because they could access anything from our [medical records] database. That would be great for [allowing lateral movement if their device was already compromised. Things like that could potentially be catastrophic. … Portnox has helped patch one of our biggest holes in our security infrastructure. We know what’s plugged in now [that] Portnox Cloud is stopping that kind of stuff.”

• The network manager at the utility company indicated that Portnox improved protection against rogue devices across their organization’s 760 remote-managed sites: “Portnox definitely improved [our] risk posture. We don’t have that exposure to someone just bringing a rogue device onto our primary network. [With Portnox, we can] rest a little easier knowing that we have that in place at [our] sites. It gives me more insight into my environment. We know the types of devices that are out there now, as compared to before when we didn’t.”

• The IT security administrator at the education organization noted: “[With Portnox Cloud], we are not getting a lot of those false negatives anymore. … I think it’s doing a much better job of making sure the [end-user device] antivirus is up to date than the previous system was. The previous system was only really checking for the presence of it, not necessarily the efficacy or the quality of [the antivirus. Sometimes it] would just outright fail and allow a computer through and we wouldn’t even know.”

• The director of infrastructure security at the hospitality company said that preventing unauthorized devices from accessing the network also significantly reduced the amount of troubleshooting their teams had to do: “People are much less likely to just plug in random devices because they know that they’re not going to work. … You can’t even connect a printer, so we don’t have to take that call. It adds consistency to the environment where there was inconsistency.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• According to Forrester research:

  • The cumulative cost of breaches for the composite total $3.9 million per year in the prior environment.³
  • The composite has a 67% likelihood of experiencing one or more breaches.⁴
  • Thirty-five percent of breaches targeting the composite organization originate from external attacks from a network-connected device.⁵

• With Portnox Cloud, the composite organization improves device visibility and data protection with automated policy enforcement, real-time endpoint risk posture assessment, and passwordless authentication via certificates. It centralizes access control to secure networks across endpoints, which, taken together, minimizes the composite’s exposure to breach costs from addressable attacks by 75%.

Risks. The following risks may impact this benefit:

• An organization’s size, industry, location, security maturity, legacy security capabilities, and level of Portnox Cloud coverage and adoption, which may influence security and risk metrics and breach impacts.

• The frequency of security incidents involving persistent threat actors and remediation efforts in the prior environment.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $1.3 million.

Improved Performance And Connectivity

Evidence and data. By replacing unstable legacy systems with Portnox Cloud, interviewees’ organizations experienced fewer outages and improved network reliability. It reduced connection times from up to 10 seconds to near instantaneous, and authentication failures dropped dramatically. Helpdesk tickets related to connectivity issues decreased from dozens per day to just a few per month. These improvements translated to better availability of critical services and reduced business disruption, particularly in environments with high user mobility or distributed operations.

• The network engineering manager at the technology company shared: “We used to have roughly a monthly outage due to [our legacy solution], and those outages varied from 15 devices not being able to connect to a thousand [employee and IoT] devices not being able to connect. … [Now we have] high availability … so it’s a really solid, fast deployment.”

• The information security manager at the entertainment company told Forrester how Portnox improved network performance and connectivity by eliminating the need for on-site appliances and manual capacity planning, resulting in fewer outages and more reliable access. Its cloud-native architecture enhanced availability and resilience, allowing operations to continue even during regional disruptions. They said: “We would have a few outages because of the requirement for [our legacy solution] to have on-prem resourcing. If that site went down, then the VPN was just not accessible. Even if we had a backup VPN collector, we couldn’t authenticate. … [Portnox Cloud] is life-changing because now I can actually go on vacation and not have to worry about getting an email about why the network is down and have to hop on a hotspot somewhere.”

• The information security manager at the entertainment company indicated that their organization’s prior environment often experienced widespread business disruption. With Portnox Cloud, however, they mitigated this disruption: “We wouldn’t be able to produce [items] that were producing future revenue. There was one instance that delayed us about a week. … [Even though Portnox is] a cloud solution, there’s also a significant ability to have on-prem as failover, so if you lose the cloud, you still are functioning. That’s another reason why it [provides] such good stability for the network and for people who need to be able to do what they need to do.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• In the prior environment, the composite organization experienced 36 hours of network downtime annually due to outages and severe performance degradations, which impacted 15% of revenue-related systems.

• With Portnox Cloud, the composite organization improves network performance and connectivity by eliminating the need for additional appliances, whether proprietary servers or VMs. It improves onboarding and offboarding through automation and continues to uphold network integrity and availability, resulting in fewer outages and more reliable access. Its cloud-native architecture enhances availability and resilience and reduces the total annual hours of downtime due to outages by 95%, recapturing 34 hours of network downtime. By reducing downtime and operational disruptions, Portnox enables teams to maintain productivity and avoid delays in revenue-generating activities.

• The fully burdened hourly rate for an end user is $40, and end users reattribute 25% of time savings to productive use.

• The composite organization’s operating margin is 11%.

Risks. The following risks may impact this benefit:

• An organization’s size, industry, and location, which may impact profitability, network performance, uptime, and other network availability factors prior to Portnox Cloud.

• Prevailing labor rates and the extent to which end users can recapture saved time toward productive work.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $637,000.

Improved Network Operations

Evidence and data. Portnox Cloud unified and simplified network access management, allowing IT teams to categorize devices, enforce policies, and troubleshoot issues more efficiently. The platform’s agentless and agent-based options supported flexible deployment across diverse environments. Interviewees reported streamlined workflows, reduced manual effort, and improved operational consistency. This freed up IT staff to focus on higher-value initiatives such as automation, architecture optimization, and security enforcement.

• The director of infrastructure security at the hospitality company shared several time-saving automations that benefited their networking team, including an automatic daily email report identifying switches the team needed to enroll in the program. The importance of these and other automations was significant: “I would say all of the above innovations eliminate the need for one to two additional FTEs to support this solution. We would never be able to handle the volume of requests or operationally maintain the solution at current staffing levels without these automations. [For another option we considered], we were going to have to run in [the public cloud with virtual infrastructure] on top of it and then [the NAC solution] on top of that. It was an incredibly complex solution to manage. … [We] estimated that we would need six FTEs dedicated to managing the [competitor NAC solution, versus] one-quarter of an FTE for Portnox.”

• The network engineering manager at the technology company indicated that Portnox Cloud had quicker, more intuitive workflows compared to their prior environment, which permitted faster onboarding of critical, high-value developer resources: “Once we deploy it, we don’t have to do a lot of changes. If you like what you see, just keep it this way and move on with your life. That’s one of the nice things about Portnox. … I want to get someone who doesn’t know anything about the tool to be an expert within 80 hours, two weeks. This is really feasible with Portnox, but was not feasible with other products.”

• The network manager at the utility company discussed how Portnox Cloud made it significantly easier for network security resources to track and shut down rogue devices: “Just tracking down rogue devices or investigating something [has] definitely saved us some time. … Portnox gave us insight about radius authentication for endpoint devices and IoT devices. We are also using TACACS, which is to authenticate to switches once we roll Portnox or network-attached storage devices and that gives us some insight into who’s doing what in our environment. We did not have that before. We were using local logins on network devices. We have that accounting of changes and access that we did not have before.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• In the prior environment, the composite dedicated five FTEs to networking operations.

• With Portnox Cloud, the composite network teams can better categorize devices, more consistently enforce policies, and more efficiently troubleshoot issues. The teams leverage streamlined workflows in the cloud-native environment, reducing manual effort and improving operational consistency. This allows the networking team to reallocate 25% of its networking operations to higher-value activities without needing to add resources as the organization scales.

• The average fully burdened annual salary for a technical resource is $143,520.

Risks. The following risks may impact this benefit:

• The number of users and the amount of time spent configuring and enforcing policies, provisioning users and sites, and other relevant NetOps activities.

• Legacy processes and solutions required to add, secure, and manage users and networking infrastructure in the prior environment.

• Prevailing labor rates, the skill sets available, and the extent to which IT resources can recapture time savings toward productive work.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $379,000.

Improved End-User Experience

Evidence and data. Interviewees described how their organizations’ Portnox Cloud environments benefited end users, from faster onboarding and fewer disruptions to more consistent access locations. Portnox Cloud’s automation and self-service capabilities enabled immediate resolution of access issues, often within minutes, without requiring IT intervention. This significant reduction in end-user downtime improved productivity and enhanced user satisfaction. In particular, interviewees shared how Portnox enabled easier and more streamlined secure access to network resources with:

• Improved posturing approaches. The information security manager at the entertainment company described how Portnox Cloud impacted their end users’ ability to connect to network resources, something they needed to do multiple times a day. They indicated that the Portnox environment was faster, easier, and safer: “I think posturing has definitely become a lot easier for them since Portnox takes the agent-based approach. That process is a lot faster and a lot smoother. Initially, if they wanted to access a protected resource, it would take a good amount of time, several retries [totaling] 1 minute, maybe up to 2 minutes. They would often have complete network drops on their devices before they got access to anything. But with Portnox, we really haven’t seen that.”

• Passwordless authentication via certificates. The information security manager at the entertainment company indicated: “With the old environment, we had to run physical nodes everywhere and each one of those physical nodes had its own certificate, so if a user went to a different site, they would be prompted to accept the new certificate. [Now with Portnox], people can go to any of our facilities, and they’re automatically connected, they don’t have to reauthenticate. They have certificates on the machine, and they are ready to roll.”

• Reduced impact area. The information security manager at the entertainment company further indicated that Portnox Cloud’s improved performance reduced the frequency as well as the breadth of network-related disruptions: “In the prior environment, people were having problems connecting to the internet every day and it wasn’t just our time [in IT that was impacted] — the whole organization’s time was impacted. And now when we hear about [any connection issues with Portnox], it’s much, much rarer and it’s usually restricted to one or two people rather than a whole building, and those usually tend to be more of a user error than a technology [issue].”

• Less disruptive device remediation procedures. The information security manager at the entertainment company indicated that Portnox Cloud provided their users with a more seamless experience, even when their devices were engaged in remediation activities: “It’s a much more graceful failure for the users. With Portnox, they are just over on the guest network rather than completely cut off, so the experience has probably improved for end users.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• In the prior environment, 10,000 FTEs required access to protected network resources.

• On average, it took 10 seconds to access a protected network resource in the prior environment, which FTEs accessed an average of 250 times annually. This led to FTEs spending nearly 7,000 hours accessing protected resources annually across the entire organization.

• With Portnox Cloud, the composite organization’s users connect to their network more seamlessly, regardless of their location or device. Connections are faster with fewer reboots, and passwordless authentication leads to less chance for human error. This reduces the time to access a protected resource by 80%.

• The fully burdened hourly rate for an end user is $40, and end users reattribute 25% of time savings to productive use.

Risks. The following risks may impact this benefit:

• The performance of an organization’s legacy environment.

• The size of an organization, its employee base, and the breadth of Portnox Cloud adoption.

• Prevailing labor rates and each user’s ability to recapture time savings toward productive activities.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $111,000.

Unquantified Benefits

Interviewees mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:

• SecOps and disaster recovery improvements. Portnox Cloud enhanced security operations by improving visibility into device authentication and enabling more consistent policy enforcement across distributed environments. The cloud-native architecture supported faster recovery times, with the ability to isolate compromised devices and integrate with endpoint detection tools contributing to a more resilient and proactive security posture.

  • The network engineering manager at the technology company reported strengthened data protections as well as improved posturing and segmentation capabilities, which reduced disaster recovery windows: “[With Portnox], we don’t have to back up any data; we don’t have to do anything. … [Disaster] recovery will be really fast. … We’re going from 16 hours roughly down to 6 hours.”

• IT help desk optimization. Deploying Portnox Cloud led to measurable reductions in help desk workload and ticket volume. Interviewees’ organizations that previously handled dozens of access-related tickets daily saw that number drop to just a few per month. Automated workflows and real-time visibility allowed lower-tier support staff to resolve issues independently, reducing escalations and improving response times. In some cases, self-service mechanisms resolved device unblock requests within minutes, significantly improving operational efficiency and freeing up IT resources for strategic initiatives.

  • The information security manager at the entertainment company reported that their organization’s helpdesk teams experienced a sharp decline in access-related help desk ticket volumes, from 12 tickets a day for one site to 12 tickets a month for all sites, enhancing user satisfaction and support efficiency: “We reduced help desk load because we have fewer access-related issues. … [Portnox] has really helped cut down a lot on the troubleshooting time and streamlines everything. … Most of the time it takes maybe about 5 minutes for their device to start working again, whereas previously, I’d have to be in there for probably 20 or 30 minutes to figure out what the issue was and then get it changed.”

• Improved cyber insurance posture. Portnox Cloud contributed to stronger compliance alignment and risk mitigation, which improved organizations’ standing with cybersecurity insurers. By enforcing port-level security and preventing unauthorized device access, organizations met key insurance criteria and reduced exposure to potential breaches. Several organizations noted that Portnox Cloud helped them retain coverage or qualify for lower premiums by demonstrating enhanced control over network access and endpoint hygiene. The platform’s integration with identity providers and endpoint protection systems further supported audit readiness and policy compliance.

  • The IT security administrator at the education organization noted: “The cyber insurance premiums were going up, so we started shopping around and finding out that if we made a few changes, they could drop by a couple hundred thousand dollars per year. That was definitely a big push for being able to save money [with Portnox] that we can invest elsewhere to improve the quality of our network.”

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement Portnox Cloud and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including integrations with other network, security, and operational tools.

• The information security manager at the entertainment company indicated that their organization was looking at integrating Portnox with SentinelOne, their managed detection and response platform: “I’m anticipating that will help significantly because it looks like from the roadmap, Portnox will be able to tell SentinelOne to isolate and do all these other automations and such.”

• The network engineer at the technology company shared: “Integration with modern services is key. As we’re shifting our organization to more cloud-centric platforms, [our legacy NAC] could not support that. In terms of integrations, any kind of authentication against our identity provider just did not work very well, [whereas] with Portnox, integrations work great.”

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Total Economic Impact Approach).