That change involves moving away from hardware-based network appliances and proprietary management to open-standards-based, software-defined networks...
That change involves moving away from hardware-based network appliances and proprietary management to open-standards-based, software-defined networks (SDNs). These networks promise to be more dynamic, scalable, agile, and resilient than their predecessors; they will be crucial for modern, scalable computing, management, and security across the cloud, wide-area networks (WANs), and local-area networks (LANs).
When coupled with high-availability, low-latency 5G cellular or Wi-Fi 6, they will usher in scores of “core-to-edge” applications and services.
This e-book explores the benefits, key technologies, and use cases of these next-generation software-defined networks, which will offer a powerful competitive advantage for businesses that deploy them correctly. Simply put: Network modernization through virtualization and automation is essential to enterprise success in the digital era. Networks touch everything from distributed data centers to on-premises or colocation facilities; infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) public clouds and software as a service (SaaS); and the edge, which includes employees at branch offices, customers, and partners worldwide.
SDNs with enabled edge services hold much promise, yet it is undeniable that this transition to core-to-edge networking will be challenging. Why? Because no business will simply rip and replace its existing LANs, WANs, and mobile networks. In other words, deployment will involve a mix of old and new technologies that must be managed together. (The same can be said for the transition to cloud. Any number of operational, regulatory, and/or security imperatives may force an enterprise to keep its on-premises compute power and applications in the mix, resulting in hybrid cloud/multicloud configurations, with resulting deployment/management complexity.)
This e-book also offers best-practice recommendations on where and how to start this digital transition and deploy network solutions for maximum benefit with minimum risk.
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The need for a more flexible and robust network infrastructure — one that is easier to provision, modify, monitor, and secure — has been underscored by recent disruptions, as businesses around the globe have raced to support work-from-home and work-from-anywhere arrangements and/or revamp their supply chain. Digital transformation requires upgrading the network, the underlying platform for everything else. The network connects distributed data centers — on-premises, in colocation facilities, in IaaS public clouds, and/or in SaaS services — to the network edge, including employees, suppliers, customers, and partners worldwide.
Network modernization extends core services (those residing in data centers or clouds) through the enterprise campus (think WAN) and out to remote sites on the edge.
But many organizations confront a management morass when they try to coordinate a hodgepodge of legacy hardware, software, and networking vendors. Organizations that want to embrace new ideas (IaaS and edge computing, for instance) must continue to manage and secure their existing infrastructure. Such mixed environments cause increased complexity, in both planning and maintenance, and increased vulnerability, due to deliberate attacks or errant configurations.
Indeed, organizations can be forgiven for choosing not to upgrade key infrastructure for fear that this activity itself could cause negative consequences. In Tanium’s 2019 “Global Resilience Gap” study of 500 global CIOs and CSOs, 81% of the respondents indicated that they had refrained from adopting an important security update or patch due to concerns about the impact it might have on business operations.
Even auditing the existing network can be a major undertaking, given the explosion of network endpoints. The number of worldwide devices on the internet of things (IoT) is forecast to almost triple, from 8.74 billion in 2020 to more than 25.4 billion devices in 2030.
According to Flexera’s 2021 “State of the Cloud Report,” which surveyed 750 global cloud decision-makers and users:
Certainly wide-scale adoption of cloud has made enterprises more agile, with the ability to add or remove compute and storage resources as needed. For instance, using cloud services is an ideal way to support elastic applications, which allocate and deallocate resources on demand for specific application components. Cloud is more resilient too, in that organizations can span compute, development, storage, disaster recovery (DR), and business continuity (BC) across a virtualized on-demand environment.
We’ve seen that companies that had already embraced cloud were able to sustain, and even innovate and extend, their business models.