
Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2019. Read them in this 11th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by P. Brighten Godfrey, Ph.D., is Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Veriflow
Multi-Cloud Environments and Intent-based Networking
Taking a broad view across the enterprise, both cloud
computing and intent-based networking deployments are still young and many
enterprises are just taking the first steps. Looking ahead to 2019, these
deployments will mature as they expand and become increasingly complex.
On predicting challenges in the cloud:
As enterprises become more reliant on cloud, the complexity
of these deployments will deepen - involving many virtual private clouds,
interconnections and segmentation between components, and hybrid cloud
connecting on-premises and multiple public cloud deployments. According to a recent prediction
from IDC, "over 90% of enterprises will use multiple cloud services and
platforms" by 2020. Integrating business-critical legacy applications which
weren't designed as pure cloud apps will bring additional considerations. But
today, most cloud ops solutions and teams are only equipped for simpler
environments. As complexity grows, executing on a cloud strategy reliably and
securely will require new automation, analytics, and, perhaps most importantly,
team expertise spanning networking and cloud platforms.
On intent-based networking:
A year ago, we predicted a rise in automated systems that
will start down the path to intent-based networking (IBN). In 2018, we saw
multiple large networking vendors and cloud providers introduce IBN
capabilities spanning control and intent verification for network
infrastructure, and startups in the space continued to deploy solutions in
enterprises that are taking the early lead in improving the uptime, security,
and agility of their networks. We note that the point of IBN is the intent - that is, the requirements of the business and the network. As a result, IBN is most powerful when it understands and is integrated with the surrounding IT ecosystem. In
the next year, watch for these deployments to expand and begin to mature, with
an increasing integration of IBN solutions with multiple components in the enterprise
and IT workflows.
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About the Author
Dr. Godfrey has conducted research in networked systems and
algorithms for more than a decade, and is a co-inventor of key technology in use
at Veriflow. His work has developed novel architectures and systems for
Internet routing, data center networking, high performance data transport, and
network data plane verification, as well as advancing theoretical analysis of
network algorithms. He has co-authored over 50 scientific publications, and
several of these technologies have been deployed by hyperscale cloud computing
providers.
In 2015, Dr. Godfrey received the ACM SIGCOMM Rising Star
Award in recognition of outstanding research contributions, including
contributions to network verification. Only one individual worldwide is
selected for this prestigious award each year. Dr. Godfrey was awarded the
Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 2014, and has also received the UIUC
Dean's Award for Excellence in Research, the National Science Foundation CAREER
Award, and the Internet2 Innovative Application Award, in addition to several
best paper awards. He was a Beckman Fellow at the UIUC Center for Advanced
Study in 2014-2015, and has served as program committee chair of several
academic conferences. Dr. Godfrey continues to advise young researchers in his
role as Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign, and is co-instructor of a popular Coursera course, "Cloud
Networking".
He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the
University of California, Berkeley.