Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2021. Read them in this 13th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
3 Network Management Trends to Watch
By John Smith, Executive Vice President and Chief
Technology Officer at LiveAction
Enterprise
networks are becoming increasingly complex and difficult to manage with every
passing year. New technologies and market developments emerge at a rapid pace,
presenting both advantages to capitalize on and major challenges to overcome. The
transition into a new year represents a useful opportunity to take a step back
and assess the industry's latest technologies and trends to build an effective
network management strategy for your business.
As
2020 comes to a close and we look toward the new year, our team at LiveAction has developed three key
IT and network management predictions for the coming year that might help you
do just that:
1.
NPM Becomes Keystone to Cloud Harmony
COVID-19 has had a major impact on how and where
people access and use network resources. As a result, network patterns have
changed dramatically in 2020 and will continue to evolve significantly in 2021
as businesses further adapt to the fallout from the pandemic. In fact, nearly 60% of
enterprises expect cloud technology usage to exceed prior plans due to
COVID-19.
The adoption of more and more cloud applications and
services will fuel the need for IT teams to invest in Network Performance
Management (NPM) solutions that can quickly analyze these larger, more distributed network foot
prints to ensure performance and security. Organizations that use NPM as the
keystone for public and private cloud visibility and reliability will
dramatically increase employee productivity and customer acquisition.
2. SASE
Adoption Hits Double Time
Today's enterprise is no longer a location, it's a set
of dynamic endpoints with a variety of cloud services. Secure Access Service
Edge (SASE) technology converges networking and
network security into a single, cloud-delivered offering to support the needs
of digital business transformation, edge computing and workforce
mobility.
According to Gartner, by 2024 at
least 40% of enterprises will have explicit strategies to adopt SASE.
However, we predict this timeline will be cut in half and there will be a
dramatic acceleration of SASE adoption through 2021 and 2022, as organizations
scramble to securely connect and enable WFH employees. NPM solutions will play
a major role in this shift, providing IT teams with critical visibility into
the traffic between SASE, public and private cloud environments and on-premises
locations.
3.
AIOps Wins the Year
AIOps is the application of advanced analytics in the form of
machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) towards automating
network operations. The goal is for ITOps teams to move more quickly. The dramatic changes to network
operations and usage over the last eight months will continue throughout 2021.
As such, network managers need the ability to understand these new network
baselines, bandwidth usage trends, application SLAs, and the new potential
bottlenecks or trouble hotspots brought on by increased usage of cloud
services, changing traffic patterns and migration from traditional WAN to SDWAN
networks.
Without AIOps technology, teams will struggle to
process and interpret the large data outputs from these systems. As a result,
AIOps will be the hero technology of 2021. NPM solutions will play a
significant role in the rise of AIOps by constantly looking at the network and
the applications traversing it, understanding what is normal (from an
availability, performance, quality of service perspective) and thus what is
anomalous. This helps ITOps teams, ably address major issues, avoid becoming
inundated with the noise that comes with scale and complexity, and remain focused
on key IT priorities.
Effective network performance management and optimization can be a
tall order without insight into the industry's latest technology trends, and
without the right NPM
solutions in place. Consider the 2021 predictions we've laid out above and
ask yourself, has your network operations team taken the necessary steps to
prepare for the coming year?
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About the Author
John
K. Smith is the Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer
for LiveAction, where he is responsible for developing the technical
vision, strategies, and relationships to drive product development to
meet customer needs. He has been in the networking field for more than
15 years, holding two patents and four patent applications. Previously,
Smith served as Vice President of engineering at Spirent Communications
where his contributions led to more than $120 million in revenue per
year, while overseeing the product line and leading more than 130
engineers. He has been in software development for more than 25 years.
Smith holds a MS degree in Computer Science from the University of
Hawaii and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of
Washington, as well as a MBA from Chaminade University.