Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2022. Read them in this 14th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
The long-term impact of COVID-19 on networking
By Bob Friday, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Juniper‘s AI-Driven Enterprise
As the pandemic rambles on, it’s clear the impact will be felt for years to come. From hybrid work to social distancing, the new normal has serious implications on the workforce of the future and how networks will be managed moving forward. In 2022, enterprises will continue evolving toward this new, permanent normal, and permanent hybrid work will become an established and lasting shift for companies. So regardless of how the virus mutates or when it comes to an end, organizations will face a difficult period of uncertainty as they grapple with when and how to implement return to office policies in a new hybrid workforce.
While the focus in 2020 and 2021 was on surviving the change, 2022 will be about adaption. Enterprises will need to rethink how to support and secure a larger remote workforce and how to support an increasing number of IoT devices in a more flexible office space. In 2022 most organizations will begin planning for the new norm of a hybrid work as their long-term solution. This requires optimizing systems and processes to make sure that employees continue to have an office-grade experience from their homes and implementing workplace systems for the long-term hybrid model. These challenges will drive changes across industries in the coming year. Below are simply a few of the ways that the effects of the pandemic will be felt from a networking-perspective in 2022 and beyond.
Due to the increasing remote workforce, enterprise-grade networking and security will move into the home networking space.
2022 will further cement the home as a staple enterprise micro-branch, driving enterprise IT teams to take an even sharper look at their network edge. To ensure end-to-end network visibility, reliability and security, expect enterprise-grade networking solutions to begin permeating remote and hybrid workforces. Many companies will take a hybrid approach, moving on from legacy security solutions to a client-to-cloud Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) approach. This will allow them to provide direct, secure access to applications as they move to the cloud.
Indoor location technology and space utilization will become necessities to help facility managers manage buildings with lower occupancy and more flexible workspace.
Businesses of every size should prepare to invest in AI-driven data analytics and indoor location technology, including Bluetooth LE technologies (BLE). Formerly considered a “nice to have,” indoor location technology is now a must-have for nearly any business, from retailers to warehouses to large enterprises that need to understand exactly who is on their premises. Even as the world slowly begins to open and reduce mandates, the way in which facility managers consider safety and space utilization has changed forever.
AI assistants that can manage and troubleshoot networks on par with human domain experts will increasingly become a member of the IT team in 2022.
In the enterprise, AI, machine learning and AIOps ultimately have the potential to become as trusted a source as the most experienced IT domain expert. In the coming year we can expect AI assistants and conversational interfaces to take on a more serious and trusted role in the enterprise. At present, AI assistants have been shown to answer up to 70% of support tickets with the same effectiveness as a domain expert. As network complexity and distributed workloads increase, AIOps and virtual AI assistants will become viewed as an essential member of IT teams. Further, as cloud services continue to scale to provide unlimited, cost-effective processing and storage, both enterprise and technology providers will be empowered to adopt AI assistants across various support teams – feeding in the volume and quality of data necessary to train AI technologies to increase their accuracy.
While the changes that promise greater control and flexibility to employees come with enormous potential, that potential can only be realized if network managers take the steps to strengthen the edge. More and more companies will start to move to optimize their networks to the new – and highly uncertain — world of work in 2022.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bob Friday is vice president and chief technology officer at Juniper Network‘s AI-Driven Enterprise business unit that develops self-learning wireless networks using artificial intelligence. He was a co-founder, vice president, and chief technology officer at Mist, a part of Juniper Networks.
