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Showing 33 - 41 of 41 white papers, page 3 of 3.
Revisting SDN - Why Your VMware Alternative Should Include Integrated Networking
Organizations are now seeking a VMware Alternative, which is a significant infrastructure change. While IT “has the patient open,” why not take another look at Software-Defined Networking (SDN) to see if it can bring greater flexibility and simplify the operation of the network while further reducing infrastructure costs.
Extend Your Infrastructure Savings Beyond the Hypervisor

Software-defined networking (SDN) was supposed to revolutionize networking, but high costs and complexity have kept adoption low. Now, as IT teams seek a VMware alternative, it’s time to take another look at SDN and how it fits into your infrastructure transition.

This white paper explores why traditional SDN solutions, including VMware NSX, have failed to gain widespread adoption and why VergeFabric, included at no additional cost in VergeOS, changes the equation.

What You’ll Learn:
  • Why VMware’s approach to SDN stalled adoption due to licensing fees, complexity, and hardware overhead.
  • How VergeFabric, built into VergeOS, eliminates the need for dedicated SDN appliances or controller VMs.
  • The advantages of VM-level segmentation and VDC-level security without VLAN sprawl or manual firewall rules.
  • How VergeOS extends cost savings beyond the hypervisor by integrating compute, storage, and networking into a single platform.
  • Why multi-site connectivity and disaster recovery are simplified with built-in SDN.
Achieve the Modern Workplace
This ebook explores transforming your IT environment into a modern, secure workplace. It covers unified endpoint management, streamlined application delivery, and advanced security measures, empowering IT teams to confidently manage complex systems while driving digital transformation.

Achieve the Modern Workplace with Recast Software is a guide designed to help IT leaders and professionals transform their complex IT environments into secure, agile, and efficient digital workspaces. This eBook explores the evolution of IT management, emphasizing how modern tools and strategies can streamline operations and enhance security.

Key Focus Areas Include:

  • Unified Endpoint Management: Learn how to centralize control over both company-issued and BYOD devices using platforms like Microsoft Intune and Configuration Manager. Discover strategies to reduce overhead while improving visibility and operational efficiency.
  • Advanced Security Solutions: Explore proactive threat detection, AI-driven compliance checks, and automated security protocols. The ebook delves into tools like the Recast Copilot for Security Plugin that work hand-in-hand with Microsoft’s security enhancements to protect your digital workspace.
  • Streamlined Application Management: Understand how to simplify application deployment and patch management. With features like automated updates and self-service portals, IT teams can ensure that software remains current and secure with minimal manual effort.
  • Digital Transformation for Modern IT: Uncover the broader framework of the modern workplace that goes beyond mere AI integration. The ebook emphasizes productivity, collaboration, and the need for a secure, adaptable IT infrastructure that meets today’s dynamic business challenges.

What You’ll Gain:

  • Actionable Insights: Clear, practical steps to overcome common IT challenges and achieve a seamless transition to modern endpoint management.
  • Enhanced Efficiency: Strategies to unify disparate IT environments and streamline management processes.
  • Improved Security Posture: Techniques to bolster your organization’s defenses against evolving cyber threats.

By focusing on these critical areas, this eBook serves as a resource for IT professionals aiming to future-proof their digital operations while maximizing return on investment. Embrace a new era of IT management with solutions that bring together robust security, streamlined processes, and an agile approach to digital transformation.

ExaGrid S3 Storage for Veeam
ExaGrid is a top choice for enterprise data backup storage and disaster recovery as its Tiered Backup Storage family of EX appliances offer a unique set of data protection capabilities. The ExaGrid and Veeam partnership is the perfect solution for enterprises looking to streamline all data protection processes, reduce their backup windows, have full scalability, and provide essential ransomware recovery.
ExaGrid is incredibly appealing for organizations using Veeam's Data Platform, as ExaGrid supports an integrated Veeam Data Mover for ingest performance and security, Veeam Fast Clone for synthetic full backups and Scale-Out Backup Repository (SOBR) for scalability. Even better, ExaGrid now supports Veeam writing to ExaGrid Tiered Backup Storage as an S3 object store target, and it brings Veeam's backup for Microsoft 365 (MS365) solution into play as you back up M365 data directly to ExaGrid's immutable on-premises storage. Learn more in this independent product review.
Deliver Applications to Your Users Not Your Infrastructure
Digital work now follows the employee, not the PC. Yet most organizations still deploy, patch, and support software as if every user sat in one place on one machine. The result is an IT backlog, exposure to security threats, and—most importantly—lost productivity.
Digital work now follows the employee, not the PC. Yet most organizations still deploy, patch, and support software as if every user sat in one place on one machine. The result is an IT backlog, exposure to security threats, and—most importantly—lost productivity.
Preparing for the Safe Adoption of Agentic AI in Networking and Security
Agentic AI can autonomously patch vulnerabilities, reroute traffic, and pre-empt outages in enterprise networks, yet its power poses new operational and security risks. The article argues that safe adoption depends on a high-quality data foundation and continuous verification through network digital twins, which mirror topology, policies and state. Acting as guardrails, twins let CIOs capture agentic AI’s efficiency and agility while preventing unintended consequences.

Forward Networks co-founder Nikhil Handigol explains how organisations can harness agentic AI in networking and security without jeopardising reliability.

What makes AI “agentic” – Unlike chatbots, agentic systems pursue goals, choose their own tools and act autonomously. Market researchers expect the segment to surge from US $5.1 billion in 2025 to more than US $47 billion by 2030, and Gartner predicts that one-third of enterprise software will embed such capabilities by 2028. 

Upside for networks – Agents can:

remediate newly disclosed vulnerabilities or block malicious traffic,
resolve connectivity issues and reroute flows around failures,
analyse patterns to predict and prevent impending outages.
 
These abilities promise dramatic efficiency gains for short-staffed IT teams and better user experience.        
Risks to manage – Because an agent can act without human oversight, a mis-trained model or bad data could break compliance, introduce downtime or even cause physical harm. “Trust but verify” must therefore guide every deployment.

Build the data bedrock – 
Autonomy is only as sound as the data it relies on. Enterprises need a complete, accurate record of every device, configuration and packet path. A network digital twin—a mathematically precise, continuously updated software replica of the live environment—provides that single source of truth.
 
Digital twins as guardrails

Pre-change simulation: Before any AI-driven or manual change, test it exhaustively in the twin to catch policy violations, compliance breaks or connectivity loss.

Continuous verification: Twin-based rules monitor live behaviour and alert operators to drift or emergent problems. With this safety layer, CIOs can accelerate agentic AI adoption while preserving control.

Bottom line – Agentic AI’s promise in networking is real, but benefits accrue only if robust data pipelines and digital-twin guardrails are in place. When those prerequisites are met, AI agents can handle routine operations and incident response, freeing humans for higher-value work and increasing organisational resilience. 

GigaOm Network Validation Radar Report
GigaOm's “Radar for Network Validation” evaluates top vendors, spotlighting key criteria—like source-of-truth accuracy, validation scope, and compliance checks—for assessing network assurance tools. Forward Networks is named an “Outperformer” in the 2024 edition, praised for its Forward Enterprise digital twin: a mathematically precise model enabling scalable path analysis, hybrid cloud support, pre-change simulation, forensic and compliance verification.

GigaOm’s “Radar for Network Validation” (2024) addresses the growing need for enterprise-grade network assurance tools that validate architecture intent, enforce policies, and ensure compliance. The report establishes clear metrics—such as source-of-truth fidelity, breadth of validation, simulation capabilities, and ease of integration—as foundational evaluation criteria.

In this latest edition, Forward Networks is ranked as a top-tier “Outperformer” for the third consecutive year, earning placement close to the coveted “bullseye” that denotes market leadership. The report highlights Forward Enterprise���s strengths:
Scalable Modeling & Path Analysis: A mathematically accurate digital twin can model state across 50,000+ devices and diverse public-cloud deployments, simulating end-to-end paths across Layers 2–4 and even Layer 7. This enables exhaustive pre-change validation and forensic path tracing.

Compliance & Security Verification: The platform verifies that configurations adhere to compliance standards and security policies before deployment.

Hybrid-Cloud Flexibility: Forward supports complex environments spanning on-premises and cloud infrastructures.

Visualization & Forensics: Users can query network state “like a database,” visualize flows, and trace live or historical behavior to troubleshoot or investigate incidents.

Why Forward stands out: GigaOm praises its technical excellence, calling out its performance across end-to-end validation, compliance/security verification, hybrid cloud support, and rich visualization features that outpace most of its 13 peer vendors.

Integrate Observability and Security to Mitigate Risk
Gartner Report: I&O leaders can use this research to integrate application security capabilities with observability tools, avoid unnecessary risks and mitigate the impact of successful attacks.
Gartner Report:  I&O leaders can use this research to integrate application security capabilities with observability tools, avoid unnecessary risks and mitigate the impact of successful attacks.
Demo of Forward Networks
This technical demo showcases the 13 most popular use cases for Forward Enterprise—the industry’s only true network digital twin. From identifying configuration drift and verifying security policies to modeling complex multivendor environments and ensuring change assurance, this session reveals how Forward gives NetOps and SecOps teams the visibility and control they need to reduce risk, improve compliance, and prevent outages across hybrid multi-cloud networks.
Explore the power of Forward Enterprise's network digital twin platform in this comprehensive session led by Mike Lossmann, our resident demo expert. This in-depth overview highlights 13 critical use cases that demonstrate how digital twin technology revolutionizes network operations and management.

Key Use Cases Covered:
1. Change Control
2. Network Compliance and Audits
3. Inventory Management
4. Workflow Automation
5. Incident Response
6. Vulnerability Management
7. Zero Trust Verification
8. Continuous Cloud Security Audit
9. Cloud Service Assurance
10. End-to-End Hybrid Multi-Cloud Visibility
11. Path Verification Analysis
12. Outage Prevention
13. Troubleshooting

Learn how Forward Enterprise enables organizations to optimize network performance, ensure security compliance, and achieve unmatched visibility across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Discover how a digital twin can drive proactive incident resolution, zero-trust strategies, and automated workflows to reduce risks and streamline operations.
Top 5 ways a digital twin can supercharge security
Security teams need better context to manage risk in complex hybrid networks. This session shows how a network digital twin delivers real-time visibility to prioritize vulnerabilities, validate Zero Trust policies, detect misconfigurations, and visualize blast radius. Forward Networks' Mike Lossmann demonstrates how the network digital twin "supercharges" SecOps without agents or disruption—ideal for security engineers and analysts modernizing their workflows.
Security teams are under pressure to manage risk, validate Zero Trust policies, and respond to threats in increasingly complex hybrid networks. Traditional tools offer limited context—and that’s where a network digital twin changes the game.

In this session, Forward Networks Technical Evangelist Mike Lossmann will demonstrate how a mathematically-accurate digital replica of your network can deliver the visibility and context SecOps teams need to:

Prioritize vulnerabilities based on real exposure paths

Instantly visualize blast radius and attacker reachability

Continuously validate firewall, segmentation, and Zero Trust policies

Detect and investigate misconfigurations before they cause damage

Ensure cloud security matches on-prem standards

You'll see real examples of how network digital twin technology eliminates blind spots, accelerates incident response, and strengthens your security posture—without deploying agents or disrupting operations.

Ideal for: Security operations engineers, threat response analysts, and network security leads looking to modernize their workflows.