Many large enterprises are moving important applications from traditional physical servers to virtualized environments, such as VMware vSphere in order to take advantage of key benefits such as configuration flexibility, data and application mobility, and efficient use of IT resources.

Realizing these benefits with business critical applications, such as SQL Server or SAP can pose several challenges. Because these applications need high availability and disaster recovery protection, the move to a virtual environment can mean adding cost and complexity and limiting the use of important VMware features. This paper explains these challenges and highlights six key facts you should know about HA protection in VMware vSphere environments that can save you money.

IDC’s 21-page Business Value Solution Brief, The Business Value of Forward Networks (doc #US52128624, June 2024), quantifies how the vendor’s network-digital-twin platform turns insight into hard cash. 

IDC interviewed enterprises that had run Forward Enterprise for roughly three years and mapped their operational KPIs to its Business Value model, converting them into annualised dollars and full-time-equivalent (FTE) hours.
$14.2 million in average annual benefits, broken down into $7.7 M from greater stability and reliability, $2.9 M from staff productivity and $3.6 M from other operational efficiencies.

95.8 FTEs worth of time returned each year.

33 % fewer unplanned-downtime incidents and 55 % faster mean-time-to-repair, preventing about 180 000 hours of lost productivity.

Incident-response teams work 34 % faster; compliance/audit tasks 10 % faster.

Network deployments finish 71 % sooner; change-planning/testing is 36 % faster; production fixes arrive 44 % faster.

Forward Enterprise builds a mathematically exact, continuously updated digital twin of multi-vendor, hybrid-cloud networks. Engineers query reachability, policy and configuration drift in seconds and run “what-if” simulations before changes. This eliminates manual CLI hunts, shortens root-cause analysis, prevents misconfigurations and surfaces licence waste, underpinning the monetised savings above.

Customers also reported quicker security investigations (thanks to instant path analysis), smoother cloud migrations, clearer executive-level reporting and higher team morale as reactive “fire-fighting” declined.

IDC concludes that the platform typically pays for itself in under twelve months and then delivers a durable, measurable ROI. For organisations wrestling with complex, hybrid networks, a digital-twin strategy emerges as both an operations accelerator and a business enabler, aligning network health with broader risk-reduction and growth objectives.

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.

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.