{"id":39262,"date":"2020-06-27T09:46:24","date_gmt":"2020-06-27T01:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=39262"},"modified":"2020-06-27T09:48:01","modified_gmt":"2020-06-27T01:48:01","slug":"the-networking-industry-stands-tall-in-extraordinary-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2020\/06\/27\/the-networking-industry-stands-tall-in-extraordinary-times\/","title":{"rendered":"The networking industry stands tall in extraordinary times"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Guy Matthews
Editor, NetReporter <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what is hot in networking right now? What innovations and highlights have we seen in a year that has unfolded in such unpredictable ways?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen a rapid and instant shift in the way businesses operate, in how we all work, in how we deal with our personal lives and interact with our friends and family,\u201d says Jeremiah Caron, Global Head of Research and Analysis, GlobalData. \u201cAll these activities have never depended more upon network technology than they have over the past couple of months. The performance of that technology has been outstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research conducted by GlobalData both before and during the COVID crisis (Figure 1 and Figure 2) offers intriguing insights into how the key technology priorities of enterprises have been affected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Figure 1:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Figure 2:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe most notable shift has been in how businesses and business leaders view employee safety,\u201d he says. \u201cIt has become first and foremost in their thinking. Secondly, their focus on survival and business continuity has moved up the list. There is of course a long way to go to really tell what the true impact of COVID-19 will be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the many exciting developments happening in the world of networking, one in particular was highlighted by John Apostolopoulos, VP and CTO of Cisco\u2019s largest business unit; Intent-Based Networking Group & Innovation Labs: \u201cThe Federal Communication Commission (FCC) has opened up the 6GHz WiFi band for unlicensed use, which is awesome because of WiFi6\u2019s 1200MgHz-wide spectrum. We believe this huge amount of spectrum will open up a whole new set of applications.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bob Friday, CTO and co-founder of Mist, a Juniper Networks company, points to Cisco figures showing that 70% of all internet traffic is on a wireless network, with 50% of that on WiFi: \u201cOver my career I’ve watched WiFi go from a \u2018nice to have\u2019 to a \u2018must have\u2019,\u201d he recalls. \u201cWhen Intel put WiFi into laptops – that’s when it became vital for the enterprise. We\u2019re now seeing a paradigm shift to where WiFi and wireless are really becoming business critical. We\u2019re seeing spectrum regulators respond to that with more unlicensed spectrum.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other major area of unwired innovation, one that’s happening right now, is in the world of 5G, argues Kevin Deierling, SVP of NVIDIA\u2019s Networking Business Unit: \u201c5G is not getting new spectrum, we just need to use the spectrum that we have more efficiently,\u201d he claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The edge of the network seems to be another place where the heat is on, in particular with advances in the cloud edge and in the optimization of the application experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe big picture is that you’re no longer really programming servers,\u201d argues Deierling. \u201cThe new unit of computing is the data centre, with distributed applications running across many of them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mansour Karam, President and Founder, Apstra, believes that while applications are indeed critical, there is a separate issue around measurement of data on the network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAn interesting problem is how to manage this data,\u201d he says. \u201cWe have spent a lot of time figuring out ways to analyze data closer to the source so that you get the insights that are needed in an intent-driven way, based on the things that you care about, which highlights the importance of a software-first approach. If you have distributed data centres what’s really important is the ability to manage them remotely.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The value of intelligent network automation through Intent-Based Networking has been highlighted by the pandemic, says Karam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCOVID-19 really emphasized the importance of the network,\u201d he observes. \u201cThe networking industry feels a sense of pride but also a lot of responsibility in delivering on networking technologies that allow people to get on with their lives in this crisis. It\u2019s allowing people to connect with their families and be 100% productive working from home. This is all due to networking, and it’s quite remarkable.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So what is hot in networking right now? What innovations and highlights have we seen in a year that has unfolded in such unpredictable ways?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":38253,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,26],"tags":[2442,456,3923,96,2727,1656],"class_list":["post-39262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-opinions","tag-network-providers","tag-networking","tag-networking-switches","tag-technology","tag-technology-adaption","tag-technology-investment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}