Are these three trends affecting your enterprise network?

We’re in the era of endless technologies entering the workplace and changing the way people work and how businesses need to operate. Whether it’s artificial intelligence, flexible working or the latest collaboration tool, all of this emerging technology changes how networks need to be built. How data is accessed, shared, transmitted and stored has dramatically changed over just the last five years alone.

A major key for enterprises is to ensure that their networks can continue to work properly and efficiently as the business evolves around them. The idea of “network continuity” is a critical component to today’s IT environment.

Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), recently released its bi-annual network management study that explores the trends that are affecting network management. Network World explores some of the key findings, but I wanted to share three here from the article that stood out to me:

• Network management priorities have changed – While server virtualization used to sit atop as the number one driver behind network decision making, EMA found that title now belongs to software defined data centers, cloud initiatives or infrastructure as a service. These are considered the new, most influential drivers behind decision making as they allow enterprises to track a single transaction across networks.
• Cloud services at the center of workloads – The EMA survey found 60 percent of participants said external public cloud traffic was the most prevalent on their networks. In fact, they said 45 percent of their total network traffic can be linked back to the external cloud, which makes it difficult for IT to monitor network performance.
• IT security is increasingly integrated – In previous years, NetOps and IT worked in siloes, but companies have recognized the two work best together. In fact, 40 percent of the network operators surveyed by EMA said they’ve fully converged with IT security. This is a key trend as security incidents and firewalls are big components to network complexity.

Overall, understanding the key trends around network management is important in making strategic decisions about your environment. If you’re interested in the full Network World piece, you can read it here: https://bit.ly/2Lnd1DK

What specific trends do you see within your own network?