The networking world is ever changing, with new monitoring and security tools entering the market, companies introducing exciting new technology, partnerships being formed to create disruptive solutions, and more. With so much note-worthy news, I thought it would be a good idea to start sharing what I think are some of the most important news stories and updates in the industry this month and what that could mean for the industry as a whole.
No longer is power the primary cause of disruptive data center outages. In 2018, there was actually a decrease in the number of unplanned outages related to power issues. This can be attributed to the fact that power supplies around the world are becoming more stable. What’s worrying though is that there has been an increase of unplanned outages due to network and IT systems, from 17% in 2017 to 32% in 2018. Networks are growing larger with more sites being connected. Additional complexity is added as resources are offloaded to 3rd parties. What does this mean for the networking world? Network design and testing of all equipment to ensure they are designed and installed properly is important to lessen the likelihood of an expensive, unplanned data center outage. Read More
IoT is everywhere. You just have to look around your own home to see the influx of IoT devices in our daily lives. But with all of the data that these devices are generating, you would think security would be a bigger focus. That’s just not the case. IoT companies need to take a systemic view of security from where the device is located in someone’s home to how often data is captured and stored in the cloud. At the very least, encryption of data must take place enroute to the cloud, with additional security monitoring of the devices themselves and the storage. Without visibility into where the data is coming from and being stored, IoT organizations will be left blind to attacks. Read More
It’s widely known that SD-WAN can provide significant cost savings for an organization. But there are additional benefits that are often overlooked including flexibility, ease of management, and security. This allows an organization to adopt SD-WAN incrementally overtime, to maximize the value of existing infrastructure and not disrupting the entire network. Read More