t cht lk environments shone a spotlight on enterprise-grade networks , and the importance of embedding intuitive , AI-driven network infrastructure into their operations .
Connecting the secure , cloudorientated enterprise
The impact of COVID-19 , along with a change in thinking over the last few years about how the Internet can perform as the new corporate backbone , is influencing how businesses deploy and manage their enterprise-grade networks , as well as the tools required to do so .
Jeff Gray , Vice-President , Americas , Xalient
In the past , traditional Multi-Protocol Label Switching ( MPLS ) networks were a popular way to ensure reliable connections for real-time applications . MPLS was designed for organizations that had multiple remote branch offices , geographically dispersed across the country or across the world , where most of the traffic was on-network to enterprise data centers .
The phrase ‘ Digital Transformation ’ is not just an aspirational goal , it is critical to business success .
That ’ s because essential business processes and interactions with customers , partners and employees , increasingly depend on tailored innovative digital solutions .
The phrase ‘ Digital Transformation ’ is not just an aspirational goal , it is critical to business success .
Security was managed from a traditional ‘ castle and moat ’ perspective , where assets were all protected inside the enterprise perimeter , but the way enterprise applications and ecosystems are being built now is making this approach increasingly obsolete . Today ’ s businesses have shifted much of their traffic to and from cloud providers instead , rendering MPLS suboptimal .
It is more efficient to send traffic directly to the cloud . Also , the use of cloud services , video and mobile apps has driven up bandwidth requirements , and MPLS services can be difficult to scale on demand .
The path to achieving digitization and business growth begins with the cloud , helping organizations connect teams , people , data and processes , in new ways to embrace the possibilities enabled by modern technologies .
They are also expensive , so enterprises are now looking at Software Defined-Wide Area Networking ( SD-WAN ) as a way to accommodate 21st century demand for network performance and cost-efficiency .
Building the network of the future
The cloud has changed more than the way IT is implemented and managed ; it is changing the very fabric of business .
To enable this , businesses need robust network access from the Edge to the core , using software-defined networking , security and communications technologies to ensure reliable and secure access to core business applications from wherever employees or customers are located .
2020 / 2021 were turbulent years , resulting in a shift to remote and flexible working to accommodate challenges posed by the pandemic . Changing working
Enabling high performance , secure network access from anywhere really requires thinking about SD- WAN in more detail . While this technology has been around for about a decade now , there are still a lot of enterprises that have yet to adopt it .
However , as companies increasingly connect to private or public cloud infrastructure and harness SaaS applications like Microsoft 365 and Salesforce , they need to be thinking about how they adapt SD-WAN into the network .
Having a network which is capable of learning and adapting to the type of application traffic that is flowing
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