The Disruptive Trends Changing the Future of Enterprise Networking

By Apac CIO Outlook | Monday, August 24, 2020

Fremont, CA: Enterprise networking is about connectivity and providing the ability for different servers, branches, applications, and campuses to communicate. The era of networking simply being 'dumb pipes' is long gone, as is the era in which networking was limited to only physical hardware.

Let us look at the disruptive trends in enterprise networking:

Wireless

This year, Wi-Fi 6 is expected to enter the enterprise through enterprise access point refreshes, while 5G will be mostly for consumers. The latest smartphones from Samsung, Apple, and other renowned manufacturers are Wi-Fi 6 enabled. Also, Wi-Fi 6 access points are currently shipping to consumers and businesses. 5G phones have not yet gained much popularity, which will begin to change in 2020. While the "5G" service will unfurl in 2020, it will not be the ultra-high-speed connectivity that has been promised. If 5G were unable to deliver on that promise initially, a lot of high-speed wireless traffic would be offloaded to Wi-Fi networks. 2020 will also witness the adoption of new frequency bands.

SD-WAN Technology

The workplace is steadily becoming virtual. Businesses now hire talents from all over the world, and these distributed employees are connecting to increasing numbers of cloud services. This scattering of connectivity – the growth of multicloud networking – will compel many businesses to reconstruct their networks in favor of SD-WAN technology.

Intelligent Sensor

Businesses have begun to use their networks for more than data transmission. Networks are being used to sense their environments as well. This may impact businesses to the bottom line. By leveraging software capable of profiling and classifying the devices, endpoints, and applications, the network would be able to automatically place the devices into virtual networks, allow the correct rule set to protect those devices, and identify security issues quickly.