Cloud computing, explosion of mobile devices and social networking in the enterprise are some of the big trends that will define the next decade, with broad implications for the IT industry, and its networks in particular. The diversity and growth of users demanding secure wireless access to enterprise networks with smartphones, tablets and other devices, presents IT departments with a unique opportunity to migrate beyond legacy networks designed for wired employee PCs. This was the message from Kevin Johnson, CEO of Juniper Networks who discussed key trends and global best practices around mobility and cloud computing with CIOs from leading Indian companies.
Key Highlights
Kevin Johnson
CEO, Juniper Networks.Explosion of Mobile Devices
There is a rapid shift to smart devices across the world, with mobile devices, smartphones and tablets surpassing the shipment of PCs. A majority of the consumers now own and use multiple devices and across their personal and professional life, said Kevin. Addressing CIOs concerns on integrating a ‘Bring Your Own Device’ policy in the enterprise, and the associated challenges of running applications across multiple operating systems, Kevin said that it is becoming a reality that employees’ consumer devices are going to be able to access the corporate network, with or without permission. IT organizations are, thus, looking for solutions that let them say YES.
With enterprises being flooded with employee requests to support new mobile devices, there is a demand for anywhere-anytime access to corporate networks from their personal devices. As IT departments struggle to support everyone’s wireless device of choice, legacy networks are ill-suited to meet the demands of new applications, ranging from surveillance and video conferencing to cloud collaboration. Enterprises need an easy, secure, and reliable way to connect everyone’s device of choice. “Enterprises require an integrated solution that can provide a broad range of capabilities, including secure connections, security protections and device management for a broad range of devices. The new mobile device configuration and management features in Junos Pulse are designed to enable enterprises and service providers to simply and cost-effectively manage mobile devices- unburdening their IT teams while also granting employees the secure mobile productivity and flexibility they need,” said Kevin.
Popularity of Enterprise Social Networking
A large number of employees use social networks and social media for personal use and this is now becoming commonplace in the enterprise too. Many organizations are co-ordinating their strategies and initiatives around the social media platform to optimize their investments and competencies to provide a better business outcome. For instance, Starbucks mobilized its own loyalty program by launching a mobile payment-enabled application for multiple smartphone platforms that can be used across the United States. “The entire campaign was promoted widely across social media platforms,” confirmed Kevin.
Cloud Computing Coming of Age
Kevin Johnson, CEO of Juniper Networks Another key trend was the emergence of cloud computing as a means to drive efficiency in the enterprise IT by delivering services on a dynamic and shared IT infrastructure. According to Kevin, “Cloud computing represents a new way of achieving greater IT efficiencies and agility to meet the requirements for an improved user experience and lower costs.” Previously, applications were linked to hardware that was specifically designated for computing and storage. With cloud computing, the functionality of these software and hardware products is delivered in a more scalable fashion as services over a network. Furthermore, CIOs are looking to apply the lessons of the cloud to their own IT departments to optimize results.
However, they are limited, because, as application architectures, server virtualization, and storage technology have evolved over time, innovation in the network has not kept pace. The current datacentre architecture in most organizations is over fifteen years old, and what is required now is a fundamentally new architectural approach — one that not only solves the increasing problems of scale and economics in the data center, but also has the potential to enable dramatic new levels of computing for years to come. “Because networks are the foundation of a cloud-ready data center, businesses need a new network to unleash the promise of the cloud,” said Kevin. Success in building a cloud-ready data center network requires CIOs to simplify, share, and secure their IT infrastructure. “It is also important to automate at each step, whether they are running internal IT infrastructure to be cloud-like or plan to connect with public cloud services,” he added.
The key takeaway from the interaction was that as these trends continue to accelerate, a legacy approach to networking is proving unsustainable as they are too costly, too complex, and simply cannot scale.
