ESG Blogs

Its that time of the year again when we try to predict the future based on everything we have seen and heard over the course of the prior year (or years). This is a fun exercise that makes us put on our thinking caps and try to determine how new technologies or initiatives will help to shape the upcoming year.

IT organizations need to be responsive to the business. Digital transformation, IoT, and cloud computing initiatives require the underlying IT environment (HW and SW) to be able to react quickly and scale seamlessly, but it can’t do that if your technical resources are spending more time getting the proper licenses correct. This is especially impactful in fast growing companies.

I recently attended Juniper’s NXTWORK 2018 event in sunny Las Vegas. Well, I assume it was sunny--as most of these events go, most of my time was spent in the convention center. Juniper has had a number of key additions to its executive team since last year and we are now starting to see the results of those shifts. Most noticeable this year was the focus on enterprise customers and enabling them to drive operational efficiency into their multi-cloud environments.

Our networking analyst, Bob Laliberte, has recently written about connectivity and experience. In today’s networking world, connecting end-users to a network is simply not enough. The focus is shifting to end-user experience once connected to that network.

Those who connect to some network daily know what I mean. I’ve had to connect to our network and edit documents while on the road. I’ve been in a running store wanting to buy some gear, but because I was overwhelmed with choices, I checked online reviews before I made my purchase. Most times, I have had no issue. But there have been times when the experience of trying to do my work or get information became frustrating. In most cases, I gave up and went elsewhere, just so that I could find a place with “good” connectivity.

In this conversation, Bob Laliberte talks about the increasing relevance of [optimized] networking in the contemporary IT world; of course, networking has always mattered, but it has often been the most likely component of IT infrastructure to be viewed as "plumbing."

These days, however, with the emphases on mobility, clouds, the edge, and distributed-everything (data and applications just as much as endpoint-access), the integral impact of networking on connectivity and experience is becoming ever clearer. When everything-IT is interlinked, the linkages matter intently! Bob outlines the main points and then talks about how this new focus on optimized networking is being - and can be - made manifest.  

Extreme networks just announced its Q4 2018 earnings and it showed that the company missed the revenue estimate and lowered guidance for Q1 2019. The market reacted quickly by knocking the stock down.

At the start of the year I wrote about the network becoming more relevant in 2018. As the year has progressed, I am even more convinced that this is true. In fact, as organizations transform themselves to become more agile and responsive to their customers, IT teams are reimagining their roles. Are they really about information technology or rather about ensuring that every employee, customer, partner or machine can connect to an application, service, or each other, regardless of location or technology.

As organizations continue to adopt cloud computing in its various forms – IaaS, SaaS, or PaaS - the network will be critical to ensure success. Equally relevant is the fact that the “pendulum” is now swinging towards decentralization – meaning compute and applications are being deployed at the edge or in the cloud. Branch offices are connecting directly to the cloud and not routing through centralized data centers. All of which is putting increased pressure on the network to ensure availability, performance, and security.

A number of articles surfaced last Friday about AWS selling network switching infrastructure used in its own environment to enterprises. This news had a ripple effect in the market as some of the major network companies saw a dip in their stock prices.

If the sources are accurate, AWS is, at the very least, contemplating this strategy. If it decides to enter the market, this could be highly disruptive to the status quo. Let’s take a minute to think about this, though--it’s not like AWS will be selling data center network switches online – well, at least not yet - I actually just checked and didn’t see any Prime Day specials. If they are seriously considering entering this market, it does highlight a number of things that AWS may have to do to capture the on-premises enterprise market share.

While at HPE Discover 2018, I had the opportunity to sit down with Doug Crawford from Warner Bros. Entertainment. As it turns out, Warner Bros. Entertainment is one of HPE Aruba’s oldest customers. We discussed how they were leveraging  HPE Aruba solutions, how their environment has evolved and how they plan to leverage HPE Aruba solutions in the future to enhance the experience at the studios.

This year’s Discover event was the first time the 20-year HPE employee and engineer, Antonio Neri took the stage as President and CEO. Antonio was engaging and humble – a very approachable CEO, he seemed to be acutely aware of the HP legacy, but is determined to drive HPE forward.