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As we move into 2023, the events of the past few years have left their mark on staffing shortages, inflationary pressures, supply chain disruptions and geopolitical turmoil. The acceleration of these dynamics has even forced business transformation and, in some cases, triggered a rethinking of fundamental business models. Networks now have a stronger role to power the transformational journey needed to thrive amid uncertainty and prepare organizations for what’s next in 2023.
Prediction 1: By the end of 2023, 20% of organizations will adopt a NaaS strategy
As economic conditions tighten, IT needs the flexibility to acquire, deploy and operate network infrastructure to enable network teams to deliver business outcomes, not just manage devices. Migrating to a network-as-a-service (NaaS) framework enables IT to accelerate network modernization while staying within budget, IT resource, and schedule constraints. Additionally, adopting a NaaS strategy will help organizations achieve their sustainability goals, as leading NaaS providers have adopted carbon-neutral and recycled manufacturing strategies.
Prediction 2: Built-In Security Replaces Bolt-Ons
Reducing cybersecurity risk has become a core operational concern. Transforming to a more automated security architecture is an IT imperative. Organizations can no longer install perimeter firewalls around their networks to protect against threats and vulnerabilities. Security must be built into every aspect of the network infrastructure, from Wi-Fi access points to LANs, campus and data center switches, WAN gateways, and out to the cloud. Zero Trust and SASE frameworks will become more intertwined to not only prevent threats but also apply micro-segmentation across the entire IT stack including users, connected devices, applications, network services, compute and storage platforms.
Prediction 3: Location-Based Services Support New Business Models and Greater Efficiency
A challenging skilled labor market and recurring supply chain issues will force companies to become more efficient, productive and resourceful. Working towards situational awareness of assets, inventory, work in process, workers, customers, contractors and the supply chain will help to better control costs, resources, quality and intellectual property.
This will require combining information technology (IT), Internet of Things (IoT) and operational technology (OT) data with contextual information about the environment. The new focus will be on capturing the exact location of work activities and assets, the identity of people and machines, the real-time applications being used and by whom or what, and the security posture of each device and machine.
Prediction 4: IT will consolidate operations onto a centralized network and security management platform
Businesses are deploying more diverse digital technologies (IoT) to improve user experience and simplify IT operations. At the same time, employees and customers want a better blended real-life/digital experience, regardless of the business model of the business.
These dynamics add to the complexity of networking and security, and complicate the management infrastructure. With heightened focus on end-user quality of experience while increasing protection against cyberattacks, IT will seek a single centralized management system with visibility across the network and the ability to configure edge-to-cloud QoS and security policies.
Prediction 5: SLA measurements will be based on user experience rather than device uptime and link availability
IT must optimize their networks to meet mixed work requirements. Businesses will have dedicated teams whose top priority will be ensuring a seamless end-user digital experience for employees and customers.
Adapting to a client-based view rather than a network view requires complete end-to-end visibility and application-level insight into whether the quality of experience is meeting end-user expectations. Strict control over network performance is no longer enough. The ability to quickly and remotely identify and resolve application response time and performance issues is critical to ensuring a seamless end-user digital experience no matter where the user connects.
Prediction 6: AIOps shifts from primarily providing insights to providing automated remediation
Automation takes center stage as artificial intelligence, cloud adoption and access to massive amounts of data are now commonplace in enterprise-grade network management solutions. Identifying clusters of similar error symptoms across the stack network leads to a coordinated workflow that will more easily provide IT organizations with options that allow solutions to automatically remediate issues.
The need to simplify IT efficiency and do more with less is driving human-assisted workflows that will allow administrators to review proposed changes and their impact, and then enable remediation of ongoing incidents in production.
About the Author: David Hughes is Chief Product and Technology Officer for Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company.
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