Enterprise networking trends in 2021 Preparing for the new normal

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if you're a member of an it team you've  probably gotten the hand of supporting your   remote workforce by now but as we prepare  for the new normal and the future of work   what should you be considering as  employees return to office stick around hey everybody welcome back to today in tech i'm  julia beauchamp and i'm here with brandon butler   senior research analyst for enterprise networking  at idc and we're going to be discussing what is   in the pipeline for enterprise networking in 2021  so brandon thank you so much for joining me today   yeah hi juliet thanks so much for  having me it's great to be here   so brandon if you could just give us a quick quick  overview of where we are now and where we've and   how we've gotten here over the past year now sure  yeah so it's a really exciting time in enterprise   networking right now you know obviously 2020 was  a really dynamic year we saw the you know covid um   uh you know pandemic which was really  tough for a lot of organizations and   it really required organizations to make a  really quick shift in in march of 2020 where uh   they were sending a bunch of their workers home  right so a bunch of workers used to come into   the office every day then businesses had to  support these workers now working remotely   and so that caused a lot of organizations to  rethink sort of what does my network need to   look like to support those remote workers and so i  think that there were a lot of solutions that were   put into place that were maybe sort of band-aid  solutions to help support those remote workers   and now as we're in 2021 um organizations are  thinking about two things they're thinking one   i'm gonna have workers coming back to my office  soon so what does my network need to look like   to support those workers who are coming back to  the office and then number two i'm going to have   a higher percentage of workers who are going to be  working remotely all the time now and so how do i   take those maybe band-aid solutions that i put in  place last year how do i make those business class   how do i make those enterprise grade to ensure  that the employees who maybe aren't coming back   into the office every day can still be productive  and have good experiences on the network exactly   like you mentioned the future of work is going  to be it feels sort of like a mix of what we   had before kovit and what we're dealing with now  there's going to be a hybrid work option for tons   i mean millions obviously of employees so  i'm wondering what it needs to be doing now   to prepare to support their future hybrid  workforce and also those employees who   either a need to be in the office every single  day and they are going to be there perhaps come   summer or fall and be those employees who like  i mentioned are going to be working a little   bit from home a little bit in the office but  certainly more in the office than they are now yeah certainly uh it shops are gonna have to  support both of these personas right you're   gonna have folks who are coming back into the  office and then folks who are working remotely so   why don't we talk about sort of what  that future office is going to look like   yeah specifically from a networking perspective so  you know as businesses are going to be welcoming   welcoming employees back to the office like  you said hopefully this summer maybe this fall   it'll be be a time hopefully this year where  workers are going to come back how is that office   space going to look different well one thing  that we've thought about is that we've seen this   increased reliance on these uh video communication  platforms of course zoom and webex and teams   and we think that that's here to stay so even as  you have employees back in the office you're still   going to be running most of your meetings via  these online collaboration platforms and so what   does that mean for the network these are really  high bandwidth applications that chew up a lot of   bandwidth on the network users expect really  low latency connections so that you don't have   any jitter on these video phone calls and and  and audio and so one of the things that we've   been thinking about is that organizations are  looking to ensure that their network is able to   meet the demands of these workers who are going  to rely on these collaboration tools even when   they come back into the office and so there are  a couple technologies that we're specifically   looking at from a networking specific perspective  um for example wi-fi six so this is um one of the   new standards in wi-fi that we saw come about in  the last couple of years and we're starting to see   uh it shops and and organizations really try to  start to embrace wifi6 as this next generation   wifi platform and then as you as you look to  deploy wi-fi six maybe you're looking to deploy   um a higher-end wired connection to support that  wi-fi environment so we're seeing things like   multi-gigabit ethernet switching come about where  folks are moving beyond just you know one gigabit   uh ethernet switching looking at 2.5 and  5 gig and even uh 10 and 25 gig ethernet   switching within the campus environment so  there's a number of technologies that we see   organizations starting to think about right now  of you know when i have workers coming back to   the office i may not have as many workers in the  office as i did pre-covid but those workers who   are in the office like i said are going to be  using these high bandwidth apps and so i need a   network that can support those applications  well that raises the question too of these   workers who are going to remain working from  home or in some capacity or perhaps obviously   the the pandemic really amplified the fact that  workers can now live anywhere because a lot of   organizations have these remote these remote work  policies and they're they're bulked up enough now   to support workers pretty much anywhere in the  world so not only are you going to have now   workers who um are preferring to stay home a few  days a week if not every single day but you may   now also be supporting brand new employees  who have never even been in your office   that were hired remotely and are going  to continue remotely because they don't   live near your office what sort of things should  it be preparing for now to support these employees   certainly now as they're working from home but how  can those changes be how will those changes still   be important in a post-coveted world yeah it's a  great question and one that we get fielded a lot   here at idc and one of the ways that i think about  it is this term that we've come up with called the   branch of one and so what do i mean by that you  know in an enterprise networking context we've in   the past supported branch offices you sort of have  your headquarters you have your campus environment   and then you have a branch environment and  these branch offices you know think of a retail   location or a gas station or something like  that that may have been a branch location that   you had to support now what do these branch  locations look like they are a branch of one   right you have single employees who you need to  support on your network so that's what we mean by   the branch of one and and this idea of supporting  remote workers um you know folks who are going to   be a remote full-time or even folks who are going  to be coming into the office a couple days a week   but then also working remotely a couple days a  week like i said i think that there were some   band-aid solutions that that organizations put  into place last year you know maybe they had a vpn   that they had for their employees to be able  to securely connect into their applications   um maybe there was uh some sort of uh cloud-based  uh security platform that you used um to be able   to uh do two-factor authentication for example  but these systems were sort of designed to   support a certain level of or number of workers  working remotely during the covet era that number   shot way up so one of the things that we saw was  um organizations have increased their reliance on   cloud-based platforms for managing their networks  because of the scalability that a cloud-based   platform enables so when you use a cloud-based  platform you can scale it up and then potentially   scale it back down as you need to so you know  one other interesting point was we did a survey   late last year um asking about the user experience  that folks are having while working remotely and   there were some pretty scary numbers around there  up to 70 percent of respondents said that they   are having uh network or application performance  issues multiple times a week and you know i think   this will resonate with a lot of people who may  have you know not a great internet connection or   there's a lot of people using the internet at home  and so we really think that there are some some   tools that organizations can think about deploying  to remote workers um you know not everyone is   going to need the same tool but there could be  some software-based tools that could provide   optimized connectivity to certain business  applications or cloud-based applications   we're starting to see some organizations  actually help pay for you know broadband   internet connectivity to remote workers help  subsidize the cost of that internet connection   um and then in in some sort of higher  end use cases you know think about for   executives or financial traders or healthcare  workers where you know if connectivity failure is   not an option for you then there are some hardened  devices like enterprise class devices that we're   seeing rolled out to some of these users that you  know provide a separate wi-fi network on your home   that uses the same credentials as what you would  use in the office or having a tool like a sd-wan   gateway that would provide really secure  and reliable connection to these cloud-based   applications that are being used so we  see these like enterprise grade tools   being rolled out to a certain class of workers um  who who need that sort of connectivity so i think   we're in the early stages here of businesses  trying to figure out you know what are these   tools that i need to put in place for my remote  workers to ensure that they can be productive   sure that makes sense because at first when you  were saying this i was wondering how is this   different than what enterprises were already  doing obviously a year ago now enterprises   sort of had to get on this immediately there  really wasn't an option and perhaps now they have   had the time they've been able to reflect and  they can be and i t teams can be a lot more   thoughtful about what tools they're rolling  out and to whom and that kind of brings me to   my next point and question for you which  you you've mentioned now obviously there's   a much heavier reliance on cloud applications  whether it's you know you're using teams all   the time or you're using salesforce you're  relying on these perhaps a lot more heavily   and you're also using them all from home so i'm  wondering how enterprises now are using the cloud   perhaps differently than they did in 2020 and  how are they going to continue to use the cloud   differently into 2021 um yeah it's another great  question and you know based on that survey that   i said that that we had looked into uh in december  one of the top things that we saw from that survey   was that businesses had actually increased  their reliance on cloud-based applications   last year during during 2020 and so why is that  well there's a couple reasons as you said these   these collaboration tools are increasingly hosted  in the cloud so that's one way that we saw the   increased use but we also saw organizations  using cloud-based applications for business   resiliency and business continuity so if you have  a an application that you were hosting internally   um then if you weren't going into the office  every day to service that if there's some sort   of issue with the application maybe you don't  have an opportunity to go into the office to fix   that and so we really saw kovit accelerate this  trend of folks moving to the cloud as a place to   to host applications like i said for for  resiliency and continuity so i think there's been   a number of ways that we've seen organizations um  you know obviously cloud isn't new this has been a   multi-year journey that organizations are looking  to to more fully embrace the cloud for a number of   applications and use cases but we really thought  kovit accelerated that trend in a lot of ways and   so now i think the question is that i have these  applications that are hosted in the cloud and by   the way it's not just one cloud it's it's  it's a multi-cloud and hybrid cloud world   you know how do i optimize my connectivity to  these cloud-based applications how do i ensure   that i have solid connectivity across these  multiple clouds and how do i ensure that my   remote employees and my employees are in the  office have these optimized connections into the   cloud as well so there's a number of different  layers that we're seeing and of of things that   folks are really taking an increased interest  in right now in 2021 as they're looking to sort   of firm up and put in put into more enterprise  class solutions into place compared to these   sort of solutions that were put in into place sort  of quickly last year yeah and i'm wondering too   about this well you mentioned the inability  perhaps to be able to go into your office   and um deal with whatever on-prem systems you  have there and to close out i'm curious about   this concept of sort of the using the cloud to  manage networks that seems like an interesting   concept that is especially applicable now when  perhaps not everyone on your it team is working   from home it's it's obviously a critically  important part of the business and maybe you've   got a team member or two in the office every  day that can fix something on-prem if something   goes absolutely haywire but i would imagine it's  especially useful now when you might have a lot of   your it team working from home still and perhaps  you may continue to have them to work from home   yeah certainly yeah this whole idea of using the  cloud not just as a place to host applications   and um and to really access applications that  you're using for your business but like you said   using the cloud is a platform for managing your  enterprise network this is again something that   we've seen it's it's been a multi-year trend  that we've seen of organizations increasingly   using the cloud as a management platform and  you know specifically i'm thinking about things   like cisco meraki for example or juniper mist  these are some of the companies that we see   that and hp aruba is another example extreme  uh networks and and ruckus all these companies   have cloud-based platforms for managing their  their wi-fi and ethernet switching and sd-wan   sort of your campus networking environments and  yeah this is something that we've also seen pick   up um after last year organizations are looking  for these cloud-based platforms to provide more   centralized management to provide more resiliency  so you don't have to like we said go back into an   office to manage some of these networks we also  see these cloud-based platforms being a great   way to access some of the sort of latest and  greatest and cool new technology that we see in   the networking market if you think about the use  of machine learning and artificial intelligence to   help you to understand what's happening in  your networking environment and maybe if   there is a problem provide some what we call  guided remediation to if there is a problem   here's how you fix it we see some of these more  advanced automation tools being rolled out first   in these cloud-based platforms and so that can  be another driver for for folks using the cloud   as a management platform so just to provide us  sort of where are we now we expect that about   a third of the wi-fi uh new wi-fi installments  that are done in 2021 are going to be managed   from cloud-based platforms and just to give you  an idea over the next four years we expect that   number to rise to about half so again this is  something that we saw kovid accelerate last year   and it's something that we expect is going to be  increasingly important into the future as well and   julia i just want to mention one other thing  that uh you know a lot of these trends that i   talked about are things that we're going to be  covering at our idc directions conference this   is a virtual conference that we do at idc every  year and this year it's going to be on march 19   or sorry march 9th and march 16th um i'm going to  be specifically talking about the branch of one   concept that we talked about and supporting remote  workers and i'd certainly encourage folks to tune   in virtually either uh live or on demand to check  out a bunch of great content that we have at idc   for our directions conference this year fantastic  well thank you so much britton i do have one last   question for you which relates to managing your  network in the cloud you say that a third in   2012 of new installations in 2021 are going to be  managed in the cloud i'm kind of wondering about   the other two-thirds what about them and why  would they why would someone opt to not manage   their network in the cloud so if you've got an it  team that's now dealing with you know a new office   space or they're dealing or they're going to be  converting their office space to support their   in person and remote workers what's the what's  the drawback i guess sure so though the sort of   traditional way that organizations have managed  their uh campus networks has been using these   on-premise management systems and platforms and  so that's sort of been the way that folks have   done this for a long time and this cloud-based  management platform is sort of a a new way if   you will that organizations are are increasingly  thinking about managing their platforms but yeah   there's a lot of advantages to using an on-premise  based system as well so if you are you know have   an i.t team that is really good at managing that  network you have a dedicated team for your wi-fi   environment for example who's able to optimize  that wi-fi environment to make sure that it's   running you know the best that it can and you  have a team of engineers maybe who are you know   managing that network on a day-to-day basis maybe  you have a team that's you know invested a lot of   resources into training and education um around  managing these networks those organizations maybe   don't see a huge need to use a cloud-based  platform i think it's the organizations that   we see using a cloud-based platform fall into a  couple categories number one folks who have a very   distributed network so if you're managing a lot  of sites having to you know manage each of those   sites individually can be can be tricky if you're  using an on-premise system having a cloud-based   platform allows you to sort of centrally  manage a bunch of these distributed sites   um and then the other one would be uh lean i.t  if you will so if these are it folks who wear a   lot of different hats if you're not just managing  your wi-fi environment but you also have to manage   you know your security and you also have to manage  your your broadband and mpls connections in your   wide area network and you sort of wear a lot of  hats as an i.t professional then maybe the cloud  

could offer you some advantages for offloading  some of the sort of day-to-day management that   you need to do on a uh for your network and sort  of rely on on a cloud-based platform to to take   some of that heavy lifting off so again it's  it's an area that we see continuing to emerge   and and growing and it's certainly something  that we're going to be watching closely this year   great well thank you so much brandon i think that  these are some really valuable insights as it   teams prepare to have and support some in-person  employees and also like we mentioned to continue   to support remote employees and i think there's  going to be definitely a lot on it's plate um to   juggle these two groups of people and hopefully  some valuable lessons here for them so thank you   so much again brandon i really appreciate it yeah  it was great to be here thanks for having me and   thank you all so much for watching this episode of  today in tech if you liked this video be sure to   give it a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel  hit the bell icon in the corner so you're notified   every single time we post a new video if you  have any questions about network management or   where you think enterprise networking might go  in 2021 please do leave a comment below really   interested to hear from you and if you have  any specific questions i'll get back to you   or i'll get back to you on brandon's behalf thanks  again for watching and we'll see you next time

2021-03-13

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