Private 5G is technology that can be used in local area networks. Not to be confused with the public 5G connectivity offered by telephone companies, private 5G is used in corporate campuses, office buildings, factories and warehouses, event venues, and airports, either instead of or in addition to Wi-Fi.According to an unpublished survey from research firm Forrester, 44% of corporate telecommunications decision-makers plan to create private 5G networks. Industries with significant private 5G plans include water and waste, high-tech manufacturing, and retail and wholesale. Other areas where private 5G might crop up include stadiums and construction sites, says Forrester analyst Andre Kindness. "They're prime for 5G technologies."To read this article in full, please click here
The appeal of private 5G is driving companies to explore ways to improve the performance, scalability and flexibility of their mobile networks.Enterprise deployment of the technology has been slow due to the pandemic and an immature device ecosystem, but that's not stopping early adopters. To help get started, they're turning to service providers, which can include telcos, private wireless vendors, hardware vendors, systems integrators, and major cloud players.To read this article in full, please click here
Private 5G networks promise to offer low latency, high reliability, and support for massive numbers of connected devices, but enterpise deployment has been slower than expected, experts say, due to the pandemic and a slow-to-evolve device ecosystem.IDC reports that the global private LTE and 5G wireless infrastructure market totaled $1.8 billion in revenue in 2021 and will increase to $8.3 billion by 2026, but that spending will grow "slower than expected" in the next couple of years.To read this article in full, please click here
Private 5G networks promise to offer low latency, high reliability, and support for massive numbers of connected devices, but enterpise deployment has been slower than expected, experts say, due to the pandemic and a slow-to-evolve device ecosystem.IDC reports that the global private LTE and 5G wireless infrastructure market totaled $1.8 billion in revenue in 2021 and will increase to $8.3 billion by 2026, but that spending will grow "slower than expected" in the next couple of years.To read this article in full, please click here
Secure access service edge, or SASE, combines networking and security into a cloud-based service, and it’s growing fast. According to Gartner projections, enterprise spending on SASE will hit almost $7 billion this year, up from under $5 billion in 2021. Gartner also predicts that more than 50% of organizations will have strategies to adopt SASE by 2025, up from less than 5% in 2020.To read this article in full, please click here
Exacerbated by the pandemic, the chip shortage neared crisis proportions at the start of the year. Network vendors calculated the impact on their businesses in recent earnings reports: Cisco's current product backlog is at nearly $14 billion, Juniper reported a backlog of $1.8 billion, and Arista said that lead times on sales are 50 to 70 weeks.Then Russia invaded Ukraine, putting even more stress on the global supply chain. Ukraine manufactures 70% of the world's neon gas, which is needed for the industrial lasers used in semiconductor manufacturing, according to research firm TrendForce.To read this article in full, please click here
Exacerbated by the pandemic, the chip shortage neared crisis proportions at the start of the year. Network vendors calculated the impact on their businesses in recent earnings reports: Cisco's current product backlog is at nearly $14 billion, Juniper reported a backlog of $1.8 billion, and Arista said that lead times on sales are 50 to 70 weeks.Then Russia invaded Ukraine, putting even more stress on the global supply chain. Ukraine manufactures 70% of the world's neon gas, which is needed for the industrial lasers used in semiconductor manufacturing, according to research firm TrendForce.To read this article in full, please click here
SASE adoption has been skyrocketing since the start of the pandemic. Secure access service edge, a term Gartner coined in 2019, combines security and networking in a single, scalable, cloud-based platform that fits well in a world in which employees work from home and mostly access cloud-based apps and services.Now Gartner is pushing a new acronym. Turns out, companies might prefer to get their SASE without the “A” — just security service edge, or SSE. Gartner this month published a Magic Quadrant for SSE (something the company never did for SASE); it's available from vendors listed in the report (here and here, for example).To read this article in full, please click here
SASE adoption has been skyrocketing since the start of the pandemic. Secure access service edge, a term Gartner coined in 2019, combines security and networking in a single, scalable, cloud-based platform that fits well in a world in which employees work from home and mostly access cloud-based apps and services.Now Gartner is pushing a new acronym. Turns out, companies might prefer to get their SASE without the “A” — just security service edge, or SSE. Gartner this month published a Magic Quadrant for SSE (something the company never did for SASE); it's available from vendors listed in the report (here and here, for example).To read this article in full, please click here
SASE vendor Cato Networks is adding fine-grained cloud access security broker (CASB) controls to its platforms.When employees working from home or branch locations log into SaaS services such as Office 365 or Dropbox or Salesforce, a CASB gateway can track the applications employees access, where they log in from, and sometimes even what they do when using those applications.Previously, Cato only offered limited CASB controls, enabling companies to allow or prohibit the use of particular SaaS tools, says Dave Greenfield, Cato's director of technology evangelism. Now, individual behaviors can be controlled. For example, users might be allowed to download documents from certain cloud file-sharing providers but can only upload documents to a company's preferred platform.To read this article in full, please click here
SASE vendor Cato Networks is adding fine-grained cloud access security broker (CASB) controls to its platforms.When employees working from home or branch locations log into SaaS services such as Office 365 or Dropbox or Salesforce, a CASB gateway can track the applications employees access, where they log in from, and sometimes even what they do when using those applications.Previously, Cato only offered limited CASB controls, enabling companies to allow or prohibit the use of particular SaaS tools, says Dave Greenfield, Cato's director of technology evangelism. Now, individual behaviors can be controlled. For example, users might be allowed to download documents from certain cloud file-sharing providers but can only upload documents to a company's preferred platform.To read this article in full, please click here
The biggest outages of 2021 had one thing in common: they affected major infrastructure or services providers and, as a result, affected large numbers of enterprises and end users. The lesson? Companies need to be careful about putting all their infrastructure eggs in one basket, or, if they must, to prepare for downtime if that particular service goes down."There needs to be a plan in place," says Angelique Medina, head of product marketing at ThousandEyes, a Cisco-owned network intelligence company that tracks internet and cloud traffic. "Organizations don't need to be at the mercy of the availability of any one particular service."To read this article in full, please click here
Messaging services vendor Interop Technologies runs three data centers to provide services to customers and to run its own back-office systems. Interop also provides turnkey hardware/software solutions that run at customer sites. Pandemic-related hardware shortages, particularly those of servers and storage, have put a severe crimp in the way it does business."When you go to procurement, you get so much push-back," said Joshua Collazo, the company's director of infrastructure. "This is back ordered, that is back ordered."Before the pandemic, the company was able to jump on opportunities quickly. "That's gone away," he said. "Ad-hoc has gone the way of the dodo for us."To read this article in full, please click here
Messaging services vendor Interop Technologies runs three data centers to provide services to customers and to run its own back-office systems. Interop also provides turnkey hardware/software solutions that run at customer sites. Pandemic-related hardware shortages, particularly those of servers and storage, have put a severe crimp in the way it does business."When you go to procurement, you get so much push-back," said Joshua Collazo, the company's director of infrastructure. "This is back ordered, that is back ordered."Before the pandemic, the company was able to jump on opportunities quickly. "That's gone away," he said. "Ad-hoc has gone the way of the dodo for us."To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert is Cisco’s most prestigious and most difficult certification to achieve, typically requiring years of industry experience and a deep understanding of networking technologies. The lab portion of the exam alone is eight hours long and costs $1,600, and candidates typically spend much more than that on preparatory courses. But professionals with the expert-level CCIE networking certification are in demand, and the value is reflected in significantly higher salaries. "It is a preeminent certification in the industry," says Nick Marentic, senior manager for IT infrastructure and security at cybersecurity training firm Cybrary. "It requires years in the industry to understand the concepts contained."To read this article in full, please click here
Secure access service edge (SASE) is a network architecture that rolls SD-WAN and security into a single, centrally managed cloud service that promises simplified WAN deployment, improved security, and better performance.According to Gartner, SASE’s benefits are transformational because it can speed deployment time for new users, locations, applications and devices as well as reduce attack surfaces and shorten remediation times by as much as 95%.With the pandemic, adoption of SASE has been on an upward swing. A June report from Sapio Research, commissioned by Versa Networks, finds 34% of companies are already using SASE, and another 30% plan to in the next six to 12 months.To read this article in full, please click here
Secure access service edge (SASE) is a network architecture that rolls SD-WAN and security into a single, centrally managed cloud service that promises simplified WAN deployment, improved security, and better performance.According to Gartner, SASE’s benefits are transformational because it can speed deployment time for new users, locations, applications and devices as well as reduce attack surfaces and shorten remediation times by as much as 95%.With the pandemic, adoption of SASE has been on an upward swing. A June report from Sapio Research, commissioned by Versa Networks, finds 34% of companies are already using SASE, and another 30% plan to in the next six to 12 months.To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco’s network certification lineup underwent a major overhaul last year, and one of the big changes is that specialization options appear at the professional level with the Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP).Before Cisco rearchitected its certifications, there were 10 concentrations associated with Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), Cisco’s foundational certification. As of last year, the CCNA no longer has different tracks. It’s focused on networking fundamentals, and there’s only one exam.To read this article in full, please click here
COVID-19 kicked off one of the most disruptive economic periods since World War II, and companies scrambled to shift business processes to the cloud to meet escalating digital demands. In fact, companies digitized many activities at a rate 20% to 25% faster than previously thought possible, according to research from McKinsey & Company.That acceleration has impacted the IT workforce: 85% of IT hiring managers say their hiring needs have changed, according to a survey by colocation provider INAP. This creates an opportunity for IT professionals who want to move ahead in their careers. Getting trained in key technologies can be a steppingstone not only to better pay but also to leadership jobs with more responsibilities.To read this article in full, please click here
Maria Korolov