Paul Whimpenny is Senior Officer for Digital Strategy at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), an agency that leads international efforts to defeat hunger. Its goal is to achieve food security for all and make sure that people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives. It has more than 194 member states and works in over 130 countries worldwide.Our organization, like many others has been both inspired and slightly terrified at the same time by the emergence of new digital markets. From AirBnB to Spotify, we see how whole industries can be changed almost in the blink of an eye, sometimes triggering a rapid decline of more traditional industries.To read this article in full, please click here
What is digitalization?
According to Gartner, “digitalization is the use of digital technologies to change a business model and provide new revenue and value-producing opportunities. It is the process of moving to a digital business.” This includes evolving existing products more quickly, and being more agile in bringing new products to market.At a greater level of detail, digitalization means that the enterprise implements its critical business processes in software. These include:
Marketing to prospective customers
Engaging with existing customers
Managing the relationships with suppliers
Managing the entire production to fulfillment process
Managing the relationships with partners
Managing the relationships with employees and contractors
It is also clear from the Gartner research that CEO’s expect digitalization to drive growth in sales and profits and that they expect their technology management teams (IT) and technology leadership teams (the CIO and his staff) to successfully lead and implement the technology initiatives that will deliver these benefits from digitalization.To read this article in full, please click here
In a rush to capitalize on the SD-WAN market opportunity, some SD-WAN vendors seem to be playing fast and loose with their appliances.At a recent customer site of ours, Nirvik Nandy, CISO of SD-WAN Experts and CEO of Red Lantern, a security and compliance consultancy, and I collaborated on a security analysis of SD-WAN architectures. We conducted penetration testing of several SD-WAN solutions, looking atthe appliances and cloud architectures. Details of how we tested and vendor results are necessarily confidential. However, I can share with you some of our overall findings about appliances – we’ll get to the cloud at a later date.SD-WAN security: what it really means
First, some context: SD-WAN vendors speak about their architectures as being secure and that’s true to an extent. All SD-WAN solutions secure traffic in transit. But there’s more to network security than protecting data against eavesdropping and wiretapping, which is why companies deploy next-generation firewall (NGFW), intrusion prevention systems (IPS), and more. SD-WAN and security vendors have been addressing this need, integrating the functionality of one another into solutions that provide networking and security.To read this article in full, please click here
In the world of wireless, the term Wi-Fi is synonymous with wireless access, even though the term Wi-Fi itself (and the Wi-Fi Alliance) is a group dedicated to interoperability between different wireless LAN products and technologies.The standards themselves are part of the 802.11 family of standards, courtesy of the IEEE. With terms such as “802.11b” (pronounced “Eight-O-Two-Eleven-Bee”, ignore the “dot”) and “802.11ac”, the alphabet soup of standards that began in the late 1990s continues to see improvements in throughput and range as we race to the future to get faster network access.Along the way, improvements are being made by adopting new frequencies for wireless data delivery, as well as range improvements and reduced power consumption, to help support initiatives like “The Internet of Things” and virtual reality.To read this article in full, please click here
In the world of wireless, the term Wi-Fi is synonymous with wireless access, even though the term Wi-Fi itself (and the Wi-Fi Alliance) is a group dedicated to interoperability between different wireless LAN products and technologies.The standards themselves are part of the 802.11 family of specifications written by the IEEE, eachwith its own letter code after the intial 80211, such as “802.11b” (pronounced “Eight-O-Two-Eleven-Bee”, ignore the “dot”) and “802.11ac”. This alphabet soup that began in the late 1990s continues evolve, with improvements in throughput and range as we race to the future to get faster network access.Along the way, improvements are being made by adopting new frequencies for wireless data delivery, as well as range improvements and reduced power consumption, to help support initiatives like “The Internet of Things” and virtual reality.To read this article in full, please click here
Recently we’ve watched netops and devops teams struggle to navigate complex networks, regulate change management, meet competitive deadlines, and break through the barriers posed by siloed IT structures. They are plagued with challenges that make the thought of five-nine SLAs a farfetched dream. The top priority in these tough times is implementing a system that helps them achieve their goals faster, without compromising quality. That’s we’re seeing automation come in.Automation is no longer a new concept. It is an essential part of every application lifecycle, from the development stage to the final deployment. Gone are the days when users, to copy a file, would open the command prompt, navigate to the directory, then manually identify the file’s final location and specify the command with the right syntax. This process was not only incredibly tedious – it was extremely error-prone. Now, users can simply drag and drop files to copy them. The functionality remains the same, but automation does the heavy lifting instead of the user.To read this article in full, please click here
Evolving your network to have the characteristics of a platform is a core requirement of the Pervasive Network. The goal is to have a network that delivers greater value by reducing operational costs, while allowing for the rapid addition of new functionality and services to consumers, wholesale players or Industry X.0 – the emerging modern enterprise defined by cyber-physical production systems that combine communications, IT, data and physical elements. It is the enabler of many of the new technologies – 5G, VR and IoT – that are driving massive industry disruption and bringing new consumer services and industry solutions to market. To achieve this the network needs to adopt the characteristics of a successful software platform such as Google, Amazon or Facebook:To read this article in full, please click here
Across all sorts of networks today – in enterprises large and small, service providers, government agencies, and beyond – there is a transformation towards a software-driven architecture. Where procedures were once manual, they are becoming more automated, driven perhaps foremost by the need for agility, while maintaining availability and protection.That transformation is coming in a broad arc, not a single drop-in solution, and the industry is still figuring it all out; you’ll see me write more about “softwarization” of the network here in the future. In this post, I’ll discuss a burgeoning aspect of this transformation towards automation: a new technology called network verification, which helps predictively ensure that business goals match reality, even throughout frequent change. With this automated assurance of resilience and security intent, the network can become more agile. And network verification does that with math!To read this article in full, please click here
With the billions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices projected to come on-stream over the next few years, questions are arising as to just where the bandwidth and radio channels are going to come from to make it all work.The sensors need to send their likely increasingly voluminous data back to networks wirelessly to be processed.RELATED: 8 tips for building a cost-effective IoT sensor network
But there’s a finite amount of radio spectrum available, and much of it is already allocated to incumbent primary users, such as public safety agencies. Other spectrum is dedicated to mobile network operators who have licensed chunks of it. Some is leftover in the millimeter frequencies, which is thus far pretty much untested in the real world — it’s going to be used for 5G in the future.To read this article in full, please click here
SD-WAN is the hottest topic in networking today. On the one hand, analyst reports state that this industry is in its infancy with less than 5% adoption through 2017. On the other hand, the same analysts project over 50% customer adoption in the next 36 months. Why has adoption been modest to-date, and why is 10X acceleration expected now? The answer lies in understanding the differences between the first generation of SD-WAN (Gen1) and the second generation of SD-WAN (Gen2).In the old days, WAN routers were focused on providing connectivity using MPLS. The goal of Gen1 SD-WAN was to enable usage of broadband for connectivity. So Gen1 SD-WAN provided better VPN manageability and improved the delivery of voice traffic over broadband connections. However, like many first-generation products, Gen1 SD-WAN has serious limitations, three of which I examine below.To read this article in full, please click here
Everyone who has a stake in the internet of things, from device manufacturers to network service providers to implementers to customers themselves, makes important contributions to the security or lack thereof in enterprise IoT, attendees at Security of Things World were told.“The key to all [IoT devices] is that they are networked,” Jamison Utter, senior business development manager at Palo Alto Networks told a group at the conference. “It’s not just a single thing sitting on the counter like my toaster, it participates with the network because it provides value back to business.”“I think the media focuses a lot on consumer, because people reading their articles and watching the news … think about it, but they’re not thinking about the impact of the factory that built that consumer device, that has 10,000 or 20,000 robots and sensors that are all IoT and made this happen.”To read this article in full, please click here
If you’ve researched purchasing an SD-WAN solution from an ISP, there’s a good chance it’s not your ISP who is providing the actual SD-WAN service. [say what?!]Way back in 2016… the demand for SD-WAN emerged so furiously, ISP’s have had to make a quick decision: 1) roll-out a solution immediately; or 2) get tabbed as an old rickety out-of-date ISP. Consequently, rather than building their own solution (a lengthy process), most ISP’s have decided to take the easy route and white label someone else’s vetted product.Many of these ISP’s have chosen VeloCloud to be the SD-WAN solution under the hood.To read this article in full, please click here
Every vendor today is spewing about the importance of managing the user experience. What this actually means, however, remains a mystery to most, and there are precious few approaches available to help you get a handle on the issue.Good and predictable user experience is no longer negotiable in this age of constant online business communications. Computer networks have effectively become the single most important tool driving corporate productivity.But user experience is one of the most difficult problems to address, especially on enterprise access networks, because each experience is influenced by a long list of moving parts, many of which are increasingly outside the control of IT. To read this article in full, please click here
Over the past decade, network management tools have evolved from being fault based to performance based. This has become a critical element in running infrastructure because faults don’t matter as much.That might seem like a strange thing to say, but consider the fact that critical infrastructure such as switches, routers, Wi-Fi access points and servers are deployed in a way to protect against outages. Infrastructure is built so redundantly today that any hardware device can go down and its likely no one will notice.Also on Network World: 7 must-have network tools
A bigger problem is managing user performance. Often users calling about a certain application not working well, but when the engineer looks at the dashboard, everything is green. Performance problems are much harder to diagnose and can kill employee productivity. To read this article in full, please click here
10 of the world's fastest supercomputersImage by Henrik5000 / Getty ImagesThe semi-annual Top500 ranking of the world’s fastest supercomputers is in for fall 2018 with China claiming 227 of the 500 spots on the list, although it managed to take just two places in the top 10. The United states took five of the top 10, including first and second place. New to the Top500 rankings at number 205 is Astra, an HPE-built machine at Sandia National Laboratories that is the first powered by ARM chips to make the list. The top 10 highlighted in this slideshow demonstrate what might become available in corporate data centers.To read this article in full, please click here
When Cisco announced its intent-based networking (IBN) strategy this summer, CEO Chuck Robbins called it the company’s biggest announcement in years.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
Blockchain, also referred to as distributed ledger, is the concept behind the success of Bitcoin and provides a dynamic digital register of transactions. Think of it as a database that’s distributed throughout a network. Information is continually shared and reconciled throughout multiple nodes and each one has an identical copy of the database. Transactions within this database are audited and agreed upon by consensus. This decentralized method of keeping track of changes ensures the ledger can’t be practically controlled by any one entity, eliminates the possibility of single-points of failure, and allows for the verification of transactions without the need for third-party intervention. Since each interaction is public, blockchain technology offers a reliable, incorruptible transaction-based infrastructure and the value it provides isn’t just limited to cryptocurrency.To read this article in full, please click here
Firewalls have become ubiquitous across enterprises over the past decade, but the combination of new and varied access methods combined with increasingly sophisticated attacks has forced network operators and security professionals to constantly evaluate their defenses. Typically, firewalls are on a five-year refresh cycle, according to Gartner researcher Adam Hils, and that gives organizations the opportunity to evaluate fairly regularly what type of firewall and what features best suit their needs.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: What is a firewall? +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When you buy your SD-WAN, or for that matter any WAN technology, you sort of assume that the vendor has the legal right to sell it to you.But what happens if they don’t? What happens if you’ve built your WAN on an illegally acquired technology?The question is not just theoretical. Last week, FatPipe sent me a press release pointing out how United States PTO Patent Court upheld a signature claim to its U.S. patent (number 6,775,235) for load balancing across disparate networks. Load balancing is a critical component of all SD-WAN products. As such, FatPipe could, in theory, claim licensing fees from SD-WAN players and their users.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For a very long time, IT professionals have made storage investments based on a few key metrics – how fast data can be written to a storage media, and how fast it can be read back when an application needs that information, and of course, the reliability and cost of that system. The critical importance of storage performance led us all to fixate on latency and how to minimize it through intelligent architectures and new technologies.Given the popularity of flash memory in storage, the significance of latency is not about to fade away, but a number of other metrics are rapidly rising in importance to IT teams. Yes, cost has always been a factor in choosing a storage investment, but with Cloud and object storage gaining popularity, the price of storage per GB is more than a function of speed and capacity, but also the opportunity cost of having to power and manage that resource. When evaluating whether to archive data on premises, or to send it offsite, IT professionals are now looking at a much wider definition of overall cost.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here