CLOUD AND CYBER
How networks are keeping pace with digital transformation
Even before the pandemic struck , factors such as hybrid cloud meant network management was becoming an ever more complicated affair . We take a closer look .
WRITTEN BY : WILLIAM SMITH
Networks are taken as a given in the modern world . We expect unbroken connectivity and security , but it ’ s not often we think about the network management that makes that possible . Digital networks themselves are a surprisingly recent development . Packet switching technology , which allows data to be sent in chunks rather than as an unwieldy unbroken string , was first demonstrated only fifty years ago at London ’ s National Physical Laboratory . Other landmarks are more familiar to us — the World Wide Web in 1990 being the most prominent .
Networks are still very much in flux . In the business space , one of the major trends in recent times has been softwaredefined wide area networking , or SD-WAN . Put simply , the practice is an evolution of traditional wide area networking , which was intended to allow employees access to servers hosted in an enterprise ’ s data centre . Clearly , times have changed and that approach is becoming rarer every day .
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