TECH TALK
W
henever a new technology
emerges that challenges the
way people and businesses
have been doing things for years or even
decades, the initial excitement is soon
over-shadowed by uncertainty, anxiety
and reluctance to try something new.
The CIO, rest of senior management,
the IT department and the teams and
lines of business who would be impacted
by the new technology are all likely to
wonder why change is needed, if the
current solution is working just fine. We
are all creatures of habit after all.
It’s understandable that the CIO and his
peers, who are ultimately accountable
if the new solution doesn’t live up its
promise, would be apprehensive about
embracing a new, untried and untested
technology. But, over time, following
much consideration, assessment
and consultation with experts, this
uncertainty and apprehension tends to
subside. In a sense, this pattern could
be compared to the ‘Hype Cycles’ by
Gartner: Innovation Triggers (such as
brain-computer interfaces), progress
to a Peak of Inflated Expectations
(autonomous vehicles), and from there to
a Trough of Disillusionment (augmented
reality) – before emerging in the Slope of
Enlightenment (virtual reality) and finally
the Plateau of Productivity.
When it comes to enterprise networking,
SD-WAN is one technology that has
many CIOs on the fence at the moment.
Yet, it is expected to reach the Plateau of
Productivity in only a few years – which
means that forward-looking enterprises
should start planning their move to
this emerging technology now to make
sure they won’t be playing catchup
with their more agile competitors later.
While it might be tempting to sit tight,
early movers in SD-WAN will have the
advantage, and any arguments for not
taking the plunge with the technology
can be easily rebuked.
If it isn’t broken…
As enterprise bandwidth demands
continue to grow, it is becoming
prohibitively expensive for the CIO
to continue adding more and more
dedicated network capacity for their
private WAN. On the other hand,
www.intelligentcio.com
“It’s
understandable
that the CIO and
his peers, who
are ultimately
accountable if
the new solution
doesn’t live up its
promise, would
be apprehensive
about embracing
a new, untried
and untested
technology.”
security and reliability concerns are
increasing with the public Internet,
which is not fit for purpose when it
comes to business-critical applications.
As network traffic continues on its
upward trajectory, congestion is
likely to have a detrimental effect on
end user experience, leading to jitter
and lag when accessing cloud-based
applications. And, as technologies such
as the Internet of Things, machine
learning, cognitive computing, artificial
intelligence and real-time data
analytics become more and more
widely adopted, network congestion
will worsen. So, simply sticking to the
way things have been done for years
won’t work in the long term.
Instead, more and more CIOs are
realising the benefits of hybrid enterprise
networks, which combine the scalability
of the public Internet with the reliability
and security of a private WAN. These
hybrid networks and SD-WAN are a
perfect match. One of the benefits of SD-
WAN is that it enables users to do more
with existing bandwidth by giving the
CIO control over how traffic routed – over
the Internet or the private network – and
how bandwidth is allocated for different
applications. This ensures that cloud-
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