The end of the year is a great time to look back and see how our industry has changed and consider what the future holds for communications. The oncoming year will be full of development and change in the network world. Here are a few predictions that have been made that we agree with:
-
- SDN Moves Beyond the Data Center. The seeds of software-defined networking (SDN) are already taking root in the data center and now the WAN. Expect the SDN seeds to start sprouting in campus fabrics for both wired and wireless environments. The vision of end-to-end programmability and automation across all network domains will start becoming a reality in 2017. *Cisco blog
-
- Cyber-offense and cyber-defense capacities will increase. We will see an increased rate of sharing of cyber capabilities between the commercial and government spaces. Commercial threat intelligence capabilities will be adopted more broadly by organizations and corporations. *Tech Republic
-
- Feel the speed. The rapid growth of mobile broadband and video is generating tremendous volumes of traffic for backbone networks. This is forcing exponential growth in the bandwidth of the core networks, which are being upgraded from an average of 10GB to 40GB, to 100GB.This presents its own challenges, as these networks deliver a huge number of data packets per second, not least tracking all that network activity at full line-rate. As such, effective monitoring strategies and real-time troubleshooting will become a concern for businesses in 2017 and beyond. * eSP
-
- IoT in the Carpeted World. The Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming widely used in the operational technology (OT) part of the organization. Now COOs are beginning to see the value that IoT can bring to the workplace (the carpeted world). This can be via intelligent lighting, location services in the workplace or connected AC systems. Expect to see companies bringing together the myriad of “things” within their carpeted space and driving more consolidation—all enabled by better security mechanisms like segmentation and profiling. *Cisco blog
-
- Ransomware will spin out of control. Since January 1, 2016, Symantec’s Security Response group has seen an average of more than 4,000 ransomware attacks per day: a 300 percent increase over 2015, according to its 2016 Internet Security Threat Report. Most organizations rely on low-overhead prevention techniques, such as firewall and antivirus solutions or intrusion prevention to mitigate threats like these. However, these tools are insufficient, and breach data shows that detection and incident response must be improved. And as attackers continue to use social engineering and social networks to target sensitive roles or individuals within an organization to get to data, the need for comprehensive security education becomes even more critical. * CIO
Regardless of what changes may come, the network experts at Corporate Technologies Group can help you create your ideal network communications environment.
Corporate Technologies Group, Inc. (CTG) is in its 16th year of supporting business clients across the United States and specializes in supporting multi-location clients with complex VoIP and wide area network solutions. CTG provides customers with LAN/WAN monitoring, network assessments, and network services, as well as cloud services like hosted PBX, hosted infrastructure, and Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service. Additionally, the company provides customers with cloud service provider relationships and supports more than 140 different VoIP, WAN network, and cloud service providers. From network design to implementation, post install support to remediation, CTG is the single source for business technology. Learn more about CTG at www.ctgusa.net and follow their blog.
