News tagged: Automation

The power and potential of programmable communications

Efficient and effective communications have always underpinned society. Through the centuries, communications have evolved, and technology has accelerated that evolution. Following the advent of mobile communications in the 1990s, we now live in a world where immediate communications are ubiquitous, anywhere, anytime – whether voice, email, SMS, instant messaging, or the range of social media applications. This allows consumers to connect directly with one another and gives businesses a direct line to their customers, writes Divya Ghai Wakankar, the head of Digital Communications Solutions at BICS

22 July, 2021

Enterprises must address engineer training to make NetOps a success

New research commissioned by Opengear spanning the UK, the U.S., France, and Germany has found that nearly two-thirds (64%) of network managers, network architects, and network engineers said their organisations have hired dedicated network automation engineers to transition to network operations (NetOps). However, only one-third of respondents said their teams had undertaken industry training courses to achieve this goal.

28 June, 2021

Nokia and Vodafone Turkey trial intercontinental terabit IP link

Nokia announced it has successfully completed a trial with Vodafone Turkey, linking Asia and Europe with the intercontinental 1T (terabit) clear-channel IP interface. The network capacity milestone is part of an ongoing modernisation effort to future-proof Vodafone Turkey’s IP architecture.

14 August, 2020

Challenger B2B payment providers to grow transactions by 42% by 2022, as traditional vendors lose market share

A new study from Juniper Research has found that the volume of B2B payments facilitated by non-banks will exceed 53 billion in 2022, from a COVID-19 related low of 38 billion in 2020; representing 42% growth. (more…)

11 June, 2020

Aruba ESP cloud-native platform is launched for Intelligent Edge

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, introduced Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform), the industry’s first AI-powered, cloud-native platform that predicts and resolves problems at the network edge before they happen. (more…)

08 May, 2020

Conversations contact centre solution aims to enable businesses to offer connected customer experiences

Conversations, a new contact centre solution enabling businesses to integrate the world’s popular communication channels, has been launched by Infobip. Infobip is a global cloud communications company that enables businesses to build connected customer experiences across all stages of the customer journey at scale. (more…)

07 May, 2020

Nokia and ABI Research identify key trends in manufacturing investment to enable Industry 4.0

Nokia has partnered with ABI Research, an independent research firm, to survey more than 600 manufacturing decision-makers to assess investment strategies related to 4G/LTE, 5G and Industry 4.0. (more…)

06 November, 2019

Values-based consumers, recessionary fears, and global socio-political uncertainty will make 2020 year of adaptability

Forrester’s 2020 predictions identify key market dynamics that will impact companies’ growth in the coming year. 2020 will be the year that moves leaders’ attention to adaptability: the ability to understand and anticipate market dynamics — and rapidly exploit opportunities, both big and small. (more…)

22 February, 2019

How can CSPs exploit telco cloud?

It’s a challenging time for telcos, as the expectations of their subscribers rocket, and they attempt to mitigate a huge transition under the auspices of new networking and communications standards, writes Nathan Rader the director of NFV strategy at Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu.

(more…)

18 January, 2019

How to set your business up for networking success in 2019

The past 12 months have been challenging, even turbulent, for a lot of businesses. The continued drive towards digitalisation, the promise of emerging technologies and increasing cyber-threats has left many with lots of plates to spin. While I unfortunately can’t promise IT departments an easy year ahead, 2019 holds a lot of opportunity, too, wrties John Morrison, the vice president for EMEA sales and services at Extreme Networks. It will be a balancing act, but for those who get it right, they will set themselves up for success in 2019 and beyond. With this in mind, what are the top network trends for 2019, and what should businesses be aware of to drive growth but remain secure?

Security and IoT management
On average, there is some form of cyberattack every 39 seconds, and by 2021 the expected cost of cybercrime will be US$6 trillion per year, according to Comparitech. As the number of IoT devices increases, so too does the need for organisations to protect and secure business critical data. This means that companies need to strike the right balance between security and gathering important information and insights.

In 2019, businesses will take steps to protect their IoT investments and safeguard confidential company data through even greater investment in IoT security and management tools. Specifically, IT departments will turn to AI and machine learning to do a lot of the heavy lifting. As a further precaution, there will be a focus on the segmentation of applications, devices and networks to mitigate the impact of any data breach.

Automation, machine learning and analytics

Until fairly recently, network operations had been a manual, time consuming process for IT, with changes to the network configuration to support new apps potentially taking weeks. By tapping into the capabilities of automation, processes are being streamlined, meaning that IT can focus on more strategic projects and tasks.

By 2021, more than 25% of network infrastructure services will include autonomous self-managing packages, according to IDC. With automation, businesses can transform processes and workflows. In fact, a critical component of network-wide automation is network fabrics. Fabrics will continue to see widespread use in 2019, to support automation and simplify network operations across the data centre and campus networks. Machine learning technologies will be applied more widely too, going to the next level to provide more effective analytics, taking the guesswork out of network management.

Better networks and better wireless
From laptops to smartphones, to IoT devices and everything in between, connectivity is king and that crown won’t slip in 2019; more specifically, wireless connectivity. With the explosion in the number of IoT devices deployed creating a need for greater capacity, networks have needed to catch up. Enterprise organisations have responded in turn with many planning a move to 802.11ax, also known as Wi-Fi 6.

Wi-Fi 6 delivers high efficiency, while also offering capabilities for automation and programmability to streamline network operations. While Wi-Fi 6 is still relatively in its infancy, organisations in 2019 will start to deploy Wi-Fi 6 equipment and solutions, not just to meet demand today, but future-proof against even greater volumes of data in the future too.

Cloud and multi-cloud environments
Cloud and multi-cloud environments have significantly impacted the enterprise network, and they will continue to do so in 2019: in fact, the global cloud computing market is set to exceed US$200 billion this year. As organisations keep working towards their digital transformation goals, hybrid cloud deployments will become more common.

In order to support hybrid cloud deployments, it’s important for organisations to select management and visibility solutions that work across a mix of cloud-managed or on-premise deployments, and ideally those solutions would work across multi-vendor environments to ensure the most efficiencies.

Make your 2019 networking resolutions a reality
There will be a myriad of opportunities for businesses this year to further digitalisation. AI, automation and machine learning will help to streamline network operations, empowering IT to focus on more strategic, transformative projects. Wi-Fi 6 will usher in the next generation of connectivity, delivering consistently high performance across a variety of environments. While 2019 will bring significant advancements in digital transformation, businesses will need to keep a security-first mind-set when looking to implement and benefit from IoT devices across the enterprise. We’re excited for what’s in store for 2019, and are looking forward to the opportunities and challenges this year will bring.