2013: Top 7 trends from Juniper Networks

BANGALORE, INDIA: Ravi Chauhan, managing director, India and SAARC region, Juniper Networks lists out his top seven trends for the new year.

1. Software Defined Networking (SDN)

In 2013, SDN will slowly start to move away from its present formative existence to addressing challenges currently faced by the network as it evolves to support critical business applications. With the level of visibility and control anticipated with SDN, providers could streamline security processes, ensure consistent configuration and policy enforcement across wired and wireless network infrastructures, and better demonstrate to customers that they can mitigate the complex threats that exist in clouds today.

2. Refinement of Cloud computing

The New Year will see content interoperability and standardization across cloud providers starting to take a more prominent shape. Regulations to ensure security will emerge as a critical factor for cloud customers. Also, we will start to see more service delivery pricing options that deliver varying ranges of Quality of Service across more cloud providers.

3. Web Security & Web Intrusion Deception Technology

2013 will be an exciting year in the domain of web security as we will see Web Intrusion Deception Systems becoming main-stream. The system will help detect, track and prevent hackers in real-time resulting in "No False Positives". In the world of zero-day web attacks, automated hacker tools, malicious web content, and similar threats aimed at companies' websites and web applications, intrusion deception technology will likely be our main defense going forward.

Deception-based technology can actively prevent attackers and stop even the most sophisticated zero-day web attacks. It can catch an attack in progress, profile the attack, learn the attacker's behavior, and then use that behavior to thwart future attacks. Deception technology also provides device level tracking beyond IP address tracking that allows for attackers to be uniquely identified, monitored and blocked.

4. Datapocalypse

"Information explosion" is presently grappling our world. Mobile data traffic coupled with the increasing use of video to deliver on-demand content to audiences around the world is seeing an exponential increase in traffic. In the face of this increased demand, legacy approaches to networking are proving unsustainable. They are too costly, too complex, and simply cannot scale. In 2013, we will witness the "new network" that will transform the economics and experience of networking by providing a scalable, efficient and reliable way of quelling the present data deluge.

5. Big Data

Big Data Analytics is a trend that is changing the way businesses gather intelligence and evaluate their operations. In 2013, we will witness breakthrough big data solutions from vendors on revamping of legacy infrastructure and applications and networks being tested to the brink in providing the required performance and scale to process large data sets in real time.

6. Mobile Computing & Virtualization

In the last 18 months, businesses have seen increased demand from end users to bring their own devices to work. IT initiatives for the next 12 months will result in business decision-makers expanding the use of mobile apps for employees, customers, and business partners. Also, we will finally see enterprise systems being run on a mobile phone with virtual machines and virtual software gaining a steady momentum. It is going to change the way we look at mobile devices going ahead.

7. Interconnection as processing power

2013 promises to bring together a mandate and a new set of principles for aligning network infrastructure with business strategy to make them efficient and provide increased performance without any inherent bottlenecks. As companies embrace new technology trends, their IT departments will have an opportunity to shift from basic support and maintenance functions to become engines of growth going forward.