Top 5 predictions for networking industry in 2008

LONDON, UK: Intelliden, a leading provider of intelligent networking (IN) solutions that enable organizations to control, manage and scale their networks, today announced key predictions for the networking industry in 2008.

“The networking industry is facing a critical time of change,” said Glen Tindal, CTO and co-founder of Intelliden. “The rapid adoption of IP-based service offerings such as VoIP and IPTV, data centers automation solutions and unified communications have all placed increasingly complex demands on the network. The ability to automate and simplify network resources will become more and more critical.”

Each one of the five predictions for the networking industry is a harbinger of increased IT infrastructure complexity for enterprise and service provider organizations. The industry trends outlined below will require these organizations to automatically and intelligently reconfigure their networks to provision these new services successfully in the future.

1. The edge of the network will be everywhere

The 'edge of the network' continues to be refined and extended. Today, the edge extends to your Blackberry, Apple iPhone or Xbox. These devices come wirelessly enabled, and are capable of accessing feeds on the news, weather, and sports. Their processing power and network speeds are continuing to rise.

In 2008, Intelliden expects the network will not only need to manage a significant number of new touch points—and more services on top of those touch points—but it will have to redefine quality expectations and ease-of-use. This will place greater strain on network professionals to make sure all the moving parts work well together.

2. The next frontier of virtualization is the network

Thus far, virtualization has largely focused on servers, storage and applications. In 2008, Intelliden expects to see forays into ‘network virtualization’. Data center initiatives by major hardware providers require greater automation and virtualization of network resources. In today’s distributed enterprise, organizations have multi-threaded servers with multiple racks running thousands of applications, and supporting tens of thousands of users across numerous locations.

This has created the tipping point for the virtualization of multi-vendor network resources — so services can be deployed rapidly and cost effectively and user groups have the right access. Intelliden predicts rapid innovation in this area as well as more partnerships and greater M&A activity across the server, storage and network domains.

3. Habits of Millennials will become entrenched in the enterprise, placing new demands on the network

Rapid adoption of unified communications and Web 2.0 technologies driven by the Millennial Generation has transformed the role of enterprise networks. Bandwidth-intensive, real-time applications and a growing number of mobile devices are placing new demands on IT infrastructure.

To keep up in 2008, enterprises — especially those with distributed network environments — will have to accelerate the automation of their networks to better support these new services and reduce the burden and error potential inherent in manual network processes.

4. Organizations will no longer be able to fix network security in the rear view mirror

The new world of communications means greater collaboration and richer services. It also means more complex layers of technology, and more security threats and vulnerabilities. Thus far, security solutions have typically focused on eliminating threats like viruses, Trojans and worms. But the growing number of new risks is overwhelming traditional defenses.

In 2008, Intelliden predicts a distinct shift to a policy-oriented approach to risk mitigation — one which provides intelligent security through proactive processes such as entitlement and access authentication. Security will be managed through these carefully structured policies, which detect unauthorized changes and provide protection from potential risks before they inflict harm.

5. Consumers will demand IP-based communications on a par with traditional phone service quality

Telcos have been slow to bring VoIP and IPTV services to market opening the door for more agile competitors e.g. Skype, Google, MySpace and Flickr. Intelliden believes that 2008 will see competition broaden from the Telcos and ISPs to the digital media companies.

As the penetration for IP-based services starts to reach critical mass, consumers will demand the same quality levels they are accustomed to from traditional phone service, forcing service providers to accelerate their infrastructure upgrade to support better levels of QoS.

In order to fend off the cable threat, incumbent service carriers will also begin broader roll outs of IPTV with a converging IP network theme—the combination of Video-on-Demand and Internet access.