Networking
Network Infrastructure
Increases in applications and data have created demands on the network that are exponentially growing requiring the Layer 2 and Layer 3 infrastructure to constantly evolve. Enterprises have gone from 10Mbps, 100Mbps, 1Gbps, 10Gbps, and now 40Gbps and 100Gbps connectivity in a decade. The proliferation of access layer devices in the network, both wired and wireless, require new densities and performance levels at the core that require investments in network infrastructure.
Security and Compliance
Network security has exploded as enterprises have become increasingly interconnected both within the organization and with their business partners and customers. Compliance and regulatory bodies have been tasked with ensuring that data is properly secured, with standards applying to almost every vertical: SOX, PCI, HIPAA and more. This has brought about an entire new generation of products augmenting and replacing traditional approaches like traditional firewalls and IDS systems.
Network Tools and Monitoring
Building the most robust, highest performance environment is important, but without the ability to monitor and measure that environment IT cannot be sure it is meeting its SLAs and providing the best experience to its users. That is where tools and monitoring solutions come in. A network monitoring solution should provide comprehensive application and network performance management and visibility.
Application Networking
Application networking is a wide reaching term that refers to that category of solutions that address Layer 4 through 7 of the network. These solutions have exploded in recent years due to the trends of data center consolidation and web application proliferation. These trends require that applications be made highly available both across servers in the data centers and across data centers themselves, through advanced application delivery mechanisms involving both local and global load balancing.
Cloud Networking
The latest development in networking is an emerging set of solutions referred to as Cloud Networking. What is Cloud Networking? It is the logical evolution of the trend of data center consolidation. The cloud presents a means of centralizing all the data and applications in a transparent infrastructure that can be extended when needed. The cloud requires the ability to abstract and virtualize every layer – well beyond virtualizing servers. This has introduced a whole new suite of products that virtualize routing, switching, firewalls, IPS, even I/O to provide the most flexible, extensible solution possible.
