The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated digital transformation and the need for IT departments to adapt to the working from home environment. While in recent months there has been a call from large corporates for the return of their staff to the office, many people have continued to work from their home offices. Some organizations have realized the benefits of a remote working culture, such as the ability to scale back on expensive offices, while others are adopting a hybrid approach that allows people to commute occasionally to the office and work from home most of the time. Infor-Tech Research Group says, "If the last two years have taught us anything, it's that organizations need their IT departments to survive and thrive in today's digital economy. This has now paved the way for IT leaders like yourself to expand on your department's maturity level and move out of a supportive role toward a more strategic role, enabling growth within your organization. The challenge then becomes, how do you move up the maturity ladder?"

Bridgeworks CEO, David Trossell speaks to Digitalisation World about WAN, SD-Wan and WAN Optimimisation Trends for 2021. It's often advisable to look back before stepping forward. While the adage is that history often repeats itself, hindsight is still an invaluable tool, as it allows us to learn from our mistakes. The key to success is then to apply the lessons that have been learnt. The WAN, SD-Wan and WAN Optimisation trends of 2020 can therefore enable us to make adjustments and improvements – even during the current Covid-19 pandemic.

David Trossell, CEO and CTO of Bridgeworks explains to Information Age how AI and machine learning can be used to accelerate WAN infrastructure. In turn, this will accelerate your data, reducing data transfer times down from days, to hours and minutes. Pure Storage claims that it has developed the IT industry's first integrated AI-ready infrastructure for deep learning. That may be true, but artificial intelligence (AI) is not new – far from it. There are many phrases that marketers can use to make even an old piece of technology sound completely brand new, or to place a vendor on the first rung of any given market's ladder; but, in actuality, it may mean that they're not the first.