Palo Alto Networks announced new capabilities to boost its single-vendor SASE solution enabling organizations to automate their increasingly complex IT and network operations center (NOC) functions. Additionally, the company announced features to secure IoT and automate branch management. With new AI-powered capabilities, organizations can confidently rely on Prisma SASE to generate better security outcomes and unlock operational efficiencies. According to the Gartner 2022 Roadmap for SASE Convergence report1, by 2025, 80% of enterprises will have adopted a strategy to unify web, cloud services and private application access using a SASE/SSE architecture, up from 20% in 2021. "With so many organizations adopting SASE, it is important to understand that in order to reap the full benefits, they need to move towards a single-vendor SASE approach. A mix-and-match approach increases complexity and makes it challenging to be proactive or isolate issues," said Kumar Ramachandran, senior vice president for Products, SASE.

The war between Russia and Ukraine has highlighted a number of potential weaknesses from energy security and in supply chains of chip set supplies and commodities such as food, to the exploitation of IT, through cyber-attacks and cyber-espionage. The latter can be a strength too, as new technologies have been tested in the conflict by, for example, Ukraine, to oust Russian forces from their territories. These include autonomous and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the use of artificial intelligence for data gathering to enable "precise strikes and effective surveillance and reconnaissance, which can – at least in part – be attributed to the knowledge which the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine is receiving from the western allies"; and the use of satellites such as Elon Musk's Starlink by Ukraine to attack Russian positions. Key to the success in the conflict is Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT). "The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war has exposed the importance of resilient PNT for a nation's safety and security. It has opened up doors to discussions on the fragility of GPS signals that can cost millions of human lives, when data is available to an enemy entity", writes Nibedita Mohanta for Geospatial World in her article, 'Why PNT is vital for national security?'.

Bridgeworks CEO, David Trossell features in and gets the cover of TaaS Magazine to discuss the importance of WAN acceleration in the industry of autonomous vehicles and planning for the future of data management in the automotive industry. Self-driving cars still have a long way to go before they become commonplace on public roads around the world. However, in the meantime all kinds of businesses are having to adapt to using artificial intelligence. David Hughes, founder and CEO of Silver Peak writes in an Information Age article: "While self-driving cars still have some way to go, AI is already having a significant impact on the way IT runs enterprises. Businesses are making the transition from being automated to autonomous, where machine learning and AI make it possible to create a'self-driving' wide area network (WAN)."

There has been a boom in SD-WAN deployments as enterprises around the globe seek new ways to boost network efficiency, simplify operations, and create new operating models to thrive in this new world of work. According to a report published by Research & Markets, the valuation of the global SD-WAN market is predicted to increase from USD $1.4 billion to USD $43.0 billion from 2019 to 203[1] with Asia Pacific poised to demonstrate the highest CAGR in the near future. With SD-WAN fast becoming a priority investment, it all boils down to rapidly delivering innovative business services that offer optimized user experiences (UX) at the right locations, for the right reasons, and with the right pricing to enable a unified future-ready networking fabric. This requires connecting people with SD-WAN technology with high levels of virtualization and automation across the network to improve human experiences, or in other words, creating an'Experience-First' network. However, the soaring reliance on cloud-based services and applications has magnified enterprises' need for enhanced agility, security, and flexibility of their existing SD-WAN infrastructures to ensure unparalleled network performance, service quality, and human experience.

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.

Juniper Networks today announced it can now apply the same artificial intelligence (AI) engine it uses to automate the management of wireless local area networks (LANs) to software-defined wide area networks (SD-WANs). Based on an AI engine that Juniper Networks gained when it acquired Mist Systems, the Juniper Mist WAN Assurance cloud service streams telemetry data gathered from Juniper SRX devices to an AI engine that advises IT teams on how to best set WAN service levels as part of a larger transition to intent-based networking. As part of that initiative, Juniper Networks is also providing access to a Marvis conversational interface originally developed by Mist to enable IT teams to verbally issue commands, replacing the traditional command-line interface (CLI). Christian Gilby, director of product marketing for Juniper Networks, said as the number of remote branch offices that IT organizations need to manage increases at a time when travel is limited, the need to apply AI to SD-WANs has never been more apparent. Rather than return to central offices in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gilby noted, many organizations are shifting staff to smaller remote offices to enable collaboration while continuing to minimize potential exposure to anyone who might be infected.

Software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) and AIOps are both red-hot technologies. SD-WANs increase application availability, reduce costs and in some cases improve performance. AIOps infuses machine learning into IT operations to increase the level of automation. This reduces errors and enables businesses to make changes at digital speeds. Most think of these as separate technologies, but the two are on a collision course and will give rise to what I'm calling the AI-WAN.

While humanoid robots that can do box jumps and back flips get more attention than enterprise networking tech--after all, if you're not in the IT business, you have no clue what SD-WAN is--2020 is poised to be the year when trends become reality. One of those much-hyped trends is 5G. But it's more likely to be used by consumers than enterprises in the coming year. So what does that mean for your enterprise network? "In 2020, Wi-Fi 6 will enter the enterprise, through the employee door and through enterprise access point refreshes. Indeed, Cisco projects more people will be using Wi-Fi 6 in 2020 than 5G. In part, that's because 5G service still won't provide "the ultra-high speed connectivity that we have been promised or that we will see in future years," Oswal points out in his blog. So expect a continued reliance on Wi-Fi, at least for the time being. Eventually, though, once 5G gets up to speed (literally and figuratively), Oswal believes we're in for a "period of innovation in ...

IoT and SD-WAN might not sound like they belong together, but ask VMware's VeloCloud or managed service provider Apcela and you might be surprised by what they have to say. The two companies see SD-WAN as the key to making large IoT deployments manageable at a human scale. Sanjay Uppal, who co-founded VeloCloud and now serves as the head of VMware's SD-WAN division, said the expanding scope of SD-WAN has opened the door to several applications that the technology wouldn't normally be associated with, and IoT is one of them. "You think of IoT, it's not just IoT running on a cellular network or IoT running on Bluetooth, you could absolutely run IoT on your enterprise SD-WAN," Uppal said in an earlier interview. "Just think of that IoT traffic as a new data type that you will steer across the WAN and you can add services to it as it is steered." While IoT may not be a new concept, with some companies having been in the business for decades, the rise of IoT to the mainstream is forcing networks to change, said Apcela CEO Mark Casey.

History exists so that man could learn from his mistakes, It's been around five years have passed since Microsoft's $7 billion ill-fated acquisition of Nokia's smartphone business, and now after learning too many lessons, both the tech champions are coming together yet again. Microsoft has announced a strategic collaboration with Nokia to accelerate transformation and innovation across industries with Cloud, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT). "Bringing together Microsoft's expertise in intelligent cloud solutions and Nokia's strength in building the business and mission-critical networks will unlock new connectivity and automation scenarios," Microsoft Azure Executive Vice President Jason Zander said in a statement. "We're excited about the opportunities this will create for our joint customers across industries." The new partnership combines Microsoft's expertise in Cloud Computing and Artificial Intelligence with Nokia's 5G private wireless and mission-critical networking prowess.