Our Insight

We constantly hear buzz words like digitisation and transformation, and there is no doubt technology is changing the way we work and live. It is not uncommon to see someone using a coffee shop, airport or their home as their ‘mobile’ place of work. The availability of fast, reliable internet means workers can use different devices (laptops, tablets, even mobile phones) at any location and at any time. Cloud services have removed the need to connect to a VPN we can join virtual meeting, access emails or data on SaaS applications on demand. But what does this mean for security?

Promising speed, bandwidth and latency opportunities, but what's the story behind Wi-Fi 6?

Given the prediction that, by 2020, 80% of organisations will primarily use public cloud and there will be 10 billion mobile-connected devices¹, it’s no surprise that there’s a Software-Defined WAN boom. Many companies are using this advanced technology to simplify how they move workloads to any cloud, consume hosted applications and enable new services in remote locations. And the stats are compelling: SD-WAN offers 2.25x more bandwidth, software updates can be completed 51% faster and there’s 94% less unplanned downtime.² It’s essentially the enabler for digital transformation across hundreds of companies. 

While some network and infrastructure managers are gambling on ‘if it aint broke, don’t fix it’, many others are actively trying to find ways to improve WAN functionality and service levels while lowering costs. Which camp do you fall into? If you’ve realised SD-WAN is an essential part of your WAN strategy, then you’ve likely already moved onto weighing up the pros and cons. 

DevOps is often thought of in a cloud context. But how can networking benefit from breaking down the silos of Development and IT Operations roles and introduce automation to achieve efficiencies, speed and agility? SD-WAN has the answer. 

It’s argued that there is a place for both SD-WAN and MPLS in modern WANs. But we’re backing SD-WAN and for good reason...

Here's the problem with supporting a network: by the time someone comes to you and tells you they couldn't connect at, say, 7pm on a Friday evening, it's 10.30 on Monday morning. Sure, you could wade through thousands of lines of log text from your switches, access points or authentication server, but in the meantime the problem has resolved itself, and your team has more important things to do.

The term disruptive gets bandied about a lot these days - seemingly for anything involving a couple of clicks or an app - but while the term is overused, it's a very real phenomenon. Ask Kodak or Blockbuster, who went from market leaders to market leavers when technology undercut their business models.

At the top of the year, Mike set out the challenges and opportunities we're all facing in 2018. More than a month in already, and I wanted to talk about the exciting ways Ideal is rising to meet those challenges, and help you seize and deliver on opportunities.

At the start of the month I was at Cisco Live in Barcelona: an entire week of presentations, workshops, networking and general hobnobbing among Cisco, its partners and IT professionals. I've been before, but this year I was with fellow solution architects Daren Vallyon and Adrian Clarke - a strong showing from Ideal.

SD - should this stand for security disaster?

We're often talking about software-defined networking (SDN), and how the latest generation of hardware has the intelligence to simplify the provisioning and management of networks. Added brains bring the ability to support new security features like Cisco TrustSec, but we've also moved away from the labour-intensive configuration of individual devices, and towards simplified, centralised administration.

That's great for convenience, allowing admins to configure and support branch networks from a single controller, but if there's a weakness in the system, or if an unauthorised user gains access, isn't software definition a disaster waiting to happen? Does SDN actually stand for security disaster networking? We asked network solutions architect Richard Harvey and senior cyber security consultant Adrian Clarke to put our minds at rest.