How Big Data And Cloud Computing Are Pushing Networks to the Brink

Grazed from AllThingsDigital. Author: Arik Hesseldahl.

A lot is expected of corporate networks these days. Companies are trying to add new services and support new devices. There’s always more data that has to keep flowing, more stuff being connected to it. And the network is expected to perform, no matter what. Now there are about five billion devices connected to the Internet and billions of individual users, all expecting their networks to perform.

The folks at Juniper Networks started to wonder if the world of networking has reached some kind of fundamental inflection point. They got together with the people at Forrester Research and surveyed 150 senior IT executives to try to get a better handle on how big trends facing the enterprise, like cloud computing and big data, are affecting enterprise networks…

The findings are kind of interesting and sort of troubling. While cloud computing and software-as-a-service products such as Salesforce.com tend to save money and time by taking dedicated hardware and software out of the equation, using them puts new demands on the network: 58 percent of those surveyed said cloud services had added enough demand to their networks that they had to upgrade the networking hardware. Cloud services tend to go hand-in-hand with an increased usage of mobile devices: 47 percent of businesses have seen increased demand from employees bringing their own devices to work…

Read more from the source @ http://allthingsd.com/20121015/how-big-data-and-cloud-computing-are-pushing-networks-to-the-brink/