The cloud is enabling the Next-generation Enterprise WAN, and vice versa
June 10, 2013
Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Andy Gottlieb.
Having spent the last several columns looking in depth into why MPLS is no longer the only answer for building enterprise WANs, this time let’s go up a few thousand feet and look at the bigger picture, before any further dives down into the details.
"The cloud" is happening. We’ll leave aside for the moment exactly what "the cloud" means, as it tends to mean different things to different people, but I think readers here have at least a "kinda sorta" understanding of what it is. As it relates to wide area networks and enterprise IT, let’s go for now with Gartner’s definition of cloud "as a style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service using Internet technologies."…
How quickly "the cloud" happens for the enterprise overall is still very much an open question. How quickly it happens for any given enterprise is also unknown. It is clear to me that "the cloud" is enabling the Next-generation Enterprise WAN (NEW) architecture. It is also clear to me that this NEW architecture will accelerate the adoption of public cloud computing, including SaaS, and hybrid cloud computing by early adopter and early majority enterprises…
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