The Cisco Live event in San Diego last month provided incredible insight into the evolution of networking technology and how it’s moving forward. The event provided an opportunity to not only experience the most cutting-edge technologies, but also talk with incredibly smart people about what innovative solutions are now available for our federal clients.
From the vast benefits of automation to the latest in software-defined networking, here are some of the highlights to give our readers a better understanding of the landscape ahead.
- Automation and Programmability are a Requirement
Programmability is becoming more and more mainstream, especially when it comes to managing network and cyber security operations.
For example, analysts manning workstations can focus on only the most pressing cyber issues when computers use programmed and automated processes to quickly sift through threats and act without human intervention, where appropriate. By programming systems to identify and sort these threats, agencies can immediately pull in data and predict potential spread more rapidly and accurately than any one analyst could ever do.
Cisco is growing an ecosystem of automation and programmability expertise through Cisco DevNet, and announced this year that is has refreshed and formalized its certification and learning tracks for DevNet skillsets. For agency IT teams, which are often staffed with generalists, this will go a long way toward making automation a tool that the average network engineer can leverage—further cementing the idea that automation is not a nice thing to have, but a requirement in operating modern networks.
- Networking Continues to Evolve
SD-WAN isn’t new, but the technology has continued to grow. And for the federal government, which has to effectively connect nearly 3 million civil servants across the country, this is incredibly important.
Benefits of SD-WAN abound, but a few highlights include the ability to automate processes and reroute traffic to less burdened parts of the network, eliminating unexpected outages without any intervention from IT teams. Beyond that, SD-WAN scalability is quick and seamless. If an agency needs to change, the same policies and rules already enforced throughout the network can be applied to the new location with very little work on the backend.
In an effort to enhance these benefits even further and make the technology easier to integrate into other software-defined technologies, Cisco has introduced SD-WAN on Aggregation Services Router (ASR) and Integrated Services Router (ISR) platforms. This will make it much easier for clients to leverage their existing infrastructure for SD-WAN. The evolution of SD-WAN continues to enhance Cisco’s multi-domain capabilities that allow users of next generation campus, WAN, and data center technologies to integrate to creatively solve problems with the shared context of the entire enterprise network.
- Software-defined Technologies Still Reign Supreme
While technology is always evolving, software-defined solutions continue to be the best, fastest and most efficient way to drive innovation.
This is a big change in networking, but network expertise is still required to implement and operate these solutions effectively. For that reason, engineers and agencies as a whole should be familiarizing themselves with SDA as early as possible.
At Iron Bow, we’re always excited to see these kinds of leaps in technology. Not only does it help us develop new and better solutions, but it also supports our customers in advancing their missions with the best and most advanced leading-edge technology.
For more information about how we can help, be sure to visit the Iron Bow website.
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