Technology such as SD-WAN, migration to the cloud, and the sudden surge of remote and distributed work have upended the modern WAN.
The composition of the underlay, flow of traffic, end points of workers, and security postures are all undergoing a massive shift. Like the protagonist in Canadian power trio Rush’s hit “Tom Sawyer,” WAN managers are realizing that “changes aren’t permanent, but change is.”
Figures from TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database show that the global wireless subscriber total has passed 8 billion. User numbers were up 1% in 2020, ending the year at 8.05 billion.
The cellular market showed year-on-year growth despite the negative economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which contributed to downturns in user take-up in a number of countries.
It's a case study episode!
Greg is joined by Johan Ihse, product owner of global connectivity at H&M. As with previous WAN manager interviews, we'll focus on the story behind the network. This includes learning about H&M's network set-up, the transformations they've undertaken, and some goals for where Johan would like to see their network go.
We had a feeling that our expert team would deliver a winning discussion during our TeleGeography Deep Dive on internet middle mile.
And disappoint, they did not.
With middle mile emerging as one of the next major topics of interest for global enterprises, our event appropriately started with the explainer of all explainers on this new market segment. (And, yes, we recorded the overview for our readers who couldn't make the live event.)
When our new WAN Geography Benchmark got a bit of buzz earlier this year, we thought it'd be cool to invite Principal Analyst Patrick Christian back to the pod to explain how this tool was developed.
It's one of those origin stories where a major customer needed to use several of our databases to run a bespoke analysis of their network. The project sparked a bright idea for how to help other enterprises with their data center decision-making.
Tech giants are investing in submarine cables, sure. But you already know that part of the story.
It gets interesting when we look closer at the number of cables hyperscalers are investing in, for how much, and where.
Our resident podcaster Greg Bryan recently sat down with Daniel Remarc Bognár—the Head of Network Architecture at Norsk Hydro—to get his network case study.
As an early adopter of SD-WAN, and an eventual participant in a merger, there were plenty of lessons learned along the way. (Which we will now share with you, dear listeners.)
SD-WAN can seem like a moving target.
But what do you need to know about SD-WAN right now, at this moment in time?
We thought a lot about this question as we developed our latest refresh of the SD-WAN Research Service. While we can't divulge all of our new intel in this blog, we did want to shout out some of our top-level findings. Keep scrolling to enjoy a bite-size sampling of our latest data.
Sure, the TeleGeography team was sad to miss out on their annual trip to Honolulu to deliver our yearly telecom workshop. But a virtual event couldn't stop Brianna Boudreau from taking the audience on a trek around the world.
Any day that ends in "y" is a good one to explore cloud networks. (New TeleGeography slogan?)
But that's exactly what's happening in Patrick Christian's latest presentation, which reviews underlying cloud infrastructure, its evolution, and its impact on global networks.
