Jun 14, 2021
Managing Multinational Network Modifications
It's another case study episode of the podcast. Today, we welcome Ian Calderbank, Enterprise Network Architect at PageGroup, to the hot seat.
It's another case study episode of the podcast. Today, we welcome Ian Calderbank, Enterprise Network Architect at PageGroup, to the hot seat.
In our latest episode of the podcast, we dig into sourcing. Our listeners know that we often discuss the migration of large enterprises away from one or two global suppliers for a mostly MPLS network to a novel mix of transport types and suppliers. This is especially true due to changing trends in cloud migration, SD-WAN, and security.
Our data shows that most enterprises have more than one IaaS provider. For SaaS, that number can be dozens, hundreds, or even more. Most have moved the majority of their data centers off corporate premises to some kind of shared facility.
This means most companies are dealing with multi-cloud connectivity in some form; WAN managers, of course, have to handle that from a performance and cost perspective.
We often say that we'll be taking a "deep dive" into an issue at the beginning of our podcasts. Today we almost mean that literally, as Greg welcomes TeleGeography Research Director Alan Mauldin to talk about submarine cables.
We're going back to the middle. The middle mile, that is.
Like many telecom terms, this is one that you might have to follow up with, “what exactly do you mean by that?”
The average enterprise network had MPLS running at 82% of sites in 2018. That fell to just 58% in 2020. About one-third of those networks have active backups for their MPLS service—a quarter of them have passive backups.
Looking at these numbers, we have to ask: what role will MPLS play in the WAN moving forward?
The latest episode of the podcast is all about network monitoring.
Most of the enterprises we interview are running dozens or more SaaS applications. And most of our WAN Manager Survey respondents have moved their data centers off-premises—the majority are connecting to multiple IaaS providers. Further, enterprises are increasingly more likely to piece together networks from multiple vendors.
Most of our listeners are probably familiar with network interface cards (NICs, if you're savvy). But what about SmartNICs?
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.
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