CRN head to head: “What will be the biggest trends in networking for 2008?"

Kevin Bloch, director of business and technology solutions for Cisco in A/NZ.

The most important trend in networking in 2008, indeed in all of IT, will be the emergence of the “network as the platform” for productivity, profitable growth, resource management and innovation. This trend will play a key role in helping determine success in business as well as in other areas of society (healthcare and education).

One of the most important is in the area of “business communications and collaboration” which includes taking current social networking applications and capabilities into mainstream business to drive collaboration and productivity through Web 2.0, video and Unified Communications. The second trend will be in the area of data centres within which virtualisation will flourish. Virtualisation of resources such as servers, CPUs, storage, switching and appliances can provide significant cost savings as well as support new services and diverse forms of access. The third area is video which will follow both trends above. If there is one overriding element of the Web2.0 generation, it is the use of video, both on the public and private Internet.

Nathan Godsall, business development manager.

As much as I hate to use a much overused term in the networking industry, I’d have to say one of the biggest trends I see happening in 2008 is “convergence”. This time though, I mean in the sense that I see one of the key trends being a convergence of multiple technologies into a single box that is easy to deploy, configure and support in to the small business. Vendors such as Cisco and Nortel see it as a new market space for them – when you take a look at the number of small businesses in Australia the figures are staggering. The technologies are now also at a level of maturity and affordability that makes deploying applications such as IP telephony and wireless networking, or even the combination of both with voice-over WLAN (VoWLAN), a viable option for businesses even in to the sub-50 user space. As long as resellers are able to incorporate telco costs, deployment and support in such a way as to maintain profitability, then we should see a strong uptake in the small business space in Australia for 2008.Mathew Dickerson, senior network consultant.

Managers want more efficient ways to monitor and track what staff are doing on their PC regarding a range of websites. This will be further complicated by existing ‘regular’ sites gradually adding ‘social’ features.

To gain greater productivity from their IT infrastructure, progressive clients are choosing to give their staff secondary displays. This is an area that will become almost standard in a business that heavily relies on IT to improve productivity. Look at multi-display video cards and multi-display mounting devices as an area that clients will want to discuss further.

Not so long ago, the amount of data that clients stored doubled about every 18 months. We now find that with the advent of scanning paperwork, electronic filing, email usage and archiving and generally greater use of technology, clients now double their storage requirements every 12 months. This means that clients who never considered storage outside their server storage are looking at NAS and SAN devices as viable alternatives.

Clients now understand acronyms such as VoIP and DRP. I believe the SMB market is embracing VoIP solutions – in pieces or in complete solutions – like never before. The savings are too good to ignore and the quality is slowly improving. The average SMB client now realises keeping a system up and running is more productive to their business so are prepared to spend an appropriate amount on a disaster recovery solution. Ensure you have a viable offering in this space.

Joseph Sweeney, advisor.

There are a number of trends likely to emerge in networking during 2008 including: The flexible office – as ongoing staff shortages, coupled with an increasingly ‘digitally literate’ generation of business professionals will see many organisations look for ways to maximise the amount of time their staff can function when outside the main office. The rise (2008) and fall (2009) of Enterprise 2.0 – as vendors and management alike jump on the Web 2.0 bandwagon, we will see a lot of intranet / extranet redeployments in 2008 and early 2009.

Experimentation with new forms of desktop delivery over the network – organisations will increasingly trial a broader array of desktop application delivery methods. Mobility from laptops to 3G Smartphones – in an effort to keep field workers in the field for as long as possible, organisations will increasingly look at small-form factor devices and mobile applications. Renewed interest in encryption – driven by amendments to Australian privacy laws and expansion of organisational perimeters, encryption will gain prominence. Planning for the ‘occasionally connected’ infrastructure – management will realise Australian networks are far from ubiquitous, causing headaches for the deployment of the network-heavy software solutions abroad. VoIP – where implementations will continue to grow. Web server capacity failures – Australian organisations will continue to under-estimate peak loads, resulting in more ‘server failures’ during important events.