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

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.

be biggest collaboration crn distribution for head in networking the to trends what will