By: Atish Gude – Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) NetApp

2019 was a year of rapid innovation—and disruption—for both the IT industry and the broader business community. With the widespread adoption of hybrid multicloud as the de facto architecture for enterprise customers, organizations everywhere are under tremendous pressure to modernize their infrastructure and to deliver tangible business value around data-intensive applications and workloads.

As a result, organizations are shifting from on-premises environments to using public cloud services, building private clouds, and moving from disk to flash in data centers—sometimes concurrently. These transformations open the door to enormous potential, but they also introduce the unintended consequence of increased IT complexity. 

We predict that a demand for simplicity and customizability will be the number one factor that drives IT purchasing decisions in 2020. Vendors will need to offer modern, flexible technologies with the choice of how to use and to consume those technologies so that customers can keep pace with their evolving business models. As IT departments strive to deemphasize maintenance and hardware, to reduce overhead, and to adopt pay-as-you-go models, simplicity and choice will be crucial. 

Achieving this simplicity will serve as the foundation for companies as they navigate the exciting technological trends that we identify in the following sections.

 

1. As the advent of 5G makes AI-driven Internet of Things (IoT) a reality, edge computing environments are primed to become even more disruptive than cloud was.

In preparation for the widespread emergence of 5G, lower-cost sensors and maturing AI applications will be used to build compute-intensive edge environments. This effort will lay the groundwork for high-bandwidth, low-latency AI-driven IoT environments with the potential for huge innovation—and disruption.

The advent of 5G is what AI-driven IoT has been waiting for. It will take a few more years for 5G data technology to spread across the Middle East. However, 2020 will see many players in the technology industry and business community invest in building edge computing environments to support the reality of AI-driven IoT. These environments will make possible new use cases that rely on intelligent, instantaneous, and autonomous decision-making, with low-latency, high-bandwidth capabilities. This evolution will bring us to a world where the internet will work on our behalf—without even having to ask. 

This AI-driven IoT innovation, however, will depend on a massive prioritization of edge computing, further disrupting IT infrastructures and data management priorities. As edge devices move beyond home devices (such as connected thermostats and speakers) and become more far-reaching (such as connected solar farms), more data centers will be placed at the edge. Also, platforms such as artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) will be necessary to help monitor complex environments across the edge, the core, and the cloud. 

 

2. The impact of blockchain will be undeniable as indelible ledgers rapidly enable game-changing use cases outside of cryptocurrency. 

The world is quickly moving beyond Bitcoin to adopt enterprise-distributed indelible ledgers, setting the stage for a transformation that’s exponentially bigger than the impact that cryptocurrency has had on blockchain in finance. 

While the crypto frenzy continues to steal the limelight when it comes to blockchain, most players in the industry understand the bigger picture of the technology and its potential. Going into 2020, we will see a tipping point for larger implementations as enterprises go a step further to adopt indelible ledgers based on Hyperledger, which represents the maturation of blockchain for wider use cases. Indeed, we will start to see blockchain go “mainstream” as it enables industries such as healthcare to create universal patient records, to improve chain-of-custody pharmaceutical processes, and more. 

With such use cases validating blockchain and indelible ledgers, additional widespread adoption of the technology will drive transformation across society on a larger scale. This widespread adoption will build on the disruption that cryptocurrency has brought to finance to touch nearly every industry. As a result, new data management and compute capabilities will encourage companies to invest in indelible ledgers to build differentiated applications and to collaborate on critical, sensitive datasets.

 

3. Hardware-based composable architecture will have less short-term potential against commodity hardware and software-based infrastructure virtualization.

Continued improvements in commodity hardware performance, software-based virtualization, and microservice software architectures will eliminate much of the performance advantage of proprietary hardware-based composable architectures, relegating them to niche data center roles soon. 

Hardware-based composable architecture is being hyped as the next evolution of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI). This architecture enables CPUs, networking cards, workload accelerators, and storage resources to be distributed across a rack-scale architecture and to be connected with low-latency PCIe-based switching. And although composable architecture does have potential, standardization has been slow, and adoption has been even slower. Meanwhile, software-based virtualization of storage, combined with software-based (but hardware-accelerated) compute and networking virtualization solutions, offers much of the flexibility of hardware-based composable architectures today with lower cost and consistently increasing performance.

Next year, attempts to build a true hardware-based rack-scale computing model will no doubt continue, and the space will continue to evolve quickly. However, most organizations that must transform within 2020 will be best served by a combination of modern HCI architectures (including disaggregated HCI) and software-based virtualization and containerization. 

The Importance of Cybersecurity to Enable Safety and Reliability is Recognized but Obstacles Remain

Fortinet,a global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, today announced that a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting found that industrial firms, due to increased digitalization, are more exposed to cyber threats than ever before. In addition, the lack of collaboration between Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) teams represents another cybersecurity barrier for organizations that want to take full advantage of IT/OT convergence to increase their business benefits.

Industrial firms are committed to further digitalizing their factory floor to find new efficiencies and improve their ability to gather data that can provide business insight into production processes. 66% of respondents said their factories run through IP-connected networks and use real-time data to inform business decisions. However, these IP-connected networks bring up new cybersecurity risks with 73% of respondents in agreement that the attack surface has expanded. Meanwhile, only half of respondents agreed that their factory machinery is well prepared to fight off cybersecurity threats, leaving the other half unprepared and 55% of respondents either have no plans to implement or plan to implement cybersecurity technologies in the next 12 months. 

Another key finding showing Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are at risk due to lack of collaboration between the IT and OT environments with 51% of respondents claiming they operate in silos, meaning the OT team manages critical industrial equipment and any OT cybersecurity whereas the IT team is responsible for management of IT cybersecurity. A quarter to over a third of respondents did not know who had primary responsibility for cybersecurity solutions such as process, control and automation systems, and even business planning and logistics. However, 91% stated that security of factory machinery should be a shared IT and OT responsibility, as well as having clear and regular communication on the IT/OT convergence vision (58%) in order to ensure a successful IT/OT convergence. 

Organizations have much to gain from convergence and close collaboration between OT and IT teams, with the biggest being access to real-time data insights from manufacturing operations (66%) then being able to monetize and create new business opportunities via increased insight into production data (59%). Numerous efficiency gains are to be obtained as well, with 43% of respondents citing reduced duplication of processes and workflows between plants, as well as enhanced visibility to mitigate cybersecurity threats.

Joe Sarno, VP International Emerging & Operational Technology & Critical Infrastructure EMEA at Fortinet: “Industrial firms need to change at the operational level in order to bridge the divide between IT and OT environments and build trust between these teams, to ensure a successful convergence. As the attack surface expands, IT and OT teams must collaborate to improve visibility and defend against cyber threats. That’s why at Fortinet we are investing a lot of time and resources into R&D for ICS cybersecurity solutions.”

Fortinet commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct an online survey in India, Turkey, the UK, Spain, Poland, Germany, Slovakia, Italy, France, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands to evaluate the techniques industrial firms use to manage security, security roles and responsibilities between IT and OT, and the challenges and opportunities of IT/OT convergence.The survey included 459 IT and OT decision makers responsible for ICS at industrial enterprises with 1,000 employees or more (automotive, transportation, manufacturing, maritime, and aviation engineering) in Europe and India.

Article By: Mena Migally, Senior Director, MENA at Riverbed

While 2020 marks the start of a new decade, many of the technology trends that have dominated conversations through 2019 —big data, cyber hunting, IoT, 5G, and user experience — will continue to shape IT roadmaps as companies begin to take action and look for the impact of their strategic investments. 

At Riverbed Technology, we believe the dawn of the new year presents the ideal opportunity to take stock of the advancements made in the year gone by and explore how these will continue to evolve in 2020. 

Digital Transformation Will Radically Shape Business Strategies and Outcomes

While talk of digital transformation has been ongoing for several years now, organizations’ transformation efforts have seen mixed results. Even enterprises that started down the road in 2018 and 2019 have realized that an organization and its infrastructure cannot be completely transformed overnight and that it will instead be an ongoing exercise. The reality is that many organizations were not equipped for a true digital transformation or to embrace SD-WAN. This is set to change as we head into 2020. The digital transformation march will continue to move forward, along with the adoption of SD-WAN.

There’s an inherent risk for those businesses that buck the trend. The Amazonification of consumer expectations has reshaped enterprise go-to-market strategies in a huge way by going beyond just situating a solution in the cloud. The winners here will be those who can deliver the desired experiences and outcomes at the speed customers demand. Today, enterprise customers expect the incredible speed and convenience that’s traditionally been demanded by consumers. They have been shaped, as we all have, by getting what we’ve asked for at a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it level of service. Not everyone will be able to keep up so expect to see some players merge with others – or simply fall by the wayside.

IoT and 5G Will Push Applications to the Edge

There no doubt that 2019 was the year of cloud in the Middle East. The market’s momentum is only set to increase and we can expect distributed cloud to become the new data center that truly empowers the edge. As more organizations start incorporating IoT technologies, their applications will need to run at the edge to ensure high performance and faster response. With IoT heading to the forefront – and soon to be enabled by the proliferation of 5G networks – organizations in 2020 are starting to think about how to address the new visibility challenges that will stem from the need of edge applications to communicate back to a centralized point. 

Also, the security of that network traffic is going to be paramount. There is no getting away from security being at the top of the agenda for organizations’ investments in 2020. It’s going to be imperative for organizations to be able to track which devices are communicating with other devices and determine whether they’re part of a distributed cloud or still being sent back to a consolidated location. 

Threat Hunting Will Become a Mandatory Security Exercise

Sticking with the theme of cybersecurity, we will see an increase in the number of “advanced persistent threats,” sophisticated, systematic cyber-attack programs that continue for an extended period of time, often orchestrated by a group of skilled hackers. These are the hacks that do the most damage to organizations and if a company doesn’t have proactive threat detection measures in place, it could be unaware of the attack until after the damage is done.  

As networks for organizations have grown, they have become like the Roman empire – big, sprawling and hard to defend. Throwing up a “wall,” or firewall, to defend against attacks is less likely to be effective when the advanced persistent threats have multiple ways to attack the cracks in those walls. 

The best way to combat advanced persistent threats is to engage in “cyber hunting,” the process of proactively and iteratively searching networks to detect and isolate advanced threats that evade existing security solutions. As hackers become smarter and find new evasive ways to infiltrate a network, organizations in 2020 will begin adopting the proactive cyber hunting approach to complement traditional reactive threat management approaches of installing firewalls, intrusion detection systems and SIEM systems. 

The Days of Data Hoarding are Over 

The proliferation of the cloud and its immense data storage capabilities are double-edged swords for organizations that have been “data hoarding.” As we move into 2020, many organizations will realize that while big data has tremendous value, some of that data may be a liability.  The potential risk of a breach involving sensitive client data is too substantial to a company’s bottom line, especially with the emergence of more consumer data protection laws, such as CCPA, coming down the line in 2020. To combat this, organizations will start reviewing collected data to determine what clearly enhances the business’s performance and delete the rest, as the risk is too high to continue to store customer data without a foreseeable purpose. 

Why These Matter2020 will see many game changing technologies reach maturity and no doubt, emerging technologies such as AI will take root as they begin to deliver tangible value for businesses. As the technologies we know and love continue to evolve, they will open up the possibility of new 

 

Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), a global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, today announced continued momentum and global customer adoption of Fortinet Secure SD-WAN by over 21,000 organizations across different industries and verticals. Fortinet’s security-driven networking approach to SD-WAN seamlessly integrates enterprise-grade SD-WAN, advanced security, and advanced routing in a unified offering to modernize customers’ WAN edge and help achieve their digital innovation goals with FortiManager Orchestration that can scale to support up to 100,000 SD-WAN sites.

 

Cybersecurity has become a top-of-mind strategic business issue for enterprise organizations deploying SD-WAN solutions. As a result, organizations worldwide are turning toward solutions that tightly integrate next-generation firewall security and SD-WAN functionality. The latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for Network Firewalls states, “By 2024, 50% of new firewall purchases in distributed enterprises will utilize SD-WAN features with the growing adoption of cloud-based services, up from less than 20% today.”1

 

“Our rapidly growing market share and customer base around the world and across different verticals highlights the need for Fortinet’s security-driven networking approach to SD-WAN” said John Maddison, EVP of Products and CMO at Fortinet. “Customers continue to recognize the importance of integrated security and SD-WAN as they select Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN solution to reduce complexity and enhance their organization’s security posture. As a leading SD-WAN vendor, Fortinet empowers organizations to achieve optimal user experience, visibility, and security at their WAN edge to enable digital innovation.”

Fortinet delivers full-featured SD-WAN via the FortiGate next-generation firewall, and today Fortinet Secure SD-WAN has emerged as one of the top solutions on the market to support enterprises in their pursuit of reducing WAN complexity and cost while enhancing application experience and security. To support large enterprises, Fortinet Secure SD-WAN is able to scale to up to 100,000 SD-WAN sites thanks to Fortinet’s 20-year investment in building single-pane-of-glass management, which can now support the most demanding use cases for both security and SD-WAN.

Fortinet received the highest score for the “Security-Sensitive WAN” use case and scored in the top third for all remaining WAN Edge use cases in the November 2019 Gartner analyst research report, “Critical Capabilities for WAN Edge Infrastructure.” “Gartner recommends that users consider the set of critical capabilities as some of the most important criteria for WAN Edge solution acquisition decisions.” Fortinet believes these results further highlight its focus on Secure SD-WAN innovation.

Customer Validation of Fortinet Secure SD-WAN

Today, over 21,000 companies of all sizes and verticals worldwide, including some of the largest service providers, have chosen Fortinet Secure SD-WAN to achieve the following business benefits:

• Enable a Cloud-ready Branch: On-ramping branch offices and other remote locations to the cloud through Fortinet Secure SD-WAN enhances customers’ application experience and extends the cloud’s power, flexibility, and productivity gains to all users.

• Simplify Operations: By delivering advanced routing, SD-WAN and advance security in a single offering, Fortinet simplifies operations and allows for unified management. Zero-touch provisioning further reduces complexity and allows customers to deploy a new branch in minutes instead of weeks.

• Reduce Costs: Customers are able to consolidate point products into one enterprise-grade solution to significantly reduce capital costs. Augmenting MPLS with broadband reduces operational costs while a full stack of integrated security functions—including NGFW, IPS, anti-virus and anti-malware, web filtering, SSL inspection (including TLS 1.3), and sandboxing—ensures security without compromise and limits the potential costs related to a security breach.

Here’s what a number of Fortinet’s over 21,000 customers from around the world and within various industries have to say about Fortinet Secure SD-WAN:

 

“The ability to on-ramp our branch offices to the cloud through Fortinet Secure SD-WAN enables us to extend last mile optimization to all users. Fortinet Secure SD-WAN helped us improve user experience and effectively connect to our multi-cloud environment.”

-Dirk van Gelderen, Group Information Security Officer at De Heus Animal Nutrition

 

“SENATI is the largest technological higher education college in Peru and it’s important that our students are able to access the applications and resources needed to support their educational goals from any location. We chose Fortinet Secure SD-WAN because it not only enables our students to quickly access the resources they need, but also keeps them safe online. Fortinet Secure SD-WAN allows us to optimize and improve visibility of bandwidth usage with integrated software and hardware, helping us reduce costs. Working with Fortinet’s team made integration and migration easy and simple, and they have provided us with a solution that will safely grow with our institution throughout time with their security-first approach.”

-Willy Zamudio Núñez, Information Technology Manager at SENATI

 

“Fortinet Secure SD-WAN has provided The Paper Store with a secure, high-performing, scalable solution that allowed us to significantly improve our security posture and user experience for cloud and SaaS applications. The Paper Store currently has over 80 stores and 3,000 employees throughout the Northeast, and as we continue to expand, Fortinet Secure SD-WAN will help save time and money by enabling us to deploy new branch locations in minutes instead of months. Fortinet’s solution gives us the flexibility to integrate new services into our network without compromising performance or security.”

-Alex Fuchs, Director of IT at The Paper Store