The Internet has irrevocably changed the face of business and network infrastructure. The traditional approach of enterprise networking simply no longer suits this new world order. A new type of network is required to help drive enterprise transformation in this increasingly digital world.
Take a look at some of the stats that we collated in our latest infographic – global IP traffic will reach 1.6 ZB by 2018. A zettabyte is the amount of data you can store on 250 billion DVDs. If you stacked all of those DVD discs on top of each other they would nearly reach the moon. The vast majority of this growth is being driven by the Internet.
Enterprise users are increasingly using services delivered on the Internet, be it cloud services, collaboration via the Internet or simply web browsing. IT departments typically have the choice to break this Internet traffic out from regional gateways from the WAN or purchase Internet connectivity locally. Both of these approaches have problems, which are exacerbated as Internet traffic continues to rise. The former creates latency issues if the distance from source to destination via the gateway is too far. The latter opens a hornets nest of security, control and cost issues.
building the hybrid network
Solutions to these problems are being tackled by Orange Business in its hybrid networks approach, which was the subject of a media and analyst webinar on Monday (which you can listen to again here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k5NTDGSJCRHDQ78V7wy). The webinar brought together Jerry Caron, Senior Vice President, Analysis, Current Analysis, along with Orange representatives Didier Duriez, Senior Vice President, Global Solutions and Services and Andrew McFadzen, Head of Global Marketing, Network Solutions.
Caron set the scene looking at investment trends in enterprises, with research showing that almost 50% of enterprises said that networking services were a top investment priority. He said that enterprises were increasingly looking to managed Internet VPNs in an attempt to control the growth of Internet traffic in the enterprise.
Duriez said that the major trends that Orange was seeing in its customer networks were an increasing use of video, cloud collaboration, and consumer application and device use. Statistics from Orange customers showed that 40% of WAN traffic was now carrying traffic that was destined for the internet and WAN traffic in total was growing by 21% year on year.
The session was wrapped up by McFadzen who looked at Business VPN Internet, which was launched at the webinar. It is specifically designed to meet the demand for high-performance, secure access to Internet services. The service includes 15 gateways that break Internet traffic out closer to the user to eliminate the latency caused by the long physical distances, and combines Internet and WAN connectivity into a single “hybrid” port.
Check out more information on the hybrid network on the Orange site.
After a Masters in Computer Science, I decided that I preferred writing about IT rather than programming. My 20-year writing career has taken me to Hong Kong and London where I've edited and written for IT, business and electronics publications. In 2002 I co-founded Futurity Media with Stewart Baines where I continue to write about a range of topics such as unified communications, cloud computing and enterprise applications.