Data-center networking was already changing prior to the technology challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, and few areas of the enterprise will continue to be affected more than data centers by those modifications in the future.
That’s because myriad technologies are driving changes in the data center—everything from heavy demand for higher-speed networking, support for a remote workforce, increased security, tighter management and perhaps the biggest alteration—the prolific growth of cloud services.
Cloud is key
“The pandemic shifted many multi-year digital transformation and modernization projects to occur rapidly,” said Alan Weckel, founder and technology analyst with the 650 Group. “The way cloud changed networking 10 years ago is similar to the impact COVID is having now—rapid transitions to new technologies to support new workloads, and humans interacting differently with those workloads. This is especially true in edge data centers.”
