Top 10 networking stories of 2020

So much has been up in the air since the onset of Covid-19 and the lockdowns and stay-at-home orders issued by various governments around the world, especially those in the major European economies and North America in March 2020. And given the death toll from the coronavirus and the major negative impact that it has had on business around the world, it seems somewhat distasteful to say that the last nine months have actually been good for the networking industry.

That is to say, the edicts to work from home for millions were made on the rather bold assumption that national infrastructures were capable of transitioning from enterprise to home networks almost overnight. The good news is that, in the main, they have to date indeed been capable of supporting this change.

Two key themes in networking came to the fore over 2020: software-defined wide area networks (SD-WANs) and gigabit network proliferation. Both really began growing in earnest in 2019, but they have accelerated greatly since the pandemic began as the massive increase in remote working, which is set to continue for a long time, if not permanently, has driven firms to think deeply about their network infrastructures.

The SD-WAN market has evolved, moving toward larger-scale and globalised deployments. SD-WAN suppliers are now releasing features designed to support deployment at scale, allowing multi-tenancy where enterprises can define sub-regions for their WANs that are to be managed independently. In fact, this maturity is now commonly accepted to have reached a stage where SD-WAN suppliers are focusing on explaining to customers why a particular offering is best and how it aligns with strategic corporate directions.

There are signs that work still needs to be done. There are indications of some confusion among IT leaders about the benefits of SD-WAN, a growing feeling that some organisations feel it is less relevant to the burgeoning remote workplace that has emerged since lockdown. This makes SD-WAN selection more important than ever.

The net result is that SD-WAN suppliers are currently seeing significant increases in orders and deployments of appliances in residential locations to connect and secure remote workers. Security application visibility and performance tuning are regarded as key areas for 2020 growth.

For gigabit broadband, the picture is somewhat clearer. Access to ultra-high-speed broadband delivered by fibre or DOCSIS networks to homes and businesses has never been more important, now and in the future as the new normal of work rapidly becomes simply the normal. Fibre deployment, for one, is rapidly increasing across the major regions, Europe in particular.

And when it comes to networking, for bandwidth it is a case of more is more – SD-WAN giving professionals the ability to do more, more securely, in more places. When it comes to bandwidth, more is more.

Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 networking stories of 2020: