Pocketwatch

Predictions 2015

Longform
(Image: Stockfresh)

15 January 2015

Choose your own
“Security will be the key consideration for enterprise infrastructure and evolving IT strategies in 2015” Damien Farrell_Toshiba_web Toshiba : Damien Farrell, B2B reseller channel manager, Ireland
The Internet of Things has tremendous potential to change the way we work across different sectors. For example, packers in warehouses might be able to automatically scan items through devices such as Toshiba Glass, keeping their hands free for other activities and speeding up the process as a result.The sector that perhaps could see the most change through such innovation is the healthcare market, with smart watches and bands monitoring people’s vital signs such as heart rate and blood pressure. With the arrival of smart clothing, shipments of which are projected by Gartner to hit 10 million in 2015 and 26 million the year after that, the scope for development suddenly appears even greater.

Security will be the key consideration for enterprise infrastructure and evolving IT strategies in 2015. IT security has always been a concern, but a number of high-profile hacks and threats this year — ranging from Wirelurker to Heartbleed — have placed security much higher up on boardroom agendas.

With new mobile payment innovations set to expand to a wider audience next year, protecting data is only going to become even more important in the eyes of many consumers and businesses. While anti-virus remains an important and effective precaution, businesses now need to be more aware of the increased threats they are open to today as hackers and malware continue to evolve. Because of this, we are likely to see IT managers curb BYOD policies, as it’s becoming far too difficult to manage the ever-increasing array of operating systems and devices securely. This is particularly the case as wearables begin to impact upon the enterprise market. As a result, we expect CYOD adoption to increase next year, as businesses recognise it as a more secure proposition as they clamp down on their MDM strategies.

Working from home is only going to become more prevalent, with employees driving this trend and businesses striving to keep up. As devices become more capable of providing full functionality regardless of location, the argument for working from home becomes even harder to ignore. Why spend an hour or two commuting each day when we can perform our job to perfection at home, and accomplish more within the working day as a result? Flexible working will become a necessity, not just an occasional option, and there is little that companies can do but to adapt or risk losing today’s talent. As a result, businesses need to ensure they provide staff with the tools to do their job properly and, more importantly, securely, when away from the office. Managing flexibility with security is often a challenging balancing act, but it is crucial firms achieve it — if staff can’t work flexibly, they may look for somewhere they can.Devices such as the Toshiba Portégé Z20t, which marry a flexible, lightweight tablet with high-performance ultrabook functionality, are vital in ensuring that users are equipped for today’s mobile landscape.

 
 

 
 

Integrating SDN
“SDN simplifies network management and provisioning by enabling greater automation and accelerating the deployment of new applications and services” Henry Batten_Meru_web
Meru Networks : Henry Batten, UK HE and FE manager and Ireland country manager
Just as we have seen a huge uptake in business this year for Irish resellers, this will continue to gain momentum in 2015. For the wireless networking industry in particular, the future looks very promising — 2014 saw the emergence of the 802.11ac standard and many organisations have been keen to take advantage of the benefits of so-called Gigabit Wi-Fi.

This year will see more customers upgrade their networks to the new standard for the delivery of superfast wireless to support the demand for growing data consumption by mobile users. This will be particularly evident in key markets like the hospitality sector where fast, scalable reliable and secure Wi-Fi is absolutely critical but often hard to find.The Convention Centre Dublin, Ireland’s first purpose-built convention centre, has just completed a major implementation of an 802.11ac Meru network to deliver the best possible wireless experience for users of its 2,000 seat auditorium and 4,500 square metres of exhibition space.We will continue to see interesting opportunities for the market this year with new technologies like Software Defined Networking (SDN). As the only wireless vendor to have received OpenFlow conformance for its Wi-Fi equipment from the Open Networking Foundation, Meru is at the forefront of wireless SDN innovation.

SDN simplifies network management and provisioning by enabling greater automation and accelerating the deployment of new applications and services. It delivers end-to-end visibility of the network and can improve and ensure a predictable user experience based on device type, application, user ID, location, time etc. It also improves deployment and network management, as well as troubleshooting capabilities.As a leading wireless networking provider, our goal is to harness these capabilities to ensure our customers get the best performance, agility and flexibility — all while experiencing a unified view of the entire network infrastructure including end-to-end QoS. By taking an open-standards approach that leverages OpenFlow and SDN, we are enabling unified management of wired and wireless networks, in addition to integration of an increasing number of high quality, third party applications.

Meru has also taken major strides to integrate SDN into its offerings to stay ahead of the market. After becoming the first vendor to complete qualification with Microsoft Lync for 802.11ac wireless networking solutions, we announced Meru Collaborator designed to ensure predictable experience for Microsoft Lync users.NEC and Meru also announced plans to work together to create SDN-enabled unified wired and wireless enterprise access networking solutions, further driving the adoption of open standards. The two companies are collaborating on support for OpenFlow to enable seamless interoperability between the NEC Programmable Flow Networking Suite and Meru 802.11ac intelligent Wi-Fi solutions.

With IDC predicting 1.2 billion smart phones to be shipped by the end of this year (a number expected to grow to 1.8 billion by 2018) and 1.3 billion mobile workers by 2015, the pressure is on for organisations to design and implement networks that can support this growing demand for Wi-Fi access. As a result, the future of wireless looks bright and this year looks set to be a busy and exciting one for the networking industry.

 
 

 
 

Cloud catch-up
“Archiving dramatically improves the performance of your primary storage, as only active and relevant data is stored on expensive primary SAN storage” Pictured: Lorcan Cunningham MD of Savenet Solutions
Savenet Solutions : Lorcan Cunningham, MD of Savenet
We predict 2015 will be the year that the Irish market for cloud services starts to catch up with the UK and others.

In the application space, we see a huge change in the number of companies looking to migrate to Office 365 in the next 12 months. The first wave of early adopters are now great reference sites and the majority of users can see it’s really a no-brainer in terms of running Microsoft applications.In the data management space, as data continues to grow exponentially, there will be major growth around cloud services to provide secure archive facilities. This allows companies to maintain their backup and primary storage environments at a set level and by implementing a vigorous archiving solution — customers can maintain compliance with any data audit rules, whilst keeping storage and backup costs under control.

Archiving dramatically improves the performance of your primary storage, as only active and relevant data is stored on expensive primary SAN storage. Backup and recovery times are vastly improved also, as only active data is being backed up. You also have less hardware to manage with all the cost reductions that brings.

Another area of strong growth will be the adoption of hosted desktops and servers in the cloud. This overcomes the problems many organisations have with multiple offices and mobile workforces. Applications are run straight from the cloud onto any device — enabling massive reduction in complexity and time to deployment for hard pressed IT departments.
 
 

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