A common misconception about software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) is that all solutions are essentially the same. Choose your vendor, the thinking goes, and you’ll save countless dollars every year thanks to the efficiencies of centralized management. The truth is a little more complicated.

There’s an old saying in networking that goes something like “You’re only as good as your tools and to the degree that they are updated.” This usually comes up when we’re talking about network management. Like the rest of the IT world, innovation in networking technology is constant, which means that the processes and tools we use to run the network are constantly being improved upon and updated.

In the past decade, organizations across all industries have come to realize that new technologies and methodologies can eliminate many of the management challenges that have traditionally been a part of supporting email and other applications. Today, the same thing is happening with storage, computing and networking. While cloud software has streamlined software support, technologies…

Digital transformation occurs when enterprises fundamentally change their business model, creating a shift in technology that affects IT culture and how value is being delivered to customers. Scale, referring to additional connected devices increasing data growth, is one of those technological changes. The Internet of Things, for example, is often a key component of digital…

At a recent trade show, someone referred to me as a software-defined networking veteran. This struck me as odd, because I’ve only been talking about SDN for five years, but also as being true — because I’ve been studying it for five years. I started speaking about this technology because it was so clear to…