Traditional networking technologies and topologies were designed for the simpler business needs of the past. They weren’t designed for today’s complex enterprise, with its multiple wired and wireless local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs) incorporating multiple factories, warehouses, and data centers, and various cloud services.
Traditional infrastructure wasn’t designed for today’s increasingly connected factories. Networks need to support greater volumes of devices and data from those devices. Real-time communications and video are becoming more prevalent, with HD-quality live streams from surveillance and production-monitoring cameras, as well as conferencing with workers on the factory floor. Networks are expanding, incorporating IoT and connected equipment outside traditional IT environments.
Many of these networks and IT environments are siloed, making it difficult to gain end-to-end visibility of who and what is accessing the networks, and the quality of the worker experience. Managing these networks has become a huge challenge.