by Ian Barker

One of the biggest impacts of 2020's pandemic has been on networks as more people than ever have switched to remote work. Let's have a look at how the industry thinks this will play out in 2021.

Dave Locke, chief technology advisor at global services provider World Wide Technology (WWT)believes:

2021 will continue the trend towards 'anywhere operations.' Modern infrastructure is increasingly software-defined and can be managed from any location. This shift will continue to drive continuity in enterprises' network quality and security, whether employees are in the office, working abroad, or from home. For example, call centre workers might continue to work from home, but businesses will want to secure a minimum standard of call quality and security.

To deliver this, the IT infrastructure needs to be distributed closer to employees. Big cloud scalers are creating products which decentralise stored data and push it into business premises. Services like AWS Outposts will be important to remote working because they allow businesses to have their own mini on-premise cloud, all while remaining connected to larger public cloud infrastructure and its benefits. To meet the associated security challenges of this shift, SASE software, combining wide-area networking, and network security services into a single, cloud-delivered service model, will gain popularity.

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