Enterprise Looking for Security, Access at the Edge

As the action continues to push out to the network edge, enterprises are looking not only for better performance from their distributed applications but also for greater security for the data that is being generated and collected out there. Trends like cloud services, a more mobile workforce, increasingly intelligent applications and the internet of things (IoT) are rapidly changing the way business is done, pushing applications and data beyond the firewall while enabling employees to work where they want and to easily access cloud services. That’s driving the need for organizations to bring better network access and application performance to where the workers are while finding ways to address what is a vastly larger threat landscape. “The network edge used to be something that was easy to define,” Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst with ZK Research, told eWEEK. “It used to be the branch or campus edge, but now it’s wherever your customers are.” It’s creating an edge computing market that is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years. A report published by MarketsandMarkets is predicting the space—including hardware and solutions—to grow from $1.47 billion in 2017 to $6.27 billion in 2022, an annual average growth rate of 35.4 percent. Given such numbers, it’s no surprise that most data center product vendors are making the edge a central part of their portfolios and roadmaps. Two of those vendors are Cisco Systems and Aruba Networks. Cisco over the past couple of years has continued to push its broad array of products out to the edge. That includes everything from its HyperFlex hyperconverged infrastructure solutions to edge routers and Webex collaboration services. The company, like most other networking technology vendors, also has been building out its software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) lineup, making it easier for branch offices to connect directly into the internet rather than having to go through a central data center.