A host of factors have converged to produce the latest revolution in computer and communications networking:
Image Demand: Enterprises are faced with a surge of demands that focus their attention on the need to design, evaluate, manage, and maintain sophisticated network infrastructures. These trends include the following:
Image Big data: Enterprises large and small increasingly rely on processing and analyzing massive amounts of data. To process large quantities of data within tolerable time periods, big data may need distributed file systems, distributed databases, cloud computing platforms, Internet storage, and other scalable storage technologies.
Image Cloud computing: There is an increasingly prominent trend in many organizations to move a substantial portion or even all information technology (IT) operations to an Internet-connected infrastructure known as enterprise cloud computing. This drastic shift in IT data processing is accompanied by an equally drastic shift in networking requirements.
Image Internet of Things (IoT): The IoT involves large numbers of objects that use standard communications architectures to provide services to end users. Billions of such devices will be interconnected in industrial, business, and government networks, providing new interactions between the physical world and computing, digital content, analysis, applications, and services. IoT provides unprecedented opportunities for users, manufacturers, and service providers in a wide variety of sectors. Areas that will benefit from IoT data collection, analysis, and automation capabilities include health and fitness, healthcare, home monitoring and automation, energy savings and smart grid, farming, transportation, environmental monitoring, inventory and product management, security, surveillance, education, and many others.
