This is a guest blog post by Brad Casemore, Research Vice President, Datacenter Networks, IDC. Connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Employees currently constitute a hybrid workforce spanning multiple locations and environments. At the same time, the growth of cloud means that applications are more distributed and decentralized than ever. Most enterprises now have a mix of on-premises applications as well as a growing number of SaaS and IaaS applications, and some are deploying applications in edge environments. As a result of the distribution of both the workforce and applications, IT complexity has grown alongside the business imperative for cloud-like agility and speed.
The challenge, for enterprises and the vendors that serve them, is to abstract and effectively mitigate complexity to achieve agility and flexibility without compromising on security and control. Modern architectures and infrastructure are clearly needed, but IDC finds that the ways in which infrastructure is managed and operated must also change if organizations are to attain unprecedented scale.
As organizations modernize their network infrastructure, including their application delivery infrastructure, they are embracing cloud-centric architectures and operating models. Their aim is to extensively leverage intelligent automation to simplify what is inherently complex and to align with developer and application needs. In doing so, the IT teams in these organization will be able to contribute more meaningfully and tangibly to the business outcomes that are integral to digital transformation.
Automation related both to network infrastructure and security can offer considerable benefits and business value, but IDC finds that enterprises are cognizant of the challenges involved. In IDC’s Future Enterprise Resiliency & Spending Survey Wave 1, February 2021, respondents indicated several significant barriers that prevented them from deriving full value from automation, as shown in the chart below (click image to view larger).
The goal for application-delivery infrastructure, and for networking more broadly, should be to seamlessly support and effectively integrate with application-developer needs and DevOps practices. This convergence of business strategy and cloud-centric IT operations should produce common cause between business goals and digital means. It should also enable better collaboration between lines of business, developers, and ITOps personnel, including an evolving breed of modern network operators who will increasingly adopt cloud-centric operational processes, integration of cloud/IT processes, and closer relationships with business stakeholders.
There’s an axiom that structure follows strategy, and the same rule applies to infrastructure. A cloud-centric operating model cannot achieve its strategic objectives if it is applied on architectures and infrastructure that haven’t been modernized in the same manner. With that in mind, what are the essential attributes of modern application-delivery infrastructure?
Agility Through Automation
Automation should facilitate agility throughout the application lifecycle. Without question, automation that speeds deployment is important, but so is automation that improves the agility and effectiveness of day-to-day operations throughout the network life cycle (Day 0 and Day 1, but also Day 2 and Day N). Prime examples of agility through automation include elastic autoscaling, API integrations, and intent-based traffic steering and policy-based automation.
In addition, automated application delivery infrastructure should align with DevOps practices and the needs of application developers. This means providing automation that conforms with CI/CD pipelines, elastic autoscaling, and code pushes.
Comprehensive Application and API Security
Ensuring that applications and APIs are fully protected from threats and vulnerabilities should be an enterprise priority. The adoption of a layered and comprehensive approach to application and API security — including WAF, defenses against volumetric DDoS attacks, and bot management — can help keep applications available and safe for employees and customers. Comprehensive application and API security must be considered carefully and planned thoroughly to ensure that application protection serves to optimize employee experience and overall IT agility.
Operational Simplicity
Given the need for agility and speed, complexity is the enemy. Automated application-delivery infrastructure must be both effective and simple to operate, helping ITOps move deftly and quickly. Lightweight multifunction SD-WAN appliances provide simplicity not only through consolidation of network and security functions, but also through the ability to provide automated connectivity from home and branch networks to cloud infrastructure, where network policies, application-based security, and analytics reside.
Support for All Apps, Everywhere
Modern application-delivery infrastructure should be capable of supporting all the applications that are integral to digital transformation. That means support for all hybrid and multicloud application environments (on premises, co-location, and clouds) and the full range of application infrastructure (hardware appliances, virtual ADCs, containerized ADCs, cloud ADCs).
Centralized Management and Orchestration
Centralized management for consistent operations is essential, ensuring both agility and flexibility spanning on-premises environments as well as clouds. Centralized management also supports governance and compliance, and it provides RBAC to ensure that DevOps, SecOps, and NetOps obtain the services and insights relevant to their mandates and requirements.
Visibility for Digital Experience, Security, and Faster Troubleshooting Remediation
Visibility that is capable of yielding actionable insights is increasingly important. Such visibility should extend all the way up to the application layer (and user level) to facilitate automated policy-based traffic steering and enable full-stack application insights that can provide observability for CI/CD, root-cause analysis, and faster remediation of issues that threaten application availability. Visibility assists in providing contextual access (based on user location, device, available endpoint protection, etc.) and also provides insights into network performance and security architectures, ensuring that real-time events that could affect network or security availability are resolved immediately through failover mechanisms that maintain digital resilience. Such visibility and observability — extending to the user level, regardless of location — helps operators achieve a more proactive posture, eliminating network and security risks before they can turn into service disruptions and outages.
In considering modernization of application delivery infrastructure, organizations should recognize that the investments they make will determine how successful they will be in achieving the goal of being able to move fast without losing control.
