For decades, enterprise networks were designed around a simple assumption: work happened inside the office. Applications lived in centralized data centers, employees connected through internal infrastructure, and security focused on protecting the perimeter that surrounded everything ... But the way organizations operate today bears little resemblance to that environment. Cloud platforms host critical applications, employees connect from homes and airports as often as they do from offices, and partners collaborate through shared systems that exist far beyond corporate walls. In short, the corporate network no longer resembles the environment it was designed to protect ...

As an analyst who researches how IT organizations design, build, and operate their networks, I find that network data is a constant source of pain. Network teams struggle with data quality, fragmentation, authority, access, and trust. And these issues undermine everything they try to do. Here are the numbers: Only 45% of network teams are completely confident in the accuracy of their network source of truth, which documents the intent of their network ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 26, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses network compliance ... 

The biggest challenge in multi-cloud operations today isn't a technical one. It is a fundamental lack of operational transparency. Historically, cloud architecture was dominated by a singular focus on connectivity ... That initial phase is over. Today, spinning up a highly flexible environment across cloud providers, on-premises infrastructure, and various SaaS platforms is standard operating procedure. But as organizations start layering automated workflows and intelligent systems on top of this massive footprint, a much tougher question comes to the surface: Are we actually equipped to track data paths across these highly distributed environments? ...

For decades, identity security followed a straightforward rule: authenticate once, then trust ... That environment no longer exists. Today's enterprises span cloud platforms, SaaS tools, partner ecosystems, and increasingly autonomous AI-driven workflows. Employees connect from everywhere, devices vary in trustworthiness, and attackers exploit this complexity by targeting the weakest link: identity. The problem isn't that credentials are obsolete. It's that they no longer reflect reality ...

For years, secure connectivity has relied on a familiar pattern: route traffic back to centralized gateways, inspect it, and then allow access. This model worked when applications lived in a handful of data centers and users were largely confined to offices. That model is now under strain. Applications are distributed across clouds, users connect from everywhere, and real-time workloads demand performance that centralized inspection points struggle to deliver. As traffic volumes grow and latency expectations shrink, routing everything through a small number of control points has become both a performance bottleneck and a resilience risk. The future of secure connectivity requires a different approach ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 25, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses AI's impact on the Wide Area Network (WAN) ... 

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 24, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses network observability tool sprawl ... 

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 23, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses the NetOps labor shortage ... 

For years, many infrastructure teams treated the edge as a deployment variation. It was seen as the same cloud model, only stretched outward: more devices, more gateways, more locations and a little more latency. That assumption is proving costly. The edge is not just another place to run workloads. It is a fundamentally different operating condition ...

Over the past few years, organizations have made enormous strides in enabling remote and hybrid work. But the foundational technologies powering today's digital workplace were never designed for the volume, velocity, and complexity that is coming next. By 2026 and beyond, three forces — 5G, the metaverse, and edge AI — will fundamentally reshape how people connect, collaborate, and access enterprise resources ... The businesses that begin preparing now will gain a competitive head start. Those that wait will find themselves trying to secure environments that have already outgrown their architecture ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 22, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses DNS Security ... 

Network hardware vendors are raising prices again — and enterprises are feeling it at renewal and refresh time ... Here's the reality: the buy-rack-depreciate cycle is no longer the only way to build a world-class enterprise network — and this isn't a one-off. It's sustained upward pressure across the hardware stack ...

As enterprise networks get more complex, encompassing on-prem, cloud and hybrid systems and applications, network automation is no longer optional. It's critical for uptime, security and scale. Yet persistent misconceptions about increasingly capable network automation platforms among the very NetOps professionals who would benefit the most from using them are holding back adoption. Here are 5 of the most common of those misconceptions, and why NetOps teams might want to re-think them ...

While 87% of manufacturing leaders and technical specialists report that ROI from their AIOps initiatives has met or exceeded expectations, only 37% say they are fully prepared to operationalize AI at scale, according to The Future of IT Operations in the AI Era, a report from Riverbed ...

Many organizations rely on cloud-first architectures to aggregate, analyze, and act on their operational data ... However, not all environments are conducive to cloud-first architectures ... There are limitations to cloud-first architectures that render them ineffective in mission-critical situations where responsiveness, cost control, and data sovereignty are non-negotiable; these limitations include ...

For years, cybersecurity was built around a simple assumption: protect the physical network and trust everything inside it. That model made sense when employees worked in offices, applications lived in data centers, and devices rarely left the building. Today's reality is fluid: people work from everywhere, applications run across multiple clouds, and AI-driven agents are beginning to act on behalf of users. But while the old perimeter dissolved, a new one quietly emerged ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 21, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses AI-driven NetOps ... 

Every business today depends on real-time connectivity — for meetings, cloud apps, customer transactions, and increasingly, AI-driven workloads. Yet one of the most common reasons performance feels inconsistent has nothing to do with servers or software. It's packet loss — the silent destroyer of digital experience ...

Basic uptime is no longer the gold standard. By 2026, network monitoring must do more than report status, it must explain performance in a hybrid-first world. Networks are no longer just static support systems; they are agile, distributed architectures that sit at the very heart of the customer experience and the business outcomes ... The following five trends represent the new standard for network health, providing a blueprint for teams to move from reactive troubleshooting to a proactive, integrated future ...

The conversation around AI in the enterprise has officially shifted from "if" to "how fast." But according to the State of Network Operations 2026 report from Broadcom, most organizations are unknowingly building their AI strategies on sand. The data is clear: CIOs and network teams are putting the cart before the horse. AI cannot improve what the network cannot see, predict issues without historical context, automate processes that aren't standardized, or recommend fixes when the underlying telemetry is incomplete. If AI is the brain, then network observability is the nervous system that makes intelligent action possible ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 20, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA presents his 2026 NetOps predictions ... 

Industry experts offer predictions on how NetOps and NPM will evolve and impact business in 2026. Part 2 covers NetOps challenges and the edge ...

APMdigest's Predictions Series continues with 2026 NetOps Predictions — industry experts offer predictions on how NetOps and Network Performance Management (NPM) will evolve and impact business in 2026 ...

The rise of hybrid cloud environments, the explosion of IoT devices, the proliferation of remote work, and advanced cyber threats have created a monitoring challenge that traditional approaches simply cannot meet. IT teams find themselves drowning in a sea of data, struggling to identify critical threats amidst a deluge of alerts, and often reacting to incidents long after they've begun. This is where AI and ML are leveraged ...