As a continuation of the list of 2019 predictions, APMdigest invited industry experts to predict how Network Performance Management (NPM) and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2019. Here are the predictions:
Start with 2019 Application Performance Management Predictions
AI AND ML SUPPORT NPM
In 2019, the success of network transformations depends on more than just adopting modern technologies. The full value of these new architectures will never be realized due to existing siloed tool sets, manual operating procedures and reactive triage. NetOps teams need to adopt a unified, highly scalable application-centric approach to network monitoring coupled with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in order to confidently assure the network and the application experience. Benefits include breaking down operational silos, improving network traffic visibility, predicting network outages and implementing automated triage procedures
Jeremy Rossbach
Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Broadcom
The traditional "break-fix" approach to maintaining network quality of service (QoS) is no longer enough. End customers are now so dependent upon always-on connectivity and so sensitive to service outages that even short service interruptions are now deal-breakers. Moving forward, we're going to see artificial intelligence (AI) emerge as the role of a fixer and optimizer to enhance IT operations. Initial applications will tend to focus on security functions, like DDoS attack mitigation and real-time automated path selection. Eventually, uses will grow to include AI-defined network topologies and basic operations, which will help us forge toward a network that runs on auto-pilot.
Kailem Anderson
VP of Product Management for Software and Services, Ciena
NETOPS DEMANDS MORE INTEGRATED NPM
Network-centric businesses will finally go all-in on creating and supporting NetOps teams as a more agile organizing principle. As a result, in 2019 we'll see these teams demanding more integrated network management platforms that optimize analytics and workflows to enable the consolidation of legacy IT monitoring tools and dashboards (tool sprawl).
Mark Milinkovich
Director of Product Marketing, LiveAction
DEVOPS MUST TAKE NETWORK MORE SERIOUSLY
In 2019, we need to incite some urgency to compel DevOps to work in tandem with network infrastructure. A microservices-based approach to DevOps would help yield a Cloud Native Network Operating System (CN-NOS), that ultimately puts an operator first. Doing so will align the management of development, operations, and network to solve major systemic issues that are becoming increasingly common in cloud native environments.
Glenn Sullivan
Co-Founder, SnapRoute
NETOPS SUPPORTS DEVOPS
Traditional networking sliding beneath the fold. Networking professionals will find the tedious task of managing network devices port by port slipped beneath the proverbial fold as cloud-inspired technologies like SDN push the overlay networking popular in virtual private clouds into the core network. This will cloudify the traditional routing and switching layers of the network and make the integration of containerized environments less painful a process. Network professionals will find their attention focused more firmly on Layer 4 through 7 and on automating the higher-order services necessary to support DevOps on a per-application basis.
Lori MacVittie
Principal Technical Evangelist, Office of the CTO, F5 Networks
SDN ADOPTION ACCELERATES
Adoption of SD-WAN will accelerate and exceed 50 percent by the end of 2019, far exceeding the already bullish predictions by analysts.
Brooks Borcherding
CEO, LiveAction
NPM COVERS LARGER AND MORE COMPLEX NETWORK FOOTPRINTS
As enterprises continue with multi-cloud adoption in 2019, Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostic (NPMD) vendors will need to cover larger and more complex network footprints for customers by providing increased visibility across existing campuses, WANs, datacenters and public clouds. Expect to see NPMD vendors ingesting more and varied telemetry, and providing more analytics to help organizations understand the distributed and dynamic networks that are increasingly being controlled by software-defined networks (SDN) in each domain. NPMD vendors will need to continue integrating these controllers to help enterprises manage the network from end to end.
John Smith
Founder and CTO, LiveAction
NETOPS NEEDS NEW LEVELS OF NETWORK GRANULARITY
In 2019, digital transformation will continue to drive personalized user experiences (for example, retail's location-based customer loyalty programs). For these to be successful and fluid, NetOps teams will need new levels of network granularity when looking at real-time end-to-end user performance data, including by site, by application, and by overlay tunnels and service provider.
Mark Milinkovich
Director of Product Marketing, LiveAction
SD-WAN CAUSES INTERNET UNPREDICTABILITY
Internet unpredictability impacts become more visible as SD-WAN projects spread and mature. SD-WAN adoption is on the rise, and with it, the enterprise’s growing dependence on the Internet. Before moving to SD-WAN, most enterprises only had to worry about Internet performance from its data centers to key services. With SD-WAN, they’re increasingly leveraging DIA and broadband connectivity and grappling with hundreds or thousands of sites, each of which will have distinct Internet paths to many different cloud-based services. Shifting from a carrier managed service to the Internet, means that there’s an exponential rise in the number of service providers that can potentially impact performance for branch office users. As a large number of enterprises move from deployment into their operations stage in 2019, the impact of Internet unpredictability will become more evident. As a result, more enterprise IT teams will start to develop operational capabilities to deal with Internet-centric issues.
Angelique Medina
Senior Product Marketing Manager, ThousandEyes
NPM DELIVERS VISIBILITY INTO SD-WAN
In 2019, as the adoption of software-defined networks accelerates, there will be an increase in the number of cloud service portals and screens DevOps is required to monitor. This will put a premium on network monitoring solutions that can deliver comprehensive end-to-end multi-domain, multi-vendor visibility into SD-WAN and SD-Access service overlays and performance KPIs. Organizations that fail to do this will see continued tools sprawl, which will result in added complexity and inefficiency when looking to resolve incidents quickly and/or deliver a premium service.
Mark Milinkovich
Director of Product Marketing, LiveAction
SAAS SATURATION
With SaaS apps saturating the enterprise space in 2019, IT is going to be stretched thinner than ever before — all while end-user expectations have never been higher. Without the availability of actionable analytics and insights into network performance (especially in cloud environments where IT has limited control), teams can expect a lot of finger-pointing in their direction over the next 12 months.
Matt Stevens
CEO, AppNeta
MICRO-SEGMENTATION
Micro-Segmentation will be needed across the entire network. We anticipate that the need for isolating different users, applications will be needed from the LAN to the WAN to the Data Center. This will be driven for multiple reasons - the need for reduce the risk zones not just from external threats but from internal threats; the need for consolidating disparate environments into a single network that can deliver the needs of different lines of business or IT and OT across the same infrastructure while providing isolated management and control.
Robert McBride
Head of Product Marketing, Versa Networks
5G NEEDS UPGRADED INFRASTRUCTURE
"5G" is a huge buzzword as we round the corner toward 2019, with many businesses clamoring for airtime about how their technologies will be even better on a 5G network. 2019 is expected to be all about 5G, but there is one element largely absent from the discussion: many companies are claiming 5G-readiness, but without the infrastructure to support it, we'll be left with the same bandwidth speed as before. To be able to take advantage of all that 5G will have to offer, telco companies will need to increase their infrastructure investments. Operators will have to upgrade their 4G networks to cope with the growing demand in 2019. In the year ahead, we predict there will be a growing awareness that while 5G innovation exists, the infrastructure will need significant time and investments to catch up.
Sascha Giese
Head Geek, SolarWinds
5G DRIVES EDGE COMPUTING
Edge computing is taking off. Given the increased number of devices connecting to the cloud, on-going trials of the technology and growth of 5G, it's expected that 2019 will see more mature edge deployments. One of the biggest adoption drivers will be 5G, given it is the most active use case for edge. With its reliability opening up an infinite number of new uses, 5G means data collected at the edge can be understood and actioned in near real-time. Multi-gigabit-per-second speeds and one-millisecond latency times will ensure more data than ever can be farmed off and used in wider crowd-sourced intelligence. While edge computing will be one of the differentiating technologies to take us into the next frontier for a fully-connected world, proof of concept will be a key factor to demand improved solutions from cloud providers to ensure edge is both effective and financially viable - before it starts revolutionizing the likes of wearables, cities and robots.
Stephan Fabel
Director of Product Management, Canonical
