Key Issues For Communications Enterprise Strategies, 2011

Key Issues for Communications Enterprise Strategies, 2011
Communications infrastructure modernization is a top priority, as networking underpins most major IT initiatives. This research describes the key enterprise networking trends and critical areas of focus for network architects, planners and operational managers for 2011.

Topic Description
The scope of the communications enterprisestrategies agenda is to assist enterprise directors of networking, network architects and network managers in the design, purchase and operation of network solutions and equipment, and to assist product management and market and competitive intelligence personnel within enterprise network equipment vendors selling solutions to the enterprise.
The main focus for our 2011 agenda is communicationinfrastructure modernization. Networks are always in a continual state of evolution, but the urgency to upgrade is new: from new application deployment models, video, mobility, unified communications, server virtualization and cloud computing. All of these areas have a significant impact on how networks are designed, built and run. We describe how these changes will impact the network, and outline thekey decision points for potential network modifications. Because of the increased convergence of solutions, we will focus on convergence in technologies and technology domains, such as servers, storage and network convergence, voice, video and data convergence, and wireless and wired convergence, as well as LANs, WANs and data center LAN convergence, as described in "The Enterprise Network of theFuture Will Be Hyperconverged."
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Why This Is Important
The network has become an intrinsic and essential component of the IT infrastructure. Almost all enterprise applications and, thus, business processes are supported by the enterprise network. The emerging approach encompasses hybrid solutions of enterprise-built, carrier-provided, public Internet and consumer/end-user-providedsolutions. At the same time, many high-priority applications are becoming more tightly coupled to the infrastructure: Applications are being reworked to be delivered in a mobile form, or through the cloud. It is not enough to merely provide access to locations and individuals; the network needs to natively optimize applications. As an infrastructure initiative, many CIOs are stating that ensuringconnectivity for their remote employees is their most important issue (see "Gartner CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey, 2010: Perceptions of IT and Tactical Fixes"). This is also reflected in the 2011 Gartner CIO survey, where networking, voice and data communication remain in the top 10 priority list, and where cloud computing and virtualization are still the two top priorities. While thetop business priority now is to support business growth, the CIO's top IT priority is to develop and manage a flexible infrastructure increasingly dependent on network initiatives (see "Reimagining IT: The 2011 CIO Agenda").
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Key Issue Descriptions
The agenda addresses the related Key Issues to provide an end-to-end view of the traditional infrastructure and operations (I&O)cycle, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Traditional I&O Cycle

Source: Gartner (March 2011)
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Within this cycle, we will describe how network planning needs to change, and outline how this will impact solution design and selection criteria in order to support a more agile IT environment. The key planning question is how enterprises should approach their network planning and designin order to meet the needs of the hyperconverged enterprise, and how equipment vendors should plan for this change.
Changes in application deployment, such as composite applications, mashups and the move to cloud computing, are increasingly changing application traffic flows in a manner that requires highly meshed network topologies within the data center and across all traditionally separate...