WAN professionals adapted to new roles in 2010

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

From advances in cloud computing to the proliferation of mobile devices to consolidated data centers, the past year has seen several significant changes for wide area networks, and, consequently, for WAN professionals, TechTarget reports.

According to TechTarget, many WAN professionals are now responsible for one of 2010's biggest trends - cloud computing. However, as the technology is still relatively young, its applications are error-prone. As a result, WAN professionals are expected to fix problems often present on data centers thousands of miles away.

The growth of the mobile workforce also introduced new challenges for WAN professionals. With smartphones and tablets in hand, employees expect to be tuned into WAN at all times - even if they're not tuned into security policies.

Once relegated to the lower layers of the OSI model, data centers consolidation has forced networking professionals to bear the burden of improving WAN application performance, working within layer 7. TechTarget asserts networking professionals are keen on WAN application performance monitoring tools to improve application performance management.

Changes to WANs do not show signs of slowing down in the next year either. In 2011, WAN professionals can look forward to even more responsibilities as businesses prepare to migrate toward IPv6 and mobile solutions continue to evolve.