Five Trends That Will Influence IT Networking in 2022

Since 2020, organizations have had to fine-tune their IT networks to make them seamless for remote employees to access internal applications and data, to make them secure against emerging threats, and to effectively support expanding operations. Let’s look at some of the top emerging trends in the IT networking domain in 2022 that should help organizations fine-tune their networks to meet the challenges ahead.

At the dawn of 2020, no one could have foreseen the swift migration to remote work strategies that would take place just months later. Even as companies began rushing their employees out the door at the start of the COVID outbreak, no one could have predicted that these swift trends would establish the roots that they did.Â

Because technology moves so fast today, the crystal ball that we use to peer into the future seems to get murkier each year. However, businesses always rely on recent trends and events to form future strategies. Here’s a look at some of the recent trends that have taken root in the IT networking sphere and would inform developments in the space in the year ahead.

Five Top IT Networking Trends for 2022

Networking as a Service (NaaS)

We have grown accustomed now to delivering IT as a service. Over the past decade, enterprises have recognized the great benefits that â€œ_______ as a Serviceâ€ models, such as SaaS, IaaS and PaaS come with. Well, get ready for another acronym â€“ NaaS or Networking as a Service. While the global Network Networking-as-a-Service (NaaS) market was valued at just over $8 billion in 2020, it is expected to exceedOpens a new window $45 billion by 2026.Â Â

The concept of NaaS is like other â€˜as a Service’ types. A networking vendor such as Aruba or Cisco provides your networking infrastructure to your facility and charges you for using it, thus shifting it to an OPEX predictable budgeting model. As is characteristic of such models, it eliminates the high CAPEX of product refreshes for all switches and routers across your IT estate. Because these refreshes are part of the service, customers can take advantage of shorter product cycles, allowing them to leverage better technology faster. The outside vendor then manages everything through the cloud, removing the burden of mundane tasks such as patching, updating and basic troubleshooting for internal IT. In addition to a zero-ticket experience, internal IT gains added visibility and insights into their network that was unattainable before through self-service portals.Â

See More: Network Management: Why NetOps Is the New DevOps

Hot desking becomes the next evolutionary step of hybrid work

As employees began returning to work in the latter half of 2021, we heard the conversation turn from remote work strategies to hybrid work architectures. Does the conundrum then become how to allocate office space for your employees when you don’t know where they may be working from? How do you avoid the expense of large amounts of empty office space or risk running out of space when everyone comes in simultaneously?Â Â

The answer is hot desking. Hot desking incorporates communal workspaces that employees can utilize when they come into the office. Some desks will include high-performance PCs for users who need devices more powerful than their laptops. Desks and computers are unassigned, sort of like a public library’s PC area. An employee simply chooses whatever workspace happens to be available and starts working. This negates the need for assigned offices and desktop PCs. Conference rooms are available for team meetings or client interfacing. Besides providing high-performance wireless access for these areas, a primary challenge will be delivering the assigned desktop and application portfolio to any user that logs on to a community machine.Â Â

5G takes remote work to the next level

There is no doubt that the proliferation of Wi-Fi provided the infrastructure for today’s mobile society and workforce. Believe it or not though, you haven’t seen anything yet. While Wi-Fi access is highly prevalent, it still lacks the ubiquitous presence that employees need to work from anywhere truly. That will change once enterprise computing devices become embedded with 5G capability later this year. Users will no longer be restricted to available Wi-Fi perimeters or lug around personal hotspots whenever they go out. Companies must deliver applications and create workspaces to any remotely connected device to allow users to work from any device, from any location. 5G will truly allow employees to work from anywhere, even in the middle of nowhere. It is the next chapter of network mobility.

The transformation of internal ITÂ

Of late, enterprises have witnessed the growing presence of shadow IT throughout their organizations as business units have grown weary of wrangling with internal IT concerning their technology needs. Indeed, IT can no longer reside on an island, and they can’t be the ones driving technology anymore. While it may not be time to get rid of the IT Department, as a recent article in the Wall Street JournalOpens a new window alluded to, it is time for IT to make itself more valuable to the business by aligning itself with the needs of the business through cooperative partnerships. Through these new liaisons, Internal IT will deliver the necessary solutions to satisfy the visions of those that dream it. Business units will now help mold the future of the company network.

In addition, we will see less specialization within internal IT departments. For example, with NaaS, you will no longer need a routing and switch specialist. With the growing popularity of hyperconverged infrastructure solutions, you no longer need a storage specialist. To keep pace with the speed of business, internal IT will no longer build their network environments, either through cloud providers or outside vendors that can deploy and implement new solutions according to best practices to get the new technology working. Internal IT will consist of operators who will run the environment.Â Â

See More: Why the Future of Networks Is WAN Convergence

Clipping the VPN cord

While companies continue to migrate applications and internal systems to the cloud, there are limitations to what they can move. It isn’t easy to lift and shift legacy ERP systems and customized applications to the cloud. The problem is that remote users need to get to applications and websites inside the company domain. The traditional answer has been to allot VPN access to remote users, but VPN comes with significant risk as hackers readily target VPN connections. Once a VPN login is compromised, hackers directly connect to the LAN. VPN clients must also be updated and supported, which is a mundane assignment that Internal IT is trying to eliminate. VPN connections also tend to be problematic, increasing help desk calls. Expect a growing assortment of remote access solutions on the market that provide access to the exact assets that remote users need without VPN dependency.Â

Conclusion

Whether any of these predictions come true is anyone’s guess. There may be something just beyond the horizon that we don’t see coming that will initiate significant, unpredictable changes to our lives. We only know for sure that businesses will expand their use of technology and that the size of their IT estates will continue to grow as networks continue to expand outward.Â Â

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What do you think will be the top networking trend in 2022? Â Comment below or let us know on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!