Many technology vendors have used artificial intelligence to transform their products. This is evident in areas like unified communications, contact centers and cybersecurity.
Yet one area of IT that has yet to see AI play a significant impact is the network. AI has been used to improve basic management functions but has yet to transform network operations.
Arizona-based Liveops is a contact center-as-a-service (CCaaS) provider that provides agent services for several industries, including insurance, retail and health services. The company was launched 20 years ago in the gig economy and maintains a large work-from-home workforce with more than 25,000 independent agents who provide contact center services to businesses of all sizes. The company has grown rapidly and provides services to many name brand companies across the US.
Palo Alto Networks has announced what it calls Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) 2.0, which shifts the focus of ZTNA from the network to the application layer.
Implementing zero trust has been top of mind for security pros for the past couple of years. Pre-pandemic, the topic had been gaining momentum, but interest in it exploded as work from home increased, applications moved to the cloud and the IT environment got more complex. In many cases, networks became too complicated to secure with traditional tools.
Recently, network market leader Cisco held its annual event, Cisco Live, in Las Vegas. It’s been three years since the network giant held the event in an in-person format and the first in the era of hybrid work.
Historically, Cisco has used the event to launch new switches, routers, security devices and other new products. While the 2022 edition of Cisco Live certainly had its fair share of products, such as the new Nexus switches highlighted in my latest ZKast, much of Cisco’s innovation was aimed at making the day-to-day job of IT pros easier.
Over the last decade, a generational shift has taken place in the enterprise: the move from on-premise data centers to the cloud.
Organizations continue to face the same issues they have always faced in networking, but with much less control due to the distributed nature of data, applications, people, and devices.