It’s NRF week in New York, which allows technology vendors to showcase innovation for the retail industry, and at the National Retail Federation show, HPE Aruba Networking rolled out several new products to help retailers tackle industry-specific challenges. They included providing backup connectivity for mission-critical apps, supporting pop-up stores and simplifying information technology infrastructure deployment in retail environments.
Networking and complexity go hand in hand, like chocolate and peanut butter. Though this has been the norm, it’s playing havoc with business operations. A recent ZK Research/Cube Research study found that 93% of organizations state the network is more critical to business operations than two years ago. In the same period, 80% said the network was more complex. Increasing complexity leads to blind spots, unplanned downtime, security breaches and other issues that affect businesses.
When it comes to building campus networks, there is a religion around stacking versus chassis-based systems. In my network engineer days, I lived on both sides of that holy war. Initially, it was chassis or nothing, but I worked for a big financial firm with large budgets and didn’t give much credence to other options. As time went on, I began to appreciate a stack’s flexibility and budget flexibility, as one could start with a small network stack and add to it when required.
Cisco Systems today announced its new Wi-Fi 7 access points. During the main keynote at Cisco Live APJC in Melbourne, Tom Gillis, senior vice president and general manager of the Cisco Security Business Group, introduced the products and mentioned that Cisco’s goal with the new APs is to give its customers the ability to “solve for their connectivity, security and assurance challenges while also providing a flexible foundation to future-proof their workplaces.”
Juniper Networks Inc. is focusing on helping customers move artificial intelligence in their networks from vision to reality, and today it laid out its plans at its AI-Native NOW customer event at the New York Stock Exchange. Over the last several years, Juniper has developed strong AI networking products, and interest in AI for networking is extremely high, as engineers need help keeping up with modern networks’ complexity.