CIO OPINION
Ultimately , CIOs want insights beyond the network itself and into availability and performance applications that the users and business leaders care about .
Partha Narasimhan , CTO of Aruba
The four 2021 networking trends every CIO needs to know
Partha Narasimhan , CTO of Aruba , a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company , outlines four trends that can provide CIOs and IT leaders with the tools to be better equipped for navigating the unpredictability of today and beyond .
We enter 2021 in a very different place from
where we were at the start of 2020 . The role of networking and more broadly , the IT function , has more often become the hero – and sometimes the scorn – of Business Continuity and resilience in the face of the pandemic . As CIOs soak up the praise or take their lumps , they must now look to the horizon and define their approach and strategy in a post-pandemic world .
Aruba has identified four major trends that CIOs now face that can make or break an organization ’ s IT program :
• The rise of the hybrid workforce and how that will evolve during and after the pandemic
• The changing role of network security integrated across the fabric of the network
• Graduating from uptime networking metrics to user satisfaction metrics , examining networking holistically as part of the broader IT technology stack
• Staying the course in implementing automation in networking operations , despite challenges posed by the LAN , WAN and cloud
The hybrid workforce is here to stay
Despite recent advances in vaccines for COVID-19 , many roles may still not fully return to the office until late 2021 , and in many cases , not at all . After speaking with CIOs from across the country , what is clear is that some amount of remote working will remain after the
44 INTELLIGENTCIO NORTH AMERICA www . intelligentcio . com