Prakash Mana is an experienced technology executive and leader. He is the co-founder and CEO of Cloudbrink. With 25 years of experience in various markets, Prakash has a strong track record of success and expertise in cloud, networking, security, and infrastructure. Prior to his role at Cloudbrink, he held executive positions at Pulse Secure and Citrix. Prakash is widely recognized in the cybersecurity landscape, where his relentless drive for innovation has been instrumental in transforming the way businesses operate.

The year networking catches up with hybrid working needs

It’s a safe bet that about half the predictions made for 2024 will be wrong. Predicting change is easy. Getting the timing right is another matter.

When we started working with our design partners in 2020 we bet that the world would move steadily towards hybrid working. In fact, hybrid work took off like a rocket. While pandemic set off the revolution, it is millennials and Gen Z — the first 100% digital generation — that are keeping it going.

The 9 to 5 mentality is long gone. Shift hours are not the motivation; it is better work-life balance, operational efficiency, and productivity that we care about. What seemed like a transient problem during covid times has now become an existential and generational issue.

This shift to hybrid work has sent IT teams into overdrive trying to fulfil the secure connectivity needs of a workforce that is no longer office based but which would need to be equipped to work from anywhere. IT reached for familiar technology, throwing millions of dollars at VPN. This elderly technology is still the most common choice for enabling hybrid working in its remote mode but performance and operational challenges make it a far from optimal solution.

The pandemic hybrid shift also encouraged enterprises to adapt existing SD-WAN solutions, though these office-centric networks were being asked to do a job they were never designed for. Supporting remote users typically involved upgraded connections and hardware rollouts — all at a time when silicon was in short supply and IT was already at full stretch.

Research by Enterprise Management Associates for Cloubrink, published late last year, showed that despite the efforts to bend existing network architectures to fit the shape of the new world of work, networking still hasn’t caught up with the needs of the modern workforce. Of the 354 IT pros who took part in the EMA survey, only 32% of claim that they have “fully succeeded” in providing fast, reliable, secure connectivity to work-from-anywhere staff and 31% admit that performance is still worse for remote users than their colleagues in the office.

What started as a necessity has become a choice: future generations of employees will demand IT that works the way they do. So while predictions are always risky, mine is that 2024 will be the year when the networking industry finally gets on top of the trend.

Hybrid working will transform IT architecture and investment

Hybrid working will continue to become mainstream, particularly as millennials and GenZs get into decision-making roles. This trend will have a profound effect on IT, shifting investment in the security and networking stacks from the office to the user. Expect to see spending on data center and office plateau before shrinking as network/security architecture migrates to the edge. Other impacts of hybrid working will be on the shape of service provision. More and more enterprise services will move from independent PoP based architecture to cloud-native and edge-native solutions, slashing end user latencies from ~100ms to ~20ms. Services that resolve last-mile performance issues will become a growth driver for telcos and managed service providers. Continuing shortages of silicon will push enterprises to look for software-based solutions to access and connectivity problems.

Work-from-anywhere will change the way IT is organized

The enterprise workforce will be viewed through the lens of hybrid work. Work-from-anywhere will become a universal requirement encompassing users in the office, on the road or working from home. Enterprise CXOs will no longer tolerate the increased security risks and lower productivity of remote/mobile workers but will demand higher productivity with fewer breaches across the entire workforce. Functional silos within enterprise IT (networking, security, endpoint, apps) will be eroded as organizations prioritize user experience across all functions.

AI will accelerate the development of edge computing

AI will put even more pressure on network bandwidth and performance, particularly in the mid-mile and last-mile of the network where most of the bottlenecks occur. Demand for network capacity, which is already doubling every two years, will be pushed even higher as, for example, LLMs become small enough to run on laptops. AI is not the only driver of demand. Streaming providers like Netflix are betting on gaming for growth in 2024. As data generation and processing needs increase, edge computing will become more critical. We’ll likely see a significant shift towards edge computing, where data processing occurs closer to where it’s needed, reducing latency and bandwidth use. This will be particularly important for applications requiring real-time processing, like autonomous vehicles and industrial automation — and of course increasingly ubiquitous AI.

Cloud complexity will be resolved at the network edge

Enterprises are struggling with the complexities of multicloud infrastructure to the extent that Gartner is warning of a retreat to single-cloud strategies. This reduces complexity at the expense of choice, driving enterprises towards vendor lock-ins and preventing them from leveraging best-of-breed capabilities of different cloud environments. Expect CXOs to shift their attention to multicloud connectivity at the user-edge, where the requirement is for secure, high-performance simplified access to applications running in multiple clouds, delivered as SaaS or from the enterprise data center.

From IP to RIP as networks become smarter

The OSI model was not built and designed for the modern age of cloud computing and cloud networks. In 2024 vendors will start to develop self-reliant, self-programming networks. New network protocols that can be programmed in real time will control connections from the end user, through the cloud to destination apps and services, adjusting for the quality and performance issues that bedevil cloud networks today. Through AI, these networks will become aware of the conditions in each segment of the network from access, through first mile, mid mile and last mile, and program themselves accordingly to pick the best connections and the fastest routes.

Slow access service edge

Our final prediction is that several anticipated advancements for 2024 may emerge at a slower pace or encounter more challenges than expected. The Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) serves as an apt illustration of this, exemplifying how outlining a solution can be straightforward, but its implementation can be complex.

In the coming year, we anticipate a surge in demand from businesses for standardized guidelines for SASE/SSE particularly as it applies to the hybrid workforce. Expect to see enterprises continuing to be caught in the debate between single-vendor and multi-vendor solutions, and struggling to resolve technical integration, vendor management and cost estimation and containment issues.