* Predictions for the branch office in 2008
It’s the first column of the year, so after sifting through the backlog of topic ideas, one that wasn’t on my list came to mind. It’s the start of 2008, so what will change this year?
At first, the idea of writing the gratuitous “Annual Outlook” column seemed too predictable. But after further thought, it’s actually timely not only because of the calendar year. It’s timely because there are a lot of changes happening in the branch office.
Here are my official predictions for where the focus will be this year:
1.) More staff resources will be devoted to the branch. With data center consolidations projects winding down, IT staffs will shift their focus to building responsive, secure infrastructure to deliver centralized applications and data to their branch locations.
2.) Companies will streamline branch office decision-making. Rather than having numerous people (many not even in IT) haphazardly deciding what equipment to install at each location, decision-making will become more centralized within IT and telecom.
3.) IT staffs will develop standard products and services for branch locations, with a governance structure for how to manage exceptions.
4.) The definition of the “branch” will broaden. From an IT perspective, most remote sites, regardless of size, will be considered branch offices. More importantly, we will see the growing acceptance of the “micro branch,” or the office of one. IT and facilities staffs increasingly will classify a home-office employee or a mobile worker.
5.) Security functions such as VPN, firewall, and IDS/IPS will become more centralized, but concerns over potential security concerns among traffic that stays within a branch will cause security teams to reconsider adding some functionality at the branch.
6.) All-in-one devices will pick up in adoption, but there will continue to be a strong propensity toward best-of-breed solutions.
7.) Demand for bandwidth and latency reduction in and to the branch will continue to increase. Consequently, we will see more companies evaluating and increasing their penetration of network optimization and application acceleration devices.
8.) Streamlined branch office communications will become a high priority, resulting in further rollouts of IP telephony, unified messaging, and other IP-based communications applications. We’ll see some of the leading-edge IT organizations implementing unified communications solutions (with presence capabilities built into the applications).
9.) Managed services at the branch will continue to grow. IT staffs don’t have the budget increases required to internally manage the growing number of branch locations. So they will rely more and more upon third-party services to handle installation, management, training, and troubleshooting of their branch infrastructure.
10.) Wireless capabilities will play a more important role at the branch, in areas such as back-up services, wireless LANs, and broadband data services for the mobile micro branch.
We’ll be these areas in 2008, so let’s see how the numbers and trends play out. After talking in detail to hundreds of IT executives in 2007, these trends will resonate with the majority of IT organizations. Let me know what’s happening in your business or organization at robin@nemertes.com.
