Any to Any

About |

John Burke, CTO of Nemertes, advises key enterprise and vendor clients, and conducts primary research in cloud, networks, automation, and security. As a researcher and consultant, Mr. Burke draws on his more than 30 years’ experience as a practitioner and leader in IT to better understand what IT executives need and the challenges facing vendors trying to sell to them.

Opinion

When does SD-WAN make sense?

Software-defined WAN offers a lot of potential benefits including price, efficiency, and performance, but it’s not right for all sites.

Opinion

Multicloud: Keep providers separate and distinct or integrate them?

A multicloud infrastructure strategy can maximize the flexibility of enterprise IT staff, isolate workloads, and increase agility, but there may be overriding circumstances.

Opinion

Infusing a network organization with artificial intelligence will involve offloading tasks to AI, changing your approach to skills development, and as staffing requirements change, displacing workers.

Opinion

More work for admins: When labor-saving management tools don't ease workloads

There are lots of good reasons for network automation, but network teams need to be mindful of what they want to do with any time and resources saved.

Opinion

Should security systems be the network?

Small enterprises can get away with using security gear as their network infrastructure, but can larger ones, and is it a good idea?

Opinion

3 ways to reach the cloud and keep loss and latency low

Performance of cloud-based apps that create lots of network traffic can be hurt by network loss and latency, but there are options to address them.

Opinion

4 ways to better secure your network infrastructure

Must-do initiatives include eliminating generic credentials, regularly auditing IT admin accounts, and deploying MFA for infrastructure access.

Opinion

Don’t let automation break change management

Reliable change-management practices are critical to expanding network automation.

How to manage scripts that manage network automation

By following these four best coding practices, writers of scripts that automate networking chores can reduce errors, track changes, and ensure the code can be readily maintained as it evolves.

The case for declarative network automation

Some network teams are finding power and simplicity in the shift from telling devices what to do—imperative programming—to describing what they should be—declarative programming.

Opinion

Zero trust requires network visibility

AI and machine-learning techniques are imperative in a zero-trust environment that depends on analysis of the behavior of every device, person, or system using the network.

Opinion

Use zero trust to fight network technical debt

Adopting a zero-trust approach can be the impetus IT teams need to expose technical debt and make sure all network components are capable of enforcing security controls.

Opinion

Zero trust requires clear architecture plans before changing core systems

Successful enterprises approach zero trust carefully, with the big picture in mind, before making changes to network access, data management or application engineering.

5G wireless WAN will have benefits beyond 4G WWAN

Cellular WAN connectivity has solid enterprise use cases with 4G, and as 5G rolls out, will become more attractive for its speed, reliability, and price.

Opinion

How wireless WAN can make SD-WAN more agile and resilient

WWANS can augment SD-WANs with failover, redundancy, and rapid set-up.

Opinion

Rethinking the WAN: Zero Trust network access can play a bigger role

COVID-induced work-from-home prompted WAN innovations that demonstrate VPNs and SD-WAN aren’t the only good options.

Opinion

Software-defined perimeter + Zero Trust: A good place to start

Software-defined perimeter can be an important part of Zero Trust that enforces network access, but first plan the Zero Trust architecture and the changes that means for the network and security.