NC Feb-Mar 2023

NETWORKcomputing 

I N F O R M A T I O N A N D C O M M U N I C A T I O N S – N E T W O R K E D www.networkcomputing.co.uk 

DATA PERSPECTIVES 

A closer look at a secure, data-driven future 

HYBRID WORKING 

Bridging the employeremployee 

disconnect 

CLOUDS AND SILVER 

LININGS 

Forecasting the year ahead 

for networks 

QUANTUM FOR THE 

LONG TERM 

Quantum trends for 

2023 and beyond 

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2023 VOL 32 NO 01

EVENT ORGANISERS: 

Do you have something coming up that may 

interest readers of Network Computing? 

Contact dave.bonner@btc.co.uk 

08-09 

MAR 

TECH SHOW LONDON 

ExCel, London 

www.techshowlondon.co.uk 

FORTHCOMING EVENTS 

2023 



21-22 

MAR 

21-22 

MAR 

26-27 

SEPT 

15-16 

NOV 

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY EXPO 

ExCel, London 

www.communicationtechnologyexpo.co.uk 

THE REMOTE WORKING EXPO 

ExCel, London 

www.businessrevivalseries.co.uk/ 

the-remote-working-expo 

INTERNATIONAL CYBER EXPO 

Olympia, London 

www.internationalcyberexpo.com 

DATACENTRES IRELAND 

RDS Dublin 

www.datacentres-ireland.com

COMMENT 

COMMENT 

DRIVEN BY DATA 

We're delving deeper into data this issue with articles that explore ways to 

leverage and protect it to best benefit our businesses. First, Certes Networks' 

Simon Pamplin puts the case for abstracting data protection from infrastructure 

in order to ensure that it remains both secure and compliant with data regulations. 

"Attitudes to data security need to change fast because today's infrastructure-led 

model is creating too much risk," explains Simon. "According to the 2022 IBM Data 

Breach survey, 83% of companies confirm they expect a security breach - and many 

accept that breaches will occur more than once. Given this perception, the question 

has to be asked: why are businesses still reliant on a security posture focused on locking 

the infrastructure down?" 

Security and compliance issues are far from the only potential pitfalls when it comes 

to getting the most out of this prized asset. As Teradata's Ken Wood explains, network 

latency has long been an obstacle when it comes to leveraging data: "The race 

between network latency and data size has been a back-and-forth struggle throughout 

the history of computer networking. Even as the world gets digitally smaller, network 

latencies can make accessing data seem too far away to be efficiently analysed with 

high performance analytical databases engines which are already on the market." Read 

Ken's article to discover why keeping data-in-place - leaving "the original as the original" 

- might be the best solution to a problem as old as networks themselves. 

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We also have an opinion piece from D55's Jonathan Rothwell on the prospects for 

data-first systems in the year ahead. According to Jonathan "A data-driven remodelling 

synergises systems for efficiency, moving businesses beyond the disjointed siloed data 

access commonly associated with antiquated legacy systems," and can potentially provide 

a competitive edge for companies seeking to integrate digital transformation. Will 

2023 be the year of data-driven everything? Read Jonathan's article for more. 

And from data to dates for your diary with the news that nominations for the 2023 

Network Computing Awards are now open! This will be the 17th year of the Network 

Computing Awards, and you now only have until 9th March to nominate your finalists 

for this year. Voting to determine the winners will begin later in March and the awards 

ceremony itself will be held on 18th May, so be sure to visit https://networkcomputingawards.co.uk 

soon to make your selections heard. NC 

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WWW.NETWORKCOMPUTING.CO.UK @NCMagAndAwards FEBRUARY/MARCH 2023 NETWORKcomputing 03

CONTENTS 

CONTENTS 

F E B R U A R Y / M A R C H 2 0 2 3 

CLOUDS AND SILVER LININGS..8 

From hybrid working and the cloud to the 

IT skills gap, Network Computing asked 

industry experts for their forecasts for the 

next twelve months 

COMMENT.....................................3 

Driven by data 

INDUSTRY NEWS.............................6 

The latest networking news 

ARTICLES 

THE TOP FIVE NETWORK TRENDS 

FOR 2023.......................................12 

By Douglas Wadkins at Opengear 

SHADOW IT’S CLUE TO HYBRID 

WORKING ENGAGEMENT...............16 

By Jason Barker at IR 

A COLLABORATIVE EFFORT.............18 

By Carl Day at Apogee 

FILE SYNCHRONISATION CHALLENGES 

IN THE HYBRID WORKPLACE............20 

By Jason Kent at Open Seas 

ADREM NETCRUNCH 13......13 

Enterprises and SMBs are spoilt for choice 

with network monitoring products, but 

AdRem Software’s NetCrunch stands out 

from the crowd for many good reasons 

DATA PERSPECTIVES.............24 

We delve into data this issue with articles on 

removing network latency and abstracting 

data protection, and consider whether 2023 

will be the year of data-driven everything 

HYBRID WORKING.................16 

Our hybrid working feature this issue looks at 

ways of bridging the employer-employee 

disconnect while improving the hybrid 

working environment for the entire workforce 

QUANTUM MECHANICS.....30 

Dr Eric Holland, Director of Quantum 

Engineering Solutions at Keysight 

Technologies, explores six key quantum 

trends for 2023 and beyond 

THE YEAR OF DATA-DRIVEN 

EVERYTHING....................................24 

By Jonathan Rothwell at D55 

REMOVING THE MANAGEMENT 

COSTS OF NETWORK LATENCY......26 

By Ken Wood at Teradata 

ABSTRACTING DATA PROTECTION 

FROM INFRASTRUCTURE.................28 

By Simon Pamplin at Certes Networks 

DISCOVERING RULES THROUGH 

MACHINE LEARNING.......................32 

By Juras Juršenas at Oxylabs 

AWARDS 

NOW’S THE TIME TO NOMINATE...14 

With nominations now open for the 2023 

Network Computing Awards, ExaGrid share 

their experience of being a part of the awards 

CASE STUDIES 

SUPERMICRO BIGTWIN HAS A BIG 

IMPACT AT CERN.............................21 

Supermicro servers enable faster and more 

complex simulations at CERN Data Centre 

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION PROVIDES 

QUANTIFIABLE TIME SAVING............34 

Tendring District Council, working with 

Espria, transitions to Sophos Central 

REVIEW 

ADREM NETCRUNCH 13.................13 

04 NETWORKcomputing FEBRUARY/MARCH 2023 @NCMagAndAwards 

WWW.NETWORKCOMPUTING.CO.UK

INDUSTRY NEWS 

NEWSNEWS 

NEWS NEWS 

NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS 

NEWS NEWS 

Over half of IT pros have Kubernetes security concerns 

New research has found that 53% of developers are 

concerned about the security of Kubernetes. Taken from 

Civo's The Kubernetes State of Play 2022, the research found 

54% of 1000 cloud developers surveyed by Civo view the 

complexity around Kubernetes as slowing their use of 

containers, an increase of 7% from the previous year. Failure 

to manage this complexity can often leave organisations 

vulnerable. When asked about other motivating factors for 

their security concerns around Kubernetes, just over 50% said 

misconfigurations and exposure were driving their concerns. 

Many developers are also anxious about bad actors 

exploiting flaws in Kubernetes software. Almost two-thirds 

(66%) of developers said they were worried about the security 

concerns created by Kubernetes vulnerabilities. This comes at a 

time of concerted action by tech firms and government bodies 

to address this problem. Notably, the US Congress is pressing 

ahead with the Securing Open Source Software Act to create 

an industry-wide approach to tackling vulnerabilities connected 

to open-source software like Kubernetes. 

Despite these security concerns, they come at a time of 

increased usage of Kubernetes. Civo found that for the first 

time the majority of IT professionals are using Kubernetes and 

containers in their daily operations, with 57% of respondents 

seeing an increase in the amount of Kubernetes clusters 

running in their organisation over the last 12 months. 

Sophos expands firewall portfolio with new appliances 

Sophos has expanded its next-gen firewall portfolio with two 

new high-end, enterprise-grade XGS Series appliances. 

"Sophos is shaking up the competitive enterprise firewall 

landscape with these new high-performance appliances, 

providing best in class price per protected megabit per second 

(Mbps)," according to Daniel Cole, vp of network security 

product management at Sophos. 

The new XGS 7500 and 8500 models deliver industry-best 

modular connectivity; highly scalable SD-WAN features; 

trusted traffic and application acceleration; high performance 

Transport Layer Security (TLS) inspection; threat protection; and 

enterprise-grade, high-availability and redundancy 

capabilities. Featuring high performance Xstream flow 

processors and central processing units (CPUs) with enterprisegrade 

acceleration, the models offer roughly 50% faster 

throughput than industry averages in their class. 

Acronis nets cyber protection partnership with Fulham 

Acronis has announced a three-year partnership with 

London's oldest professional football club, Fulham FC. 

EveryCloud.co.uk will support Acronis as its 'Strategic 

#Cyberfit' delivery partner providing its cutting-edge cyber 

protection solutions and cloud backup service to the club. 

Under the Strategic #Cyberfit delivery partner 

EveryCloud.co.uk, Acronis will provide Premier League side 

Fulham FC with a full suite of cyber protection solutions. 

Arturs Banks, Head of IT of Fulham FC, said: "We are very 

pleased to be working with Acronis and EveryCloud UK, and 

we look forward to incorporating them into our cloud backup 

and file security infrastructure. Their support and expertise will 

be invaluable to Fulham FC and the Fulham FC Foundation as 

we continue to prioritise data and cyber security at the club." 

Half of software licenses going unused by employees 

Nexthink has released new findings from its report: Soft- 

WASTE: How Much Does IT Waste on Unused Software 

Licenses? The report uncovered that half (49.96%) of all software 

installed went unused by employees. These findings are informed 

by analysing more than 6 million customer environments across 

8 industries and 12 regions, looking at historical data of the first 

few months of Nexthink implementation to set the best standard 

of what an average business is dealing with when it comes to a 

lack of visibility around software licenses. 

"Shutting down licenses in a random or uninformed manner 

can lead to higher costs in the medium term. Only when IT has 

access to all the information about who is using what, what is not 

used, what is still performing and what needs to be repaired or 

replaced, can it see and take advantage of greater efficiencies in 

a sustainable and recurring manner," said Yassine Zaied, Chief 

Strategy and Marketing Officer at Nexthink. 



INDUSTRY NEWS 

Looking at more than 30 popular software tools, the report 

used an averaging licensing fee per user per month (ranging 

from $8 per user to $83) and calculated that based on the 

unused software licenses found in their 6 million data set. It was 

discovered that it was costing those businesses about $45M per 

month, or roughly half a billion per year. The report also 

discovered that many knowledge workers are using multiple 

applications for the same purpose. For example, roughly 37% 

of employees use 3 browser applications to access their SaaS 

tools and the internet, and 31% use 2 collaboration tools. 

Keysight launches wireless test platform for 5G RedCap 

Keysight Technologies' new E7515R solution is based on its 

5G Network Emulation Solutions platform, a streamlined 

network emulator specifically designed for protocol, radio 

frequency (RF), and functional testing of all cellular internet of 

things (CIoT) technologies, including RedCap. The E7515R 

expands Keysight's 5G Network Emulation Solutions portfolio, 

twhich is used in mobile device validation across the workflow, 

from early design to acceptance and deployment. 

The 5G RedCap specification introduces support for wireless 

devices with reduced 5G capabilities. These devices are less 

complex, and consume less power, allowing them to address new 

CIoT use cases such as industrial sensors and wearables such as 

smartwatches. The Keysight E7515R addresses this need as a 

network emulation test platform designed specifically for 5G 

RedCap and supporting all CIoT technologies. The solution 

features streamlined capabilities for RedCap without the 

additional features needed to test a full-spec 5G device. 

The release of the E7515R solution builds on Keysight's 

ongoing RedCap device development, includingestablishing a 

data call using the 5G RedCap specification. Through this 

demonstration, Keysight's 5G Network Emulation Solutions 

validated RedCap connectivity on a 5G chipset. 

New firewalls for remote and distributed environments 

WatchGuard has released its new Firebox T25/T25-W, 

T45/T45-POE/T45-W-POE, and T85-POE tabletop 

firewall appliances. Powered by WatchGuard's Unified Security 

Platform architecture to deliver comprehensive security and 

simplified management through WatchGuard Cloud, the new 

firewalls are engineered to provide the performance that remote 

and distributed business environments need for better protection 

against the latest network security threats. "This new generation 

of Fireboxes takes full advantage of our Unified Security Platform 

architecture, enabling MSPs to provide the robust solutions and 

simplified management they require to meet the needs of a wide 

range of customers and deployment scenarios," according to 

Ryan Poutre, product manager at WatchGuard Technologies. 

With enterprise-class security services like APT Blocker (sandbox 

malware detection) and ThreatSync for shared knowledge 

between endpoint and network, the new Fireboxes are ideal for 

small businesses that lack a designated security team. Beyond 

providing advanced malware protection for distributed 

environments, they also include SD-WAN to optimise network 

performance by dynamically distributing network traffic across 

multiple connections based on defined policies. The new 

Fireboxes take advantage of the latest updates in WatchGuard 

Cloud to display a graphical real-time update of SD-WAN link 

status and any failovers, and also support the latest Fireware 

capabilities for load sharing across multiple links. 

Zero Trust security for operational technology 

In order to help companies keep their operational technology 

(OT) secure, Palo Alto Networks has introduced Zero Trust 

OT Security. A key component of the solution is the new clouddelivered 

Industrial OT Security service, which can be easily 

enabled - without the need to install additional sensors - by 

any of the 61,000+ active customers of Palo Alto Networks 

network security products: hardware and software Next- 

Generation Firewalls and Prisma SASE. 

Built on an AI-powered foundation with ease of deployment 

in mind, the new solution enables customers to secure their 

OT environments from the most sophisticated threats while 

simplifying their operations. Using the industry’s first MLpowered 

OT visibility engine, the Industrial OT Security 

service recognises hundreds of unique OT device profiles, 

over 1,000 OT/Industrial Control System applications, and 

has hundreds of distinct OT threat signatures to help protect 

hard-to-secure assets. 

NEWS NEWSNEWS 

NEWS 

NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS 

NEWS 


FEATURE: 2023 PREDICTIONS 

CLOUDS AND SILVER LININGS 

FROM HYBRID WORKING AND THE CLOUD TO THE IT SKILLS GAP, 

NETWORK COMPUTING ASKED INDUSTRY EXPERTS TO GIVE US 

THEIR FORECASTS FOR THE YEAR AHEAD 

THE NETWORK 

ARUBA 

According to Aruba 20% of organisations 

will have adopted a network-as-a-service 

(NaaS) strategy by the end of this year: 

"With tightening economic conditions, IT 

requires flexibility in how network 

infrastructure is acquired, deployed, and 

operated to enable network teams to 

deliver business outcomes rather than just 

managing devices. Migration to a NaaS 

framework enables IT to accelerate network 

modernisation yet stay within budget, IT 

resource, and schedule constraints. In 

addition, adopting a NaaS strategy will 

help organisations meet sustainability 

objectives since leading NaaS suppliers 

have adopted carbon-neutral and recycling 

manufacturing strategies." 

Aruba also predicts that IT will consolidate 

operations onto a single, centralised 

network and security management 

platform, saying "More diverse digital 

technology (IoT) is being deployed by 

enterprises to improve user experiences 

and to streamline IT operations. At the 

same time, employees and customers 

expect a better integrated real life/digital 

experience no matter what the enterprises' 

business model is. These dynamics have 

added complexity to both the network and 

security and have made managing the 

infrastructure more complex. With an 

intensified focus on end user quality of 

experience while increasing protection from 

cyberattacks, IT will look to a single 

centralised management system with 

visibility across the network and the ability 

to configure edge-to-cloud QoS and 

security policies." 

ALLIED TELESIS 

Allied Telesis caution that businesses will 

need to evolve their approach to 

networking in the year ahead. "As mobile 

users expect more immersive experiences 

on their devices, the demand for bandwidth 

will continue to grow. Current IT devices are 

evolving to provide more throughput both 

on a wired network, moving from 1G to 

2.5/5 or 10G and on a wireless network 

with the full adoption of Wi-Fi 6 technology. 

"These two evolutions need to proceed in 

parallel. Wi-Fi 6 requires high speed wired 




devices with 2.5G or 5G to provide the 

full potential and the wired switches need 

to connect to Wi-Fi 6 Access Points to use 

all the available bandwidth. Companies 

will need to take a step-by-step network 

upgrade, starting from the wired device to 

build an infrastructure ready to deploy the 

new Wi-Fi 6 Access Point and then once 

ready, migrate the Wi-Fi from the current 

implementation to Wi-Fi 6." 

They add that Wi-Fi will continue to grow 

as the main access technology, and will 

require "a more powerful infrastructure 

and advanced feature-set to support the 

growing demands of the user. The 

capability to manage the mobility, device 

location, and the capability to adapt 

autonomously to environmental changes 

will be the main characteristics of new 

wireless solutions. To accommodate this 

increase in complexity, smart network 

management tools, incorporating 

elements of artificial intelligence, will 

become more widely adopted." 

ESPRIA 

Platform and Infrastructure-as-a-Service 

(PaaS/IaaS) represent one of the biggest 

opportunities for service providers in 

2023 according to Espira, offering "the 

chance to host the services and 

infrastructure that are usually present in 

an on-premises data centre. This includes 

elements like hardware, software, storage, 

servers and networking components, 

along with the virtualisation layer and 

ready-made services such as database 

platforms, to help businesses scale 

quickly. It is a hugely attractive model as 

PaaS and IaaS also enable organisations 

to cut costs, reduce the time spent 

managing in-house infrastructure and 

services, and improve service levels for 

their end users. 

"This model eliminates wait times for 

hardware, other components, or on-site 

support and the subscription-based billing 

model of IaaS offers many advantages to 

clients in terms of scalability, cost, and 

security, often making enterprise-grade 

services available to organisations for 

whom they may previously have been out 

of reach." 

TELEHOUSE 

Telehouse caution that the energy crisis is 

also set to impact IT operations and cost 

efficiencies. "With the price of energy 

reaching unprecedented highs, many 

organisations will see their IT spend 

continue to rise next year. However, while 

budgets might be able to absorb these 

extra costs in the short term, it is not a 

sustainable financial option for most 

businesses. Decision-makers will therefore 

start to look towards other means of 

ensuring a reliable, secure energy supply 

and energy reduction schemes to 

minimise the impacts on operational costs 

to ensure current and future productivity." 



THE IT WORKFORCE 


What new skill sets will be required to deal 

with the latest IT innovations in the year 

ahead? According to Allied Telesis "There 

will be a need to evolve the skills of the IT 

team; IT engineers will need to be able to 

dovetail from network management to 

network security, but also to take control of 

all other services that run over the network 

(e.g., DVS or building automation). To 

enable this new skill, a new family of tools 

are required that can automate large parts 

of the IT activity and to provide a complete 

vision of any aspect of the network in a 

simple way and recommend the actions the 

human operators should take. Ultimately, 

these actions will also be automated once 

full intent-based management tools become 

mainstream." 

NERDIO 

For Nerdio while the future of work is still 

largely one of uncertainty it seems that 

hybrid working at least is here to stay. "Many 

different factors are impacting the workplace 

as it stands. Recession is slowly but surely 

kicking in, with many companies already 

starting layoffs, which could give employers 

more power to exercise over employees and 

pressure them into working from the office. 

On the flip side, increasing business costs 

can also result in WFH being incentivised: 

many companies still aren't prepared for the 

expenses that come with returning everyone 

into the office. From an employee 

perspective, rising interest rates and petrol 

prices might lower their willingness to 

commute, but as the costs of working from 

home also rise, the population will continue 

to be divided over this issue. 

"As a result, the tech we use also needs to 

remain adaptable to both situations. Newer 

features, such as single sign-on, W365 

offline mode, and bypassing the physical 

machine and logging directly into the virtual 

desktop, will drive the seamless adoption of 

DaaS and an easy transition between home 

and the office for a genuine WFA (workfrom-anywhere) 

experience." 

SHARP EUROPE 

Sharp Europe believe that the demand for 

hybrid working will continue this year. "The 

continued shift of workloads, processes, and 

data to the cloud and on-premises 

infrastructures has enabled businesses to 

offer more of a hybrid work environment to 

their employees. Hybrid working will 

continue to be popular as it offers greater 

flexibility and more control to employees not 

only in where they work, but also how they 

fulfil their duties. Having the right tech in 

place will be key to hiring and retaining the 

best staff possible." 

TELEHOUSE 

Telehouse predict that smart outsourcing 

will help plug the ever-widening IT skills 

gap: "With the IT skills gap set to continue 

through 2023 and beyond, organisations 

will need to embrace more innovative ways 

of attracting, developing, and retaining 

new talent. At the same time, more 

businesses will outsource their IT 

infrastructure to a trusted provider, leaning 

on the knowledge, experience, and 

expertise of colocation data centre 

operators. This will help fill IT skills gaps inhouse, 

whilst also providing greater levels 

of resilience, uptime, and cost efficiency 

during the challenging years ahead." 

CYRUSONE 

CyrusOne also forecast that the digital skills 

gap will continue to expand in the year 

ahead, and will remain "a central issue 

within the data centre industry, hampering its 

long-term development and growth. While 

notable progress has been made in recent 

years, the sector continues to grow on a 

steeper curve than the advancements made 

to-date. It's imperative that the data centre 

industry comes together in a meaningful 

way to address this gap, identifying 

additional ways to communicate the value 

and opportunity that this sector provides and 

educating on its broader societal impact. 

"We will see more urgency placed around 

this issue in the coming year as the industry 

struggles to compete and maintain demand, 

with many companies widening their net to 

include recruits in unrelated disciplines who 

can be trained." 

SECURITY 

GLOBALDATA 

GlobalData caution that "There is a 

simmering level of frustration among 

security professionals that, despite important 

strides in security technology, they still can't 

keep ahead of the threat volume. The move 

to hybrid work operations has presented 

cybercriminals with an opportunity they have 

been quick to exploit. Although there has 

been considerable work done in areas such 

as endpoint detection and response (EDR) to 

close some security gaps, hackers are 

finding ways to navigate around protections. 

"In 2023, GlobalData expects to see more 

concerted efforts around integrating security 

into network services through wider Secure 

Access Service Edge (SASE) technology 

deployments - even as organisations 

grapple to understand exactly what 

constitutes SASE. Zero Trust Architecture 

implementations will also gain more traction 

as organisations seek to mirror work already 

done by entities such as the US Federal 

Government, which is in the midst of a 

multi-year migration to deploy a Zero Trust 

Architecture. However, ongoing geopolitical 

tensions and related threats from both statesponsored 

actors and related organized 

cybercrimnals continue to loom large as 

organisations try to mount effective defenses 

against hackers." 

ARUBA 

Aruba predict that we'll see built-in security 

increasingly replacing bolt-on security in the 

very near future: "Transformation to a more 

automated security architecture is an IT 

imperative. No longer can organisations 




bolt-on perimeter firewalls around the 

network to protect against threats and 

vulnerabilities. Security must be built-in to 

every aspect of the network infrastructure 

from Wi-Fi Access Points to LAN, campus 

and data centre switches, WAN gateways, 

and extending into the cloud. Zero trust and 

SASE frameworks will become more 

intertwined, not only to protect from threats 

but to apply micro-segmentation across the 

complete IT stack including users, 

connected devices, applications, network 

services, compute, and storage platforms." 


Allied Telesis see networks and security 

delivering an ever-stronger combination this 

year. "The network is the route attackers use 

to reach their target. Protecting the network 

means protecting the first line of attack, and 

this will become more and more important. 

Firewall and AI-based systems, able to 

detect attacks together with autonomous 

security systems able to take immediate 

action and create a self-defending network, 

will become the obvious way to protect 

company assets." 

COHESITY 

Updating legacy data protection technology 

must be a priority for IT and business 

decision makers this year, according to 

Cohesity. "Cybercriminals are actively 

preying on outdated infrastructure as they 

know it cannot protect or recover data in 

today's dispersed, multicloud environments. 

Cohesity research found that half of UK 

respondents depend on outdated, legacy 

backup and recovery infrastructure to 

manage and protect their data. In some 

cases, this technology is more than 20 years 

old and was designed long before today's 

multicloud era or the type of sophisticated 

cyberattacks that now plague enterprises. 

"In 2023, possibly as an outcome of 

budgetary pressures, we expect to see IT 

and SecOps teams align to co-own cyber 

resilience outcomes, including infrastructure 

used for data identification, protection, 

detection, response, and recovery." 

CLOUDSTRIKE 

Cloudstrike caution that security budgets will 

also feel the squeeze with a seemingly 

unavoidable recession on the horizon. 

"Many countries across the globe expect 

their economies to approach recession 

during the coming year. Cost-cutting will be 

discussed at many companies, and 

cybersecurity budgets, having risen - on 

average - for many successive years, will 

certainly be under scrutiny. Reducing and 

consolidating the number of licensed 

products in the area may well make sense, 

although maintaining the best levels of 

security is not negotiable at any company. 

"Notwithstanding, many companies have far 

more tools than they need. Our own 

discussions with CISOs suggest it's not 

uncommon for companies to have multiple 

licensed cybersecurity products at their 

disposal. This isn't rendering them immune to 

attack and, in fact, security levels and team 

performance are suffering at many 

organisations due to redundant or excessive 

notifications and checks. Working towards a 

consolidated single point of truth through a 

united platform will not only yield cost 

savings, but also productivity and 

performance gains for cybersecurity analysts." 

THE CLOUD 

LANCOM SYSTEMS 

The future of network management lies in 

the cloud. This is according to LANCOM 

Systems, who cite a recent survey which 

found that 85 percent of those who 

currently rely on hybrid and on-premises 

solutions are planning to move to cloudnative 

network management in the next four 

years. "Networks have changed significantly 

in recent years with increasing numbers of 

devices and new data-intensive applications 

that need to be used from anywhere. This 

all increases the demands on the 

infrastructure. Reliable protection, 

transparency, and automation are key to 

keeping this complexity manageable. 

Cloud-based network management can 

make a significant contribution here." 

NERDIO 

Cloud computing will be near the top of the 

priority list for IT teams in 2023, say Nerdio. 

"Whilst it is an investment, it's a flexible one 

that can change with the business. In the 

current economic climate, companies are 

moving towards more service-based costs, 

and public cloud providers can facilitate cost 

efficiencies as they often offer a 'pay for what 

you need' monthly model. We expect the 

move from private cloud to public cloud to 

continue at pace - with the large providers 

on the public side having a greater ability to 

weather energy price pressures and deal 

with evolving security threats. 

"With a younger workforce, cloud is here 

to stay. Employees are now demanding the 

latest tools and technology and legacy, slow 

on-premise solutions are no longer fit for 

purpose. In response, cloud providers will 

need to provide higher levels of reliability 

and performance at a lower cost - and we 

expect to see more solutions partners 

supporting organisations to fill in the gaps 

of their knowledge of how to manage and 

generate the best efficiencies from their 

public cloud usage." 

SHARP EUROPE 

Sharpe Europe also see cloud looming 

large in our hybrid working future. "One 

trend we have seen develop in recent years 

that shows no signs of slowing is SMEs 

moving more of their work, services, and 

processes into the public cloud. Already 

over 40% of EU organisations use public 

cloud services in some form, mostly for 

hosting their email systems and storing files 

in electronic form. This is a trend we shall 

continue to see steadily rise. especially the 

move to Microsoft 365 public cloud, 

which for the SMEs is by far the dominant 

player in the market." NC 



THE TOP FIVE NETWORK TRENDS FOR 2023 

WITH DISPERSED WORKFORCES STILL IN PLACE AND SECURITY 

THREATS CONTINUING TO GROW, DOUGLAS WADKINS, VICE 

PRESIDENT, PRODUCT MANAGEMENT & STRATEGY, OPENGEAR, 

IDENTIFIES THE TRENDS BUSINESSES MUST CONSIDER IN 2023 TO 

ENSURE THEIR NETWORK IS OPERATIONALLY FIT-FOR-PURPOSE 

THE NETWORK WILL BE A DRIVER 

FOR INNOVATION 

We're now seeing applications that are being 

enhanced through virtual or augmented reality, 

which could be more accurately described as 

functional metaverses. In 2023, there will be 

more instances of this technology being used 

to design entire data centres for example, as it 

will become even easier for users to visualise 

the physical parts and pieces that go together 

to construct these premises. These innovative 

solutions will be fundamentally dependent on 

the underlying network to provide value, both 

in the virtual and physical sense. Expect to see 

more professionals in the industry discussing 

their digital immune system and the health of 

their network to support innovation. 

IT BUDGETS WILL BE SQUEEZED 

As looser monetary policies tighten up 

following the end of the pandemic, the IT 

budget is likely to be earmarked for the chop. 

What organisations will need to do in 2023 is 

ensure efficiency in network investment by 

deploying more automated solutions. 

However, to gain efficiencies through 

automation the network needs to be designed 

for automation, and network professionals 

need to possess the skills to design and 

manage an automated network. 

Out of band networks provide resilient, 

secure, remote access, for management of the 

production network. As an out 

of band network is connected 

to every device and is an 

independent network, it can be used to 

automate the provisioning and configuring of 

new physical or virtual network resources, 

before a production network exists without 

sending an engineer on site. Zero touch 

provisioning (ZTP) removes the need for 

manual device configuration from the get-go. 

While no business is completely immune from 

the negative effects of a recession, automation 

will help enable efficiency and utilisation to 

help dampen its impact. 

HYBRID ENVIRONMENTS WILL 

REMAIN CRUCIAL 

Both hybrid working environments and hybrid 

cloud environments will take precedence in 

2023. Not every piece of data will go into the 

public cloud, whether it's for latency, resiliency 

or privacy reasons. Multi-cloud deployments 

will proliferate, with local applications in use to 

protect against network outages and enable 

greater agility. Hybrid working environments 

devised from the remote arrangements that 

became a necessity during the pandemic will 

also continue to be popular. As people work 

from home, a key consideration will be around 

how businesses make remote branch offices a 

key part of the enterprise. 

Critical to both will be the underlying network 

and the increasing value of out of band to 

enhance the user experience from any location 

and add resiliency to multi-cloud deployments. 

SECURITY WILL BE AN ONGOING 

CONCERN 

The methods that bad actors use to breach 

networks are growing in sophistication, and as 

the criticality of the network goes up, it will 

become more of a target. However, 

organisations will be better placed to add 

layers of security to their setups in 2023. With 

compute and storage capabilities being added 

to devices, this has opened up the opportunity 

for third party applications to be run through 

Docker containers. 

For example, a configuration file for an 

application can be integrated with a TPM 

chip. This makes it a trusted module from a 

hardware perspective, and very difficult to 

crack thanks to encryption capabilities, even 

for a state actor. Organisations can also 

revert to a last known configuration if the 

worst case scenario happens. This can be 

made possible by utilising a file store that sits 

with an edge device, and can significantly 

reduce downtime. 

THE PROMISE OF 5G WILL COME 

TO FRUITION 

In 2023, the promise of 5G will begin to be 

realised. More businesses are going to explore 

how to move data and applications to the edge 

to reduce latency and deploy out of-band to 

manage these networks. 5G connections can 

for example be utilised to enable dual 

connectivity and build redundancy for remote 

networks in the event of any outages. 

This connectivity will also become more 

accessible to smaller businesses next year, with 

the big mobile network operators and the tech 

giants previously holding the monopoly on 

resources. Companies will tap into automated 

capabilities to bring 5G-driven networks to 

the plate, particularly as skills shortages 

continue to present challenges in 

bringing in the right staff and 

talent to drive efficiency. NC 



PRODUCT REVIEW 

AdRem NetCrunch 13 

PRODUCT REVIEW 

PRODUCT 

REVIEWPRODUCT RE 

Enterprises and SMBs are spoilt for choice 

with network monitoring products but 

AdRem Software's NetCrunch stands out 

from the crowd for many good reasons. It 

offers an impressive set of network monitoring 

tools integrated seamlessly into a single 

console and teams them up with extreme ease 

of use and great value. 

This latest version introduces a raft of new 

features designed to make it even easier for 

support staff to quickly identify and diagnose 

network pain points. Automated rule-based 

device management allows hundreds of nodes 

to be configured together instead of 

individually, and NetCrunch 13 enables 

flexible visualisations that focus on presenting 

live data of business processes, network activity 

and services for simplified troubleshooting. 

One feature of NetCrunch we've always liked 

is its lightning-quick deployment, and v13 is no 

exception. We loaded the Server and Console 

components on a Windows Server 2022 host, 

followed the discovery wizard and were 

presented with a complete readout of our lab 

network in only 15 minutes. 

The NetCrunch console opens with a highly 

informative Atlas overview page which uses 

colour-coded icons of all monitored devices, 

so you can see at a glance which ones have 

problems or are down. Custom views take this 

further, as they automatically present details 

based on the content selected in the left pane 

and full search facilities apply your criteria to 

nodes, the Atlas view, program settings and 

even blog posts, making it easy to find a 

device of interest. 

Once monitoring accounts had been 

provided to the Credential Manager, we could 

use NetCrunch's Monitoring Packs to keep a 

close eye on our systems. These are a great 

idea as they group together performance data 

and alerts for specific devices and services. 

AdRem provides over 270 Monitoring Packs 

including ones for Windows systems, Active 

Directory, Hyper-V and VMware hosts and 

Linux. You have Packs for Microsoft apps such 

as SharePoint, Exchange and SQL Server and 

the cloud comes into the equation with options 

including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft 

Azure and 365, Google and even the Zoom 

conferencing service. 

The best part is you don't have to do anything 

as the most appropriate Monitoring Packs are 

automatically assigned to systems, devices and 

services during the discovery phase. 

NetCrunch is clearly capable of presenting a 

wealth of information but keeps it very well 

organised, as tabs across the top offer displays 

of all nodes with colour-coded status icons 

and quick views of Windows, Linux, VMware 

and Hyper-V hosts. 

The Top Charts tab shows graphical views of 

nodes with the most alerts and systems with the 

highest CPU, memory plus storage usage. Any 

NetFlow and sFlow data coming into 

NetCrunch will also be broken down into 

graphs of apps with detailed flow analytics. 

The new Active Alerts console page in 

NetCrunch 13 is a welcome addition as it 

presents real time views of all the latest 

alerts, which can be filtered on their severity. 

Move to the analytics page and you can see 

all alerts over the last day, week or month 

and drill down to selected items for more 

detailed information. 

Alerting features are extensive and 

NetCrunch creates scripts for you and assigns 

them to all relevant Monitoring Packs. These 

are easy to customise and you can create 

escalation scripts that assign a sequence of 

alerts and actions to critical devices if they 

have problems. 

AdRem's NetCrunch 13 takes all the hard 

work out of network monitoring and its flexible 

licensing schemes make it affordable for 

businesses of all sizes. It's incredibly easy to 

deploy and the highly informative central 

console ensures support staff are always one 

step ahead of network issues. NC 

Product: NetCrunch 13 

Supplier: AdRem Software 

Web site: www.adremsoft.com 

Price: 100 nodes/interfaces, from £860 per 

year exc VAT 

WWW.NETWORKCOMPUTING.CO.UK FEBRUARY/MARCH 2023 13 


@NCMagAndAwards

AWARDS 2023 

The Network Computing Awards 2023: now's the time to nominate! 

We're pleased to announce that 

nominations for the 2023 

Network Computing Awards 

are now open, with this year's awards 

ceremony set to take place on 18th May. 

You now have until 9th March to 

nominate the networking companies, 

solutions and services that have 

impressed you the most in the past 

twelve months, so please visit the awards 

website to make your choices heard! 

The results will once again be revealed 

at an evening awards ceremony in 

central London in May. A drinks 

reception, dinner and entertainment will 

also be provided as part of the evening, 

which is always an excellent opportunity 

to network with your networking peers! 

While the majority of awards categories 

are decided by nominating and voting 

we also have two judged categories: the 

Bench Tested Product of the Year, open 

to all solutions that have been 

independently reviewed for Network 

Computing Magazine in 2022, and the 

Network Project of the Year, which 

recognises the impressive work that 

vendors and their partners have carried 

out for customers. 

If you would like to enter a project for 

the Network Project of the Year award 

then please submit a case study to 

dave.bonner@btc.co.uk. Projects should 

ideally have been completed in the past 

12 months. However, if work is still 

ongoing, a project can still be entered 

provided it can reference some benefits 

that the customer has already seen. 

https://networkcomputingawards.co.uk 



AWARDS 2023 

EXAGRID EXCEL AT THE NETWORK COMPUTING AWARDS 

WITH NOMINATIONS NOW OPEN FOR THE 2023 NETWORK COMPUTING AWARDS, EXAGRID, 

WINNERS OF COMPANY OF THE YEAR FOR THREE CONSECUTIVE YEARS, SHARE THEIR EXPERIENCE 

OF BEING A PART OF THE AWARDS 

2022 was a successful year for 

ExaGrid; it marked a record year of 

revenue growth with positive cash, 

P&L and EBITDA for the Tiered Backup 

Storage company, and its 4th consecutive 

win at the annual Network Computing 

Awards. The company is looking forward to 

another strong year in 2023. 

ExaGrid provides Tiered Backup Storage 

with a unique disk-cache Landing Zone 

that enables fastest backups and restores, 

a Repository Tier that offers the lowest cost 

for long-term retention and enables 

ransomware recovery, and scale-out 

architecture for a fixed - length backup 

window as data grows and scalability with 

full appliances up to 2.7PB full backup in a 

single scale-out system. ExaGrid is the only 

solution with a non-network facing tier with 

delayed deletes and immutable data 

objects for the industry's best ransomware 

recovery solution. 

ExaGrid continues to gain recognition for 

its Tiered Backup Storage appliances, 

winning six industry awards in 2022, 

including three at the Network Computing 

Awards ceremony in July 2022. The Bench 

Tested Product of the Year award was 

chosen by the editorial team at Network 

Computing Magazine based on an 

independent product review of ExaGrid's 

largest appliance. The Company of the 

Year and Storage Product of the Year 

awards are determined by public vote, 

which further sets ExaGrid Tiered Backup 

Storage apart as a leader in its sector, due 

it is differentiated product architecture, as 

ExaGrid offers the largest scale-out system 

in the industry-comprised of 32 EX84 

appliances that can take in up to a 2.7PB 

full backup in a single system, which is 

50% larger than any other solution with 

aggressive deduplication, in addition to 

ExaGrid's innovative channel programs and 

its exceptional customer support. 

"We were honoured to win these three 

Network Computing awards," said Bill 

Andrews, President and CEO of ExaGrid. 

"Our company is solely focused on offering 

the best backup storage in the industry by 

improving the performance, scalability, 

security and economics of backup storage, 

and offering the best customer support in the 

industry. Many thanks to everyone who voted 

for us in 2022, and to the editorial team at 

Network Computing, we are truly grateful." 

ExaGrid has more than 3,750 active 

upper mid-market to large enterprise 

customers that use ExaGrid Tiered Backup 

Storage to protect their data. ExaGrid's 

growth is accelerating, and the company is 

hiring in all aspects of the business 

worldwide. ExaGrid recently announced its 

highlights for 2022, which included a year 

with record quarters of bookings growth 

and with the company remaining Cash, 

EBITDA, and P&L positive for the past nine 

quarters in a row. 

ExaGrid is solely focused on backup 

storage, and is constantly driving 

improvements in five key areas: ingest 

performance for the fastest backups and 

shortest backup window; fastest restores to 

keep up user productivity; scalability to 

ensure a fixed-length backup window as 

data grows, as well as no forklift upgrades 

and no planned product obsolescence; 

lowest cost up front and over time; and a 

strong security story including the ability to 

recover after a security attack, such as 

ransomware. 

In 2022, ExaGrid released Version 6.2 

which improved integration and features 

with industry-leading backup applications 

and also improved the performance and 

scalability of ExaGrid's Cloud Tier, which 

supports disaster recovery to Amazon AWS 

and Microsoft Azure public clouds. 

ExaGrid is looking forward to 2023, with 

goals to further expand into new regions, 

grow its sales team to expand global 

coverage, as well as strengthen its 

relationships in the channel and grow its 

partnerships with more resellers, all with a 

continued focus to offer organizations the 

best backup storage in the industry with 

regular improvements and updates, and 

more announcements to come in 2023. NC 

WWW.NETWORKCOMPUTING.CO.UK @NCMagAndAwards 

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2023 NETWORKcomputing 15

FEATURE: HYBRID WORKING 

SHADOW I.T.'S CLUE TO HYBRID WORKING ENGAGEMENT 

WITH THE RIGHT TO WFH SET TO BECOME ENSHRINED IN UK EMPLOYMENT LAW EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE 

MANAGEMENT IS NOW CRITICAL, AND BUSINESSES NEED TO BOTH UNDERSTAND AND IMPROVE THE 

QUALITY OF THE HYBRID WORKING ENVIRONMENT, INSISTS JASON BARKER, SVP EMEA & APAC, IR 

Shadow IT has plagued organisations for 

years - long before hybrid working 

became firmly established. With the shift 

to Working from Home (WFH), the use of 

personal devices and applications that fail to 

adhere to corporate standards has exploded - 

even for those companies that have 

accelerated the deployment of Unified 

Communications (UC) solutions over the last 

couple of years. 

Yet, while the security and compliance risks 

associated with shadow IT are well known, 

how many companies are actively considering 

the implications for employee productivity, 

collaboration and morale? Are employees 

using new corporate solutions at home or still 

preferring their own work around options? 

Are they frustrated because performance 

drops off every afternoon, or feeling isolated 

because the new corporate platform lacks 

features they have previously used to connect 

with colleagues? Without the ability to 

monitor the entire, end to end infrastructure, 

including WFH, an enterprise will be blind to 

the true extent of shadow IT and, critically, 

key indicators of employee engagement. 

HYBRID EXPERIENCE CRISIS 

Elon Musk et al may be adamant that staff 

must return to the office, but the reality for 

the majority of UK businesses is that 

employees now expect hybrid working. 

The problem for large enterprises is 

that hybrid working environments 

are still not meeting the needs of 

employees. For example, almost 

60% of women who work in 

hybrid environments feel they 

have been excluded from 

important meetings; stress levels 

are rising, and burnout is 

driving high levels of attrition. 

Trends such as 'Acting their 

Wage' may be a TikTok Gen 

Z cliché; but lack of 

productivity and 

engagement of the 

younger WFH workforce is a huge issue. 

Businesses clearly have an array of cultural 

and operational challenges to address to 

create a hybrid working model that engages 

all employees, but too few have recognised 

the impact of Shadow IT and a company's 

lack of control over the UC tools preferred by 

diverse individuals across the business. Over 

the past few years, employees have taken a 

proactive and often innovative approach to 

making WFH work for them. And while 

companies have fast-tracked UC deployments 

to improve the overall employee experience, 

from Zoom to Dropbox and WhatsApp, many 

still prefer the 'emergency' options to the new 

corporate standard. 

The result is a not just a significant shadow 

IT problem - with the associated security and 

compliance risks - but a complete lack of 

corporate understanding about employee 

activity. Are individuals engaged with the 

business? Are they productive? Motivated? 

Or about to leave? With the UK still suffering 

a significant lack of skills - access to labour 

(75%) and skills (72%) continue to top 

business' labour market concerns, according 

to the CBI - the hybrid working experience is 

fast becoming a critical component in 

employee engagement and retention. 

UNDERSTANDING HYBRID 

PERFORMANCE 

With employees returning to the office for a 

few days each week, the hybrid experience 

should be seamless. Individuals should feel 

productive, engaged and motivated 

irrespective of working location, whether 

home, head office or local satellite hub. Few 

businesses know if this is the case. While IT 




teams routinely monitor UC performance 

across the organisation, information is 

collected on each individual system. With 

10,000s, even 100,000s of employees using 

multiple solutions, it is impossible to gain an 

accurate and complete picture of system 

usage or performance. 

Furthermore, this monitoring rarely extends 

outside the core office environment, leaving 

the business completely blind to the WFH 

experience. From calls dropping out when 

children return from school and plug into 

games and streaming services, to a 

widespread resistance to adopting the new 

corporate UC standard, a lack of visibility 

across the entire hybrid environment is 

creating significant business risk. 

MONITORING UC EXPERIENCE 

A single view of the entire UC environment is 

now critical to both accelerate problem 

resolution and better understand the hybrid 

employee experience. Understanding how, 

when and where individuals are using different 

aspects of the UC solution set will provide 

companies with new insight into the way staff 

are adapting to the hybrid experience - and 

quickly flag up potential problems. 

Monitoring every aspect of the infrastructure 

and providing a single view of performance 

enables IT to rapidly understand - and resolve 

- issues that are affecting workers in any 

location. From underperforming Wi-Fi, to 

problems with local network providers, or 

specific application glitches, better visibility is 

key to improving the timeliness of IT support. 

But it also will quickly highlight issues with 

UC adoption and shadow IT that could 

impact the employee experience. If 

employees are failing to engage with the 

company's preferred platform - 85% of 

businesses use two or more meeting 

platforms (according to Cisco) - questions 

can be raised about the education and 

training process. With native monitoring tools 

providing 

information limited to a 

single solution, it is impossible to 

gain a clear picture of the way individuals 

are interacting with different systems. Are 

employees able to personalise the platform to 

work in a way that they prefer? Is one 

department creating significantly fewer calls 

via the platform than the rest of the business - 

indicating a reliance on an unauthorised 

solution? Or is it just poor Wi-Fi that is 

affecting performance, not the UC at all? 

Granular understanding of UC usage can 

help the IT Operations team prioritise 

investment and drive strategic investment. 

STRATEGIC HYBRID PLANNING 

Monitoring the entire end to end UC 

environment also provides useful information 

for other parts of the business, including both 

Human Resources (HR) and Facilities 

Management. For HR teams, for example, 

early insight into IT problems that could be 

affecting employee morale can enable 

proactive intervention and support. In 

addition to segmenting information by 

geography or business group, it could be 

analysed by age, allowing HR to understand 

how different generations are experiencing 

and engaging with the hybrid environment. 

With so many companies now offering hot 

desking options, this information is 

increasingly used by Facilities Management 

teams tasked with ensuring a building is not 

only safe and secure, but also as productive 

as possible. Infrastructure and collaboration 

platform management are now Key 

Performance 

Indicators, with UC usage 

information providing essential insight to 

support business decisions. 

Are employees avoiding certain buildings, 

putting pressure on space in other 

locations? And, if so, is that because calls 

keep dropping out or the Wi-Fi is too slow? 

If employees have to work in an office 

location one, two or three days each week, 

it is important that the office is designed to 

support a truly effective collaboration. Any 

frustration about the quality of the working 

environment, in any location, will rapidly 

affect morale. Providing Facilities 

Management teams with fast insight to 

usage information will give early indications 

of problems and allow essential 

infrastructure change. 

CONCLUSION 

Hybrid working, in one form or another, is 

here to stay. Organisations must ensure the 

quality of the employee experience to 

safeguard productivity and collaboration and, 

critically, boost staff retention through 

enhanced morale. Proactively monitoring the 

entire corporate environment provides not 

only insight into immediate UC performance 

issues that need to be urgently addressed; but 

also vital understanding of how, where and 

when different groups and individuals are 

engaging with the business. NC 


FEATURE: HYBRID WORKNG 

A COLLABORATIVE EFFORT 

CARL DAY, CHIEF SALES OFFICER AT APOGEE, ON BRIDGING THE EMPLOYER-EMPLOYEE 

DISCONNECT IN 2023 

Alot can happen in three years. The 

impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has 

irrevocably shaped the future of work, 

with flexible, hybrid workspaces opening a 

world of opportunity for newly distributed 

workforces. But the sheer pace of change has 

come with its own challenges - not least for 

employers. At the height of the pandemic in 

2020, many companies were all too happy to 

have their staff working from home, especially 

as the level of business they were previously 

accustomed to was temporarily paused. 

Now, as the 'new normal' of work becomes 

firmly embedded in the psyche of employees, a 

disconnect is growing between what 

companies want and what their workforce 

wants. Employers are starting to recognise the 

loss of troubleshooting and collaboration 

opportunities that come with having people 

grouped together in an office. Meanwhile, the 

workforce balance of power continues to shift 

in favour of employees, transforming workers' 

relationships with their jobs and fuelling the 

expectation for more flexible and mobile 

working options. 

Left unaddressed, the gap between what is 

best for an organisation and what is best for 

individual employees will only widen. At a time 

when the Great Resignation and 'quiet quitting' 

continues to permeate the workplace, 

companies can ill afford to lose both existing 

and prospective talent. Therefore, business 

leaders need to strive to reach a compromise - 

and technology is poised to play a critical role 

in bridging the divide between remote and 

office-based working. 

THE RISE OF COLLABORATIVE TECH 

Collaborative teamwork has always been 

important, but never more so than in today's 

increasingly global, complex, and competitive 

workplace. The long-term move to hybrid 

means that good communication amongst 

geographically dispersed teams is a requisite 

for business success, so employers must have 

the flexibility to provide new, innovative ways 

for their employees to collaborate productively 

from any place, time, or device. 

In this way, technological innovation serves 

as a win-win for both employer and 

employee. Workers have come to expect 



FEATURE: HYBRID WORKNG 

technology without frustration: they want the 

latest digital tools that seamlessly fit around 

the job they do without slowing them down or 

getting in their way. As the war for talent 

heats up - and a new generation of digital 

natives join the workforce in ever-growing 

numbers - businesses must continually 

modernise to attract and retain great 

employees. Therefore, organisations in 2023 

simply cannot afford to frustrate their staff 

with outdated, inflexible technology. 

This year will see businesses increasingly 

turn to collaborative technological tools to 

close the gap between office-based working 

and remote working. Offices will be fitted 

with technologies that allow for the best 

blend between physical and virtual 

participation, ensuring a seamless, highquality 

audio-visual experience that enables 

everyone to feel included in a shared working 

environment. When remote employees feel 

just as comfortable, productive, and 

supported working virtually as they would in 

an office, the most inspiring collaborative 

work can take shape. 

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION IS KEY 

However, it is not enough just to kit employees 

with the right digital tools. Business leaders 

will also need to think carefully about how 

they can communicate effectively with an 

employee base that's more fluid, mobile, and 

geographically dispersed than before. 

As new ways of working continue to blur the 

lines between work life and home life, the 

expansion of the virtual workforce means that 

many businesses now rely more heavily on 

email interaction than on face-to-face 

communication. This is resulting in remote 

and hybrid workers getting their inboxes 

flooded with emails. In fact, the average office 

worker is said to receive more than 120 

emails daily - and many remote employees 

are feeling compelled to check their work 

emails multiple times outside of their 

contracted hours. 

The simple truth is that by 

overcommunicating with their employees, 

businesses risk not communicating at all. The 

process of wading through a mountain of 

emails just to find that one message that 

needs dealing with is a frustration that most 

workers can relate to, and email overload 

threatens to fuel the employer-employee 

disconnect. Employers need to ensure that 

their most important correspondence with 

employees is not diluted or drowned in all of 

the noise. 

This is why process efficiency and stronger 

communication will be key management 

priorities in the months ahead. Technology 

plays a pivotal role in establishing a more 

streamlined and clear communication process 

in a hybrid working environment. For example, 

group chat software can be a helpful tool for 

managers to keep themselves available, be 

transparent about expectations, and share 

regular updates with physically dispersed 

teams, ensuring that everybody is consistently 

in the loop. 

GOING BESPOKE 

This year will also see the development of 

apps that allow organisations to create 

efficiency and be more flexible - on their own 

terms. Many of these applications will be 

custom-made to meet specific business 

processes and needs. 

While off-the-shelf applications offer 

organisations some useful functions, such as 

simple task tracking or calendar management, 

they are increasingly being recognised as a 

quick-fix solution to much longer-term 

business needs. In contrast, bespoke apps are 

custom built to support businesses with each 

of their specific requirements, adapting 

alongside the company as their needs evolve 

over time. This flexibility empowers 

organisations to meet more complex 

objectives, such as improving employee 

engagement and enhancing collaboration 

across departments. 

Therefore, to bridge the employeremployee 

gap, businesses are set to 

prioritise the need to quickly scale and adapt 

to meet current and future challenges. In 

many cases, this will bring about a shift away 

from off-the-shelf applications and towards 

more bespoke solutions to support their own 

ways of working. 

THE POWER OF SMART 

OUTSOURCING 

So, how can businesses seize these 

opportunities and navigate the complexity of 

the workplace in 2023? With skills shortages 

across the IT sector bringing additional 

challenges around securing the future of 

hybrid working, companies are now looking 

towards new solutions to plug the gaps. 

As a result, businesses are increasingly 

leveraging specialist outsourcing services. 

Bringing in a trusted third party to take care of 

the entire IT lifecycle - from procurement and 

imaging to end-of-life support, data erase, 

and repurposing - can give organisations the 

breathing space to focus on making the new 

normal of work truly work for all employees - 

no matter where they are located. Not only 

does this process allow companies to 

repurpose their in-house capability, but it also 

helps to establish and maintain a more 

sustainable circular economy - something that 

employees are increasingly coming to expect 

from the businesses they work for. 

Smart outsourcing is helping to relieve the 

pressures on internal IT teams, stretching 

budgets and resources at a time when both 

are under strain. But regardless of whether a 

businesses opts to outsource or to keep their 

workplace services entirely in-house, the role 

of technology in shaping the future of work is 

beyond dispute. With the right investment and 

support in place, organisations can ensure 

that digital tools continue to bring out the best 

in their hybrid workforces, setting up both 

employers and employees for sustained 

success through 2023 and beyond. NC 



FILE SYNCHRONISATION CHALLENGES IN TODAY'S HYBRID WORKPLACE 

JASON KENT, DIRECTOR AT OPEN SEAS, DISCUSSES TWO OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT ISSUES THAT ARISE 

WITH MICROSOFT'S DISTRIBUTED FILE SYSTEM REPLICATION (DFS-R) AND HOW THEY CAN BE MITIGATED 

File synchronisation and replication is a 

critical component of modern network 

infrastructures, allowing companies to 

effectively distribute and share information 

between remote offices and disaster recovery 

data centres. However, the increased number 

of users and data processed on these 

networks has resulted in several common 

issues that IT staff must contend with. 

One of the main issues with DFS-R is its 

method of handling multiple updates to the 

same file by different users. The service only 

provides one solution: the newest file will 

overwrite the older file, effectively losing the 

changes made by the first user. Although DFS- 

R saves a copy of the older file locally and 

writes an error message in the event log, an 

administrator must manually retrieve it. 

For environments with multiple users 

working from different locations and servers, 

a solution that minimises the issue of multiple 

updates is necessary. One such solution is file 

locking, where when a user opens a file, all 

other copies on other devices are 

locked and the user is 

given 

read-only access. Once the user saves and 

closes the file, it is synced to other machines 

and the lock is released, allowing other users 

to edit the file. 

However, this approach may not suit all 

needs for large enterprises. For these 

organisations, it is advisable to look for 

solutions that offer collaborative file sharing 

between offices and with a variety of one-way 

and multi-way rule methods. For instance, if 

files are distributed from a central source, a 

multi-directional rule should not be used, as it 

could potentially cause damage to the master 

set of data. 

BALANCING USER NEEDS AND 

BANDWIDTH IN FILE REPLICATION 

Another common problem with DFS-R is the 

issue of throttling. The service can throttle 

bandwidth usage based on a per connection 

basis, which means that if bandwidth usage 

increases, DFS-R does not automatically 

adapt to changing network conditions. 

Bandwidth throttling is a common issue 

faced by businesses and organisations when 

too many users access a network at the same 

time. This results in slow download speeds, 

buffering, and other frustrating issues that 

can drive customers away. To address 

this problem, many 

organisations have turned to 

bandwidth throttling as a solution. 

This involves limiting the amount 

of data that can be transmitted 

over a network in a given time 

period, which helps to reduce 

congestion and improve overall 

performance. 

However, bandwidth throttling can also 

have negative effects. It can slow down 

important business processes, affect customer 

satisfaction, and even impact the bottom line. 

To address these issues, it is important to 

implement bandwidth throttling solutions that 

are both effective and fair. This might include 

implementing usage limits, prioritising critical 

applications and processes, or using more 

advanced solutions like traffic shaping or 

quality of service (QoS) policies. An even 

better solution is a system with advanced, 

dynamic throttling, where bandwidth usage is 

based on the percentage of bandwidth 

available. For example, a system using 50% 

of the connection would reduce its usage 

when other processes consume bandwidth 

Ultimately, the key to successful bandwidth 

throttling is finding the right balance between 

performance and fairness. By carefully 

considering the needs of all users, 

organisations can ensure that their networks 

run smoothly, even during periods of high 

usage. With the right approach, businesses 

can enjoy the benefits of a fast and reliable 

network, while avoiding the drawbacks of 

over-restrictive throttling policies. 

FINAL THOUGHTS 

DFS-R provides limited reporting options, 

limited ability to synchronise encrypted files, 

and no ability to synchronise files stored on 

FAT or ReFS volumes, making it challenging to 

operate efficiently in today's hybrid workplace. 

IT staff must adapt systems for users working 

from different locations while also managing 

varying bandwidth speeds at different times. 

The two common issues discussed in this 

article - the Last Writer Wins Algorithm and 

Bandwidth Throttling - highlight the need for 

IT staff to evaluate their file synchronisation 

and replication systems and determine if 

alternative solutions are required to meet their 

organisation's needs. NC 



CASE STUDY 

BIGTWIN HAS A BIG IMPACT AT CERN 

SUPERMICRO SERVERS ENABLE FASTER AND MORE COMPLEX 

SIMULATIONS AT CERN DATA CENTRE 

CERN, the European Organisation for 

Nuclear Research, operates the largest 

particle physics laboratory in the world. 

It's where researchers are uncovering what the 

universe consists of and how it works. At 

CERN, physicists and engineers use extremely 

complex scientific instruments, including the 

largest and most powerful particle accelerator 

in the world - the Large Hadron Collider 

(LHC). These studies into subatomic particles 

are advancing the boundaries of human 

knowledge by delving into the smallest 

building blocks of our universe. Many of the 

discoveries already made at CERN have had a 

powerful impact on several areas of everyday 

life, ranging from medicine to computing. 

As such, this is one of the most highly 

demanding and challenging computing 

environments in research. The World Wide 

Web was originally conceived and developed 

at CERN to meet the demand for automated 

information-sharing between scientists in 

universities and institutes dotted around the 

world. From software development to data 

processing and storage, networks, support for 

the LHC and non-LHC experimental 

programmes, automation and controls, as well 

as services for the accelerator complex and for 

the whole laboratory and its users, computing 

is at the heart of CERN's infrastructure. 

As a long-standing supplier to CERN, 

Supermicro provides accelerated enterprise 

computing technology that supports cuttingedge 

explorations in particle physics. As the 

search for understanding the universe's origins 

expands, new computing resources are 

constantly being evaluated and updated. 

The partnership between CERN and 

Supermicro serves to introduce new 

technologies to the high-performance compute 

cluster that processes data from the LHC. 

CERN scientists continue to explore enterprise 

innovations for CERN in collaboration with 

other global technology manufacturers. 

ADDING COMPUTE POWER WHILE 

MONITORING POWER CONSUMPTION 

To understand the results of the research 

experiments conducted by scientists and 

engineers at CERN, a significant amount of 

computing power is required. Therefore, it 

must be updated with the latest advancements 

in server, storage, and networking 

technologies, while keeping an eye on the 

total power consumption of the entire 

computing environment. 

CERN's infrastructure technical team worked 

meticulously over many months before any 

procurement in assessing the market for the 

latest technological advances. It is a 

qualification process that, although it can be 

very time-consuming, is an absolute necessity 

in keeping CERN at the forefront of global 

scientific research and, more importantly, 

allows for collaboration with suitable partners 

to assess solutions around performance, cost, 

operational costs, power, density, and so on. 

CERN selected the Supermicro AMD BigTwin 

A+ 2124BT-HNTR server following a lengthy 

evaluation process. As a result, CERN 

acquired over 900 Supermicro BigTwin 

systems, each with four nodes, for a total of 

approximately 3,600 server nodes. Many types 

of simulations and workloads take place at 

CERN. Most of them are used for running 

batch computing jobs related to physics-event 

reconstruction, data analysis, and simulation. 

In addition, part of them is used as front-ends 

to disk storage, collecting physics data from 

the experiments. 

Supermicro BigTwin servers are smart yet 

affordable investments for enterprises and 

institutions that need to build, expand, or 

future-proof advanced computing 

infrastructures. The high-performance, highdensity 

systems feature optimum airflow for 

energy-efficient cooling, easy maintenance, 

and high availability with hot-swappable nodes 

and redundant power supply modules. 

HIGH DENSITY RESULTS IN LOWER 

POWER CONSUMPTION 

CERN saw an increase in the performance of 

many simulation applications. In addition, with 

the high density of the Supermicro BigTwin 

systems with AMD EPYC processors, the power 

usage was lower than expected due to the 

shared cooling and power systems. With the 

AMD EPYC 7XXX CPU, applications ran faster 

than previous generations of CPUs, helping 

scientists perform more research to understand 

more about the world we live in. 

"We have worked alongside Supermicro for 

many years, and their attention to the design 

and engineering of the Supermicro BigTwin 

architecture has constantly increased. 

Thousands of compute nodes of the latest 

AMD EPYC based Supermicro BigTwin 

platform were deployed in the CERN 

computing facilities. This illustrates the highquality 

of these systems, both in terms of 

performance and reliability", said Eric 

Bonfillou, CERN IT Facility Planning and 

Procurement. NC 

WWW.NETWORKCOMPUTING.CO.UK FEBRUARY/MARCH 2023 21 


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FEATURE: DATA PERSPECTIVES 

THE YEAR OF DATA-DRIVEN EVERYTHING 

JONATHAN ROTHWELL, CEO & CO-FOUNDER OF D55, ON THE VALUE OF DATA-FIRST SYSTEMS IN 2023 

The ever-evolving deployment of 

technology has put pressure on 

businesses to adapt, adopt and 

innovate. Integrating these advancements, 

and applying them effectively, is now 

considered imperative for obtaining a 

competitive edge. Geared toward efficiency, 

speed to market, and scale-up, data-driven 

solutions stand to benefit all sectors. However, 

with solutions rolled-out at increasingly 

impressive rates, many businesses do not 

understand the nuances of new systems. 

Business leaders are often unsure about what 

tech to invest in and how to get the most 

effective ROI from newly installed solutions. 

This is a pain point commonly seen by digital 

transformation specialists, who understand 

effective business transformations rarely require 

every solution available; businesses need to 

dictate solutions, not the other way around. 

And so, as the landscape shifts towards datadriven 

everything, senior decision-makers must 

understand this dynamic and the impact of this 

on operations and data-driven investments. 

WHAT IS DATA-DRIVEN EVERYTHING? 

Put simply, data-driven everything is the 

process of using actionable data analysis and 

interpretation to produce more effective 

strategic business decisions. A data-driven 

approach, which utilises a combination of 

connected technologies including databases, 

data systems, AI and ML, enables businesses 

to more accurately optimise the way they serve 

customers and employees by using the 

freshest data possible. The benefits of 

realignment are myriad, with intra-team 

cohesion and increased day-to-day efficiency 

advantages gained. 

A data-driven remodelling synergises systems 

for efficiency, moving businesses beyond the 

disjointed siloed data access commonly 

associated with antiquated legacy systems. This 

distinction is well-known within the 

transformation sector, with leading providers, 

such as AWS, providing public resources for 

businesses to better understand the next wave 

of system innovation. 

OUT WITH THE OLD 

Businesses reliant on legacy systems are often 

unaware of what they're missing out on. This is 

because systems have usually been in place for 

a long time, becoming part and parcel of a 

company's operations. There is a harmful 

perception that sticking with current systems is 

less hassle than switching to modern solutions. 

In the immediate term this may be correct but 

eventually legacy systems will do more harm 

than good. Businesses across sectors have 

recognised this, sparking 'the great cloud 

migration' over the last decade. 

When compared to modern cloud solutions, 

legacy systems are more costly and less 

efficient. They are normally located on-premise, 

draining space from physical stores and 




warehouses. Legacy systems are also finite by 

design, meaning with scaleup additional 

storage is required; business growth, therefore, 

comes with the problem of increased 

hardware investment. At the time these systems 

were built when green initiatives were not 

commonplace either, so hardware cannot be 

significantly optimised for sustainability goals. 

They are also more costly to maintain, with 

breakdowns the sole responsibility of the 

business. Hardware systems represent a single 

point of failure, if severe breakdowns or 

external issues such as damage occur, 

business operations come to a standstill. 

Considering this, businesses must seek 

modern data-driven solutions, to decide 

which strategy is most applicable a whole host 

of technologies must be explained. 

THE SYSTEMS OF DATA-DRIVEN 

EVERYTHING 

Cloud systems often form the base of a 

company's digital transformation. When 

compared to legacy systems, cloud is a more 

resilient, cost-effective, faster, greener solution. 

Cloud providers place connected data houses 

in various locations, nullifying breakdown or 

damage risks. Cloud can also be optimised 

quicker and more minutely, meaning 

optimisations for speed of processing are 

more easily made. Cost efficiency is a key 

component, cloud providers such as AWS 

scale cloud computing costs based entirely on 

usage, meaning businesses only pay for what 

they need and are ready for scale-up at any 

given moment. Providers also cover all 

optimisation and problem fixes internally. 

Most cloud providers also run operations on 

green energy, aiming for carbon neutrality by 

2050, benefitting cloud-based businesses' 

green credentials. 

All of these benefits provide a foundation for 

faster data collation and access, allowing 

businesses to act on data insights in real time. 

Cloud systems are also exceptional at 

removing unnecessary manpower resources 

away from maintaining IT systems, meaning 

resources can instead be directed toward 

diligent data analysis. 

DATA LAKES 

Businesses reliant on legacy systems collect 

data from various siloed systems, the adverse 

effect of this is data mismanagement and an 

overall lacking of the 'bigger picture'. 

Naturally, storing data in siloed systems 

reduces the speed and accuracy of which 

data can be acted on. A data lake removes 

these issues by collating structured and 

unstructured data regardless of scale. From 

here, the now-centralised data can be utilised 

for machine learning, big data processing 

and real-time analytics. 

The effect of implementing a data lake on 

bottom lines can be considerable, with 

research showing companies with data lakes 

boasted 9% more organic growth revenue 

compared to competitors that had siloed data 

systems. The reasons for this are likely that 

data lakes offer speedier, more accessible and 

accurate insights; research details that 87% of 

companies with a data lake believe decisionmaking 

markedly improved. Additionally, 92% 

of leaders trust data lakes to be the most 

effective solution for centralising data. In 

comparison to data warehouses - data lake's 

predecessor - the modernised solution also 

comes with a lower cost of ownership. 

Ultimately, data lakes are a foundational 

component for businesses realigning to a 

data-driven perspective. The centralised data 

system enables quicker reactivity to market 

changes, synergised collaboration between 

separate departments and more informed, 

impactful business decisions. 

AI AND ML 

With AI and Machine Learning (ML) you get 

what you put in, literally. The more a business 

gears itself toward AI and ML the stronger data 

outcomes will be. Likely, businesses are already 

leveraging AI in back-end and customer-facing 

applications, but the importance of continuous 

efforts toward ML can be neglected. Once 

businesses have a firm grasp on centralised 

data collation and analysis, they can begin to 

input this data into ML. As this process 

continues, ML becomes intelligent enough to 

impact the sophistication of AI because data 

interpretation can be used to create highquality 

insights. 

Businesses that produce an effective databased 

system to nurture ML and AI will 

produce a high detail analysis of how a 

business is operating and how clientele utilise 

the company's service. Ultimately, this allows 

businesses to accurately optimise areas they 

have identified as inefficient. 

A DATA-DRIVEN FUTURE 

The opportunities available to businesses 

willing to realign to data-first systems and ways 

of working are clearly demonstrated. Efficiency, 

accuracy and future-proofing are key benefits 

of data-driven investment. Businesses shouldn't 

focus on adopting the whole breadth of digital 

transformation technologies, but a carefully 

curated digital transformation plan will give 

them the best chance of market 

competitiveness, the edge over more stubborn 

competitors, and an overall more effective and 

diligent operation. The technology and 

expertise are in place to transform whole 

sectors in 2023 - businesses leveraging data 

to empower decisions will gain advantages in 

the immediate future and beyond. NC 



NETWORK LATENCY: HOW CAN THE 

MANAGEMENT COSTS BE REMOVED? 

KEN WOOD, TECHNICAL PRODUCT MANAGER AT TERADATA, 

OFFERS A SOLUTION TO THE ONGOING PROBLEM OF 

NETWORK LATENCY 

Across the globe there are a number 

of regulations, compliance laws 

and privacy restrictions which 

businesses need to navigate through. 

Although these rules are all designed to 

protect humanity and societies in different 

cultures, global businesses are subjected 

to spending massive amounts of time and 

money to overcome these obstacles in 

order to do business across borders. 

Yet, for businesses to gain competitive 

business insight, they must access 

sensitive data which is sometimes located 

in different countries. In this, businesses 

will also need to weave through different 

country's regulations, to access this 

critical data. This sensitive data must be 

protected, traced, and tracked in order to 

keep all the information safe. 

WHAT IS DATA LINEAGE AND HOW 

DOES THIS IMPACT BUSINESSES? 

To begin with the definition of data 

lineage, it involves the curation of the 

original data - the original truth. No 

matter how many times this data is moved 

or copied, its origins and in all its 

locations and forms is removed. Now, 

when this requirement is multiplied by 




petabytes of data globally within an 

enterprise and for most, the challenge can 

seem daunting. Successful enterprises can 

navigate through these requirements, 

however - but it can be costly. 

Businesses in regulated industries must 

prove that they can effectively store a 

certain type of sensitive data, but also 

must be able to prove that, when 

permitted, this data no longer exists 

anywhere. If this data has been deleted, 

but still shows up in any form or location, 

the data can still be recalled, which can 

bring on litigation cases against the 

business. It does not matter whether the 

enterprise is aware of the existence of the 

rogue data or not, they are still liable. The 

Data Life Cycle Management process is 

the sequence of the creation, use, 

retention, and eventual erasure of data. In 

some industries, the duration of this life 

cycle can span decades or more. 

The associated costs and burden which 

businesses have of managing data, 

tracking its movements, replication, and 

its locations, can place a massive strain 

on the ability of an organisation to 

conduct the business they need to do. The 

issue is the "use" phase of the data's life 

cycle - how do businesses make data 

useful, accessible, and analysable across 

a vast web of multinational regulations, 

without losing track of it? The answer is 

perhaps simpler than expected - leave the 

data in place, where it is safe and 

controllable - leave the original as the 

original. 

Even though analysing data-in-place 

sounds like an easy solution to this 

industry problem, it is not the first time this 

approach has been tried. The problem of 

network latency comes into play - it is not 

sufficient to just access the original data 

where it persists from anywhere. The race 

between network latency and data size 

has been a back-and-forth struggle 

throughout the history of computer 

networking. Even as the world gets 

digitally smaller, network latencies can 

make accessing data seem too far away 

to be efficiently analysed with high 

performance analytical databases engines 

which are already on the market. 

WHAT IS THE SOLUTION TO 

NETWORK LATENCY? 

There are three primary types of network 

latency which are; latency caused by 

distance, latency caused by congestion, 

and latency caused by the network design 

itself, intentionally or by accident. 

Combinations of these latency types in the 

same network, makes the issue much 

worse. All three types can, however, cause 

analytic access to data to be too slow to 

be useful, which reduces the usable 

throughput, which is required to gain 

insight from critical data, to outright 

intolerable. 

The instinctive solution is to place the 

data near the processing engines, where it 

is needed. This means copying data to 

local storage locations to give the data 

local performance access. However, this 

creates a whole new set of issues. 

Needing to keep track of where all of 

these data copies are located and when 

the use of the data is completed and 

removing the data from all locations, can 

be difficult and costly. This includes 

tracking down potential locally backed up 

copies and any off-site media copies, and 

local disaster recovery replicas in those 

remote locations. 

The simplest and most practical 

solution is to leave the original data in 

place. This is possible today with the 

combination of technologies 

which are already on the 

market. When businesses 

choose the right 

combination, they could optimise 

latencies in Wide Area Networks (WAN) 

and potentially increase throughput by 

over seven-times when directly compared 

to the same WAN by itself. 

Businesses could be able to use as much 

as 95 percent of the WAN connection to 

analyse data where it is stored versus 

copying and staging the data closer to 

their analytic engines. That is global 

analytics with data-in-place and at scale. 

This frees up IT teams to solve bigger 

issues, rather than needing to keep track 

of where sensitive data is being copied. 

They can manage and control data where 

they need to. This also has the potential 

to minimise regulatory requirements as 

some regulations allow the transient 

inflight use of data versus the persistence 

of data in other countries. 

The cost savings and reduced 

management spent could also play a role 

in planning data access methods. 

Combining the right technology is perfect 

for on-premises, private, hybrid, public 

and multi-cloud environments where long 

network latency might halt enterprises 

from being able to fully leverage access to 

their sensitive data. NC 



ABSTRACTING DATA PROTECTION FROM INFRASTRUCTURE 

SIMON PAMPLIN, CTO, CERTES NETWORKS, INSISTS IT IS NOW ESSENTIAL TO STOP RELYING ON 

INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AND USE LAYER 4 ENCRYPTION TO PROACTIVELY PROTECT BUSINESS 

SENSITIVE DATA, IRRESPECTIVE OF LOCATION 

The cybersecurity threat has risen so 

high in recent years that most 

companies globally now accept that a 

data breach is almost inevitable. But what 

does this mean for data protection and 

compliance officers, as well as senior 

managers, now personally liable for 

protecting sensitive company, customer and 

partner data? 

Investing in security infrastructure is not 

enough to demonstrate compliance in 

protecting data. Software Defined Wide 

Area Networks (SD-WAN), Firewalls and 

Virtual Private Networks (VPN) play a role 

within an overall security posture but they 

are infrastructure solutions and do not 

safeguard data. What happens when the 

data crosses outside the network to the 

cloud or a third-party network? How is the 

business data on the LAN side protected if 

an SD-WAN vulnerability or 

misconfiguration is exploited? What 

additional vulnerability is created by relying 

on the same network security team to both 

set policies and manage the environment, in 

direct conflict with Zero Trust guidance? The 

only way to ensure the business is protected 

and compliant is to abstract data protection 

from the underlying infrastructure. 

ACKNOWLEDGING ESCALATING RISK 

Attitudes to data security need to change fast 

because today's infrastructure-led model is 

creating too much risk. According to the 2022 

IBM Data Breach survey, 83% of companies 

confirm they expect a security breach - and 

many accept that breaches will occur more 

than once. Given this perception, the question 

has to be asked: why are businesses still reliant 

on a security posture focused on locking the 

infrastructure down? 

Clearly that doesn't work. While not every 

company will experience the catastrophic 

impact of the four-year-long data breach that 




ultimately affected 300 million guests of 

Marriott Hotels, attackers are routinely 

spending months inside businesses looking for 

data. In 2022, it took an average of 277 days 

-a bout nine months - to identify and contain a 

breach. Throughout this time, bad actors have 

access to corporate data; they have the time 

to explore and identify the most valuable 

information. And the chance to copy and/or 

delete that data - depending on the attack's 

objective. 

The costs are huge: the average cost of a 

data breach in the US is now $9.44 million 

($4.35 is the average cost globally). From 

regulatory fines - which are increasingly 

punitive across the globe - to the impact on 

share value, customer trust, even business 

partnerships, the long-term implications of a 

data breach are potentially devastating. 

MISPLACED TRUST IN INFRASTRUCTURE 

Yet these affected companies have ostensibly 

robust security postures. They have highly 

experienced security teams and an extensive 

investment in infrastructure. But they have 

bought into the security industry's long 

perpetuated myth that locking down 

infrastructure, using VPNs, SD-WANs and 

firewalls, will protect a business' data. 

As breach after breach has confirmed, 

relying on infrastructure security fails to provide 

the level of control needed to safeguard data 

from bad actors. For the vast majority of 

businesses, data is rarely restricted to the 

corporate network environment. It is in the 

cloud, on a user's laptop, on a supplier's 

network. Those perimeters cannot be 

controlled, especially for any business that is 

part of supply chain and third-party networks. 

How does Vendor A protect third party 

Supplier B when the business has no control 

over their network? Using traditional, 

infrastructure dependent security, it can't. 

Furthermore, while an SD-WAN is a more 

secure way of sending data across the Internet, 

it only provides control from the network 

egress point to the end destination. It provides 

no control over what happens on an 

organisation's LAN side. It cannot prohibit 

data being forwarded on to another location 

or person. Plus, of course, it is accepted that 

SD-WAN misconfiguration can add a risk of 

breach, which means the data is exposed - as 

shown by the public CVE's (Common 

Vulnerabilities and Exposures) available to 

review on most SD-WAN vendors' websites. 

And while SD-WANs, VPNs and firewalls use 

IPSEC as an encryption protocol, their 

approach to encryption is flawed: the 

encryption keys and management are 

handled by the same group, in direct 

contravention of accepted zero trust 

standards of "Separation of Duties". 

PROTECT THE DATA 

It is, therefore, essential to take another 

approach, to focus on protecting the data. By 

wrapping security around the data, a 

business can safeguard this vital asset 

irrespective of infrastructure. Adopting Layer 

4, policy-based encryption ensures the data 

payload is protected for its entire journey - 

whether it was generated within the business 

or by a third party. 

If it crosses a misconfigured SD-WAN, the 

data is still safeguarded: it is encrypted, 

making it valueless to any hacker. However 

long an attack may continue, or however long 

an individual or group can be camped out in 

the business looking for data to use in a 

ransomware attack, if the sensitive data is 

encrypted there is nothing to work with. The 

fact that the payload data only is encrypted, 

while header data remains in the clear means 

minimal disruption to network services or 

applications, as well as making 

troubleshooting an encrypted network easier. 

This mindset shift protects not only the data 

and, by default, the business, but also the 

senior management team responsible - indeed 

personally liable - for security and information 

protection compliance. Rather than placing 

the burden of data protection onto network 

security teams, this approach realises the true 

goal of zero trust: separating policy setting 

responsibility from system administration. The 

security posture is defined from a business 

standpoint, rather than a network security and 

infrastructure position - and that is an essential 

and long overdue mindset change. 


This mindset change is becoming critical - 

from both a business and regulatory 

perspective. Over the past few years, 

regulators globally have increased their focus 

on data protection. From punitive fines, 

including the maximum with its 20 million 

euros (or 25% of global revenue, whichever is 

the higher) per breach of European Union's 

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to 

the risk of imprisonment, the rise in regulation 

across China and the Middle East reinforces 

the global clear recognition that data loss has 

a material cost to businesses. 

Until recently, however, regulators have not 

been prescriptive about the way in which that 

data is secured - an approach that has 

allowed the 'lock down infrastructure' security 

model to continue. This attitude is changing. 

In North America, new laws demand 

encryption between Utilities' Command and 

Control centres to safeguard national 

infrastructure. This approach is set to expand 

as regulators and businesses recognise that 

the only way to safeguard data crossing 

increasingly dispersed infrastructures, from SD- 

WAN to the cloud, is to encrypt it - and do so 

in a way that doesn't impede the ability of the 

business to function. 

It is now essential that companies 

recognise the limitations of relying on SD- 

WANs, VPNs and firewalls. Abstracting data 

protection from the underlying infrastructure 

is the only way to ensure the business is 

protected and compliant. NC 


OPINION: QUANTUM 

QUANTUM FOR THE LONG TERM 

DR ERIC HOLLAND, DIRECTOR 

OF QUANTUM ENGINEERING 

SOLUTIONS, KEYSIGHT 

TECHNOLOGIES, EXPLORES SIX 

KEY QUANTUM TRENDS FOR 

2023 AND BEYOND 

Quantum mechanics offers an 

entirely new way of processing 

information. It has the potential 

to be faster and more resource-efficient 

than any other solution, which could 

transform our capabilities in sectors such 

as cybersecurity, pharmaceuticals, and 

manufacturing. 

However, as it stands, quantum 

mechanics is still in its infancy. We are 

fundamentally limited by the stability and 



OPINION: QUANTUM 

accuracy of existing systems. To take 

quantum computing from its current state 

and make it fit for purpose in the 

mainstream, there is a need to reduce 

errors and add the ability to scale. 

If such improvements can be made, 

quantum will be able to push beyond the 

boundaries of classical physics and offer 

solutions to calculations that have 

previously been deemed impossible. 

With this in mind, and as quantum 

continues its development, here, I have 

put together my top trends: 

1: Quantum poised to accelerate 

complex design processes 

In the airline industry, it is not 

uncommon for companies to spend 25 

years designing a new polymer that will 

make aircraft more fuel efficient and 

resistant to extreme temperatures. 

Quantum will significantly accelerate 

this and other material science design 

timelines. Rather than spending their 

entire career on one design cycle, 

employees will be able to complete the 

process in a matter of years. 

2: Taking a quantum leap in the 

climate change battle 

Once quantum demonstrates advantage, 

it will increasingly be channeled to help 

fight climate change. For example, 

improving decision-making through 

complex modeling and predictions and 

helping ensure compliance with 

emission standards. 

3: Reducing the impact of hurricanes 

and weather events 

Before the end of the next decade, 

quantum will enable meteorologists to 

better predict the trajectory of 

hurricanes, winter storms, and other 

weather events. This will allow 

communities to better plan and remove 

any element of guesstimates in 

determining whether to mandate 

evacuations or shelter in place. As a 

result, the loss of life associated with 

hurricanes and other natural weatherdriven 

disasters will be reduced. 

4: Quantum navigation will 

illuminate remote areas 

Quantum technology can facilitate 

navigation in remote areas with minimal 

satellite coverage, but cost is currently a 

barrier to adoption. This will begin to 

change as quantum becomes more 

prevalent and affordable. I believe that 

we will see emergency vehicles equipped 

with quantum sensors within the next 

decade, with consumer vehicles 

eventually following suit. 

5: Europe is hot on US' heels with 

quantum adoption 

The US is currently leading the quantum 

computing industry, but by the end of the 

decade, Europe will reach parity. 

Increasing privacy regulations is one 

major driver behind Europe's growth, as 

having quantum computing capabilities 

in the region will make it significantly 

easier to comply with these mandates. 

In addition, European quantum 

companies have seen the largest venture 

rounds and a plethora of universities 

throughout the continent provide a talent 

pipeline that can be tapped to fuel new 

quantum opportunities and use cases. As 

a result, the US quantum industry will 

feel increasing pressure to maintain its 

competitive advantage. 

6: Building the foundation for 

quantum 

After decades-long hype around 

quantum computing and quantum 

systems, the industry will start to realise 

its potential for creating new 

opportunities in fields spanning 

cybersecurity, materials creation, 

financial analysis, and military receivers. 

Proactive companies will start investing 

in quantum, fostering quantum talent 

within the next generation of workers 

through university partnerships, 

hackathons, and other projects. This will 

create an ancillary boost to DEI 

initiatives resulting in much-needed 

diversity in the tech workforce. 

Recent research revealed 74% of 

companies believe they will fall behind if 

they fail to adopt quantum. As a result, 

organisations will begin to shift their 

thinking from that of quantum being a 

futuristic technology and begin 

addressing key challenges, including 

financial resources and operations, and 

developing real enterprise applications 

of quantum by 2026, if not sooner.? 

WHEN WILL QUANTUM ENTER THE 

MAINSTREAM? 

There is still much to be learned about 

quantum mechanics and the power it 

harnesses. However, it's clear the 

opportunities it presents in fields such as 

research and industry. It's not 

unreasonable to think that quantum 

computing could be in mainstream use 

within the next ten years, though for this 

to happen there needs to be significant 

innovation in hardware and software 

development. 

What is certain is the multitude of 

possibilities quantum mechanics offers, 

and it goes beyond the trends we've 

discussed in this article. The power of 

quantum has the potential to transform 

everything from how pharmaceutical 

companies develop drugs for serious 

illness to how businesses protect 

themselves from cybersecurity threats. It 

may be in its early years now, but 

quantum is coming sooner than we 

think. NC 


OPINION: MACHINE LEARNING 

DISCOVERING RULES THROUGH MACHINE LEARNING 

JURAS JURŠENAS, COO AT OXYLABS EXPLORES THE WAYS IN 

WHICH WE CAN TAKE EFFICIENT STRATEGIES FROM MACHINE 

LEARNING MODELS AND APPLY THEM TO RULE-BASED SYSTEMS 

Back in 1868, George Boole's wife 

paraphrased his thoughts on the 

capabilities of machines: "Between 

them they have conclusively proved, by 

unanswerable logic of facts, that 

calculation and reasoning, like weaving 

and plowing, are work, not for human 

souls, but for clever combinations of iron 

and wood. If you spend time in doing 

work that a machine could do faster than 

yourselves, it should only be for 

exercise." 

We've come a long way since Claude 

Shannon applied Boole's work to build 

the first circuit board, heralding the age 

of computers. Just as he had predicted, 

most calculations and reasoning chains 

are now done by "clever combinations of 

iron and wood." We just realised that 

silicon might be a bit better at doing the 

job. What Boole himself did throughout 

his life would be something he'd not have 

thought possible for a machine. He was 

investigating the rules that governed 

thought itself. In other words, he was 

moving towards a higher level of 

reasoning, above the regular calculations 

of daily life. 

While we're still far away from 

artificial intelligence that would be 

able to make use of philosophy 

in a similar fashion to Boole 

and others, we're coming close 

to a more subtle form of 

computational thinking. 

Machine learning can be used 

to discover unintuitive rules in 

some areas of life. 

MACHINE 

LEARNING'S 

CAPABILITIES 

Much has been written about 

how machine learning is going to 

replace all other modes of solving 

problems. One of the most popular 

suggestions is that we should forgo rulebased 

approaches for machine learning. 

Such a view, in my eyes, is overly 

idealistic. Solving problems with machine 

learning that could be solved with a 

rule-based approach is a waste of 

resources. Models, especially more 

complicated ones, can be prohibitively 

expensive and require much 

maintenance to keep them accurate. 

In an ideal world with unlimited 

resources, both computing and fiscal, 

these differences wouldn't matter. In 

business, however, we're always working 



OPINION: MACHINE LEARNING 

within tightly 

defined boundaries, 

as any usage of resources 

also means an opportunity cost. 

Preferably, then, we would opt to solve all 

problems with rule-based approaches. 

However, that runs into other complicated 

issues, such as not all problems having 

defined boundaries that can be solved 

through rules. 

Machine learning is great at solving 

two types of challenges. Any problem 

that requires a probabilistic answer is 

likely much better done by a model 

rather than anything rule-based. Another 

area where machine learning is 

immensely valuable is when the rules are 

not clear. 

In business, we might sometimes not be 

sure on how to answer specific questions. 

For example, what rules should govern a 

self-checkout process? There are nearly 

infinite possibilities for structuring such a 

feature, but we're always looking to 

maximise the outcome. In other words, 

we'd prefer that a self-checkout would 

lead to the most conversions. 

INFERENCES FROM MACHINE 

LEARNING MODELS 

A common objection might be that some 

machine learning models, such as Deep 

Neural Networks, are essentially black 

boxes. We're never quite sure what's 

going on under the hood, so extracting 

rules from them is as much guesswork as 

without them. Fortunately, in business 

applications, we don't need to be as 

exact as logicians or scientists who 

attempt to uncover the foundational 

blocks of minds, language, or the 

universe. Insights that point us in the 

right direction are enough to create a 

case for doing things one way or 

another. 

In other words, when building a model 

that predicts the best outcome for a selfservice 

customer system, we're not trying 

to define some immutable laws of human 

behavior. We're simply looking at an 

admittedly ever-changing set of 

circumstances and attempting to wrestle 

out the best way to go about them. 

So, going back to the same example, a 

Random Forest algorithm, fed with 

enough data from event sessions and 

user activities, could outline the most 

predictive outputs. These would indicate 

what users are most influenced by during 

the self-service process. These outputs 

might not be ground-breaking or even 

wide-ranging as they only work in a fairly 

confined space of circumstances. But 

they're more than enough for the 

engineers, designers, and content writers 

to perform optimisation that would lead 

to better conversions. 

These insights can then be turned into 

rule-based algorithms. As such, machine 

learning models can give us a way to 

discover circumstantial rules that we can 

implement in our business practices. 


Hopes that machine learning will 

replace rule-based systems are illfounded. 

The latter is often much more 

efficient and cheaper to build and 

maintain than complicated machine 

learning models. As businesses are 

always turning one eye to efficiency, 

rule-based systems are here to stay. 

Machine learning, unlike commonly 

thought, can be used to supplement 

rule-based systems. While there are 

possible ways of combining one into a 

single system, the former can also be 

used to garner insights that can then be 

implemented into the latter. 

In the end, machine learning shouldn't 

be thought of as the cure-all for technical 

problems. It's one of the many possibilities 

that should be used thoughtfully. One of 

those is to ensure we make better 

decisions in other systems. NC 


CASE STUDY 

UTILISING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION TO PROVIDE QUANTIFIABLE TIME SAVINGS 

TENDRING DISTRICT COUNCIL, WORKING WITH ESPRIA, HAS OPTED TO TRANSITION TO THE 

CLOUD-BASED SOPHOS CENTRAL 

Tendring District Council, based in Essex, 

have worked with Sophos and Espria for 

their IT security needs since 2014. Sophos 

is a world leader in next-generation 

cybersecurity, protecting more than 500,000 

organisations and millions of consumers in 

more than 150 countries from today's most 

advanced cyber threats. Espria is an awardwinning 

expert in the delivery of IT services and 

a trusted provider of IT solutions, managed and 

integrated services to a wide range of UK 

organisations of all sizes. 

BUSINESS CHALLENGES 

Several years ago, Tendring District Council 

implemented on-premise Sophos Endpoint 

Protection Advanced and was happy with the 

solution. More recently, the council has focused 

on further digital transformation, moving all 

services and servers to a cloud environment. 

With this in mind, and working with Espria, the 

council opted to transition to the cloud-based 

Sophos Central. Completed in May 2020, 

Espria supported the organisation in working 

remotely with an ongoing priority for IT security 

after a minor ransomware incident caused the 

team to be highly aware of the prevalence of 

attacks in their sector. 

THE TECHNICAL SOLUTION 

The council moved to Sophos Central for cloudbased 

IT security for endpoints and servers with 

the added benefit of ransomware protection 

from Intercept X Advanced with EDR. The 

council also called in Sophos Professional 

Services to assist with the installation. 

Throughout the project, the team at the council 

used each step as a way of learning about the 

solutions, which included: 

Sophos Central: a unified console for 

managing Sophos products 

Intercept X Advanced for Server with EDR 

which protects virtual and physical servers 

without sacrificing performance, including 

one-click Server Lockdown 

Intercept X Advanced with EDR: a 

signatureless anti-exploit, anti-ransomware 

and root cause analysis tool that protects 

endpoints from advanced threats 

Professional Services: consultation, 

implementation and configuration of 

solutions aligned with security needs and 

Sophos best practices. 

BUSINESS BENEFITS 

Sam Wright is Cyber Security & Systems 

Manager at Tendring District Council. He lists 

the benefits of the Sophos/Espria partnership 

and moving to Sophos Central as being: 

Automation: the automation in Sophos 

Central when detecting and alerting potential 

threats eases the pressure on the IT team 

The interface: the team finds the Sophos 

Central interface very easy to use and issuefree, 

particularly when working remotely 

Threat analysis: Sam was impressed with the 

Sophos Endpoint Detection and Response 

(EDR) threat analysis in Intercept X Advanced 

with top threat indicators, live discovery and 

multiple categories and queries 

Behaviour analysis: Intercept X Advanced 

examines the behaviour of attacks rather 

than definition - a different approach that 

provides heightened security 

Data security: Device Control within Sophos 

Central keeps data safe and the council 

compliant with GDPR 

Price: Sam believes he got a good deal from 

Sophos with customer-specific pricing 

Service: "The council is pleased with the 

service it has received from Sophos and 

Espria who are there to help whenever it's 

needed." 

Sam is so pleased with Sophos' services and 

the solutions provided that he has 

recommended them to his peers in the Essex 

Online Partnership - a collaboration of 

authorities including emergency services - and 

he also ran a demo for them. 

"I'm always happy to recommend Sophos & 

Espria," he says. "It's easy to use, makes 

complete sense and empowers our technicians. 

Plus, Sophos is a well-established and trusted 

company that's here for the long term. Sophos 

has definitely played a key role in our digital 

transformation project. Our technicians are very 

happy with Espria & Sophos Central. It makes it 

easy for them to drill down, review and 

investigate any issues that arise. It just makes 

sense, and it empowers our team." NC 



Performance Redefined 

Introducing 15 New Server Families That Redefine Modern Workload Performance With 

4 th Gen Intel ® Xeon ® Scalable Processors (formerly codenamed Sapphire Rapids) 

Learn More at www.supermicro.com/X13

NC Feb-Mar 2023

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