The new enterprise mantra

The complexity of IT infrastructure and the need for an agile network requires that enterprises quickly adapt virtualization first strategy

- ADITYA KHAITAN

Network virtualization is the process of transforming the physical hardware within the network to virtual networks or machines. Multiple virtual machines are created using software and hosted on a single physical hardware. The virtual machines perform compute, storage, and network function similar to the physical hardware.

Globalization, market trends in Industry 4.0, automation, the growth of artificial intelligence (AI), big data analytics, and internet of things (IoT) as well as the black swan event of 2020 in the COVID-19 pandemic have only accelerated the pace of digital transformation in enterprises. With accelerated digitalization, the growing scale, and complexity of IT infrastructure in enterprises have raised concerns around network agility to meet the demand and resiliency to provide uninterrupted service.

Network and information security is a growing concern across IT, ITeS, manufacturing, banking, and financial services, government and public sector, defense, telecommunication sectors amongst others. Further, businesses are focused on cost reduction as the key strategic imperative for sustainability.

Network virtualization offers a reduction in hardware and power costs by consolidating multiple physical hardware servers and devices into a single host machine. As opposed to managing each physical node in the network, translating into virtual machines enable easy automation of provisioning and configuration processes, trouble-shooting as well as the implementation of security protocols. IT teams can then define security policies and controls for each workload or virtual machine which helps ensure enforcement down to the individual virtual machine.