This week has been completely full at Networking Field Day 21 with lots of great presentations. As usual, I wanted to throw out some quick thoughts that fit more with some observations and also to set up some topics for deeper discussion at a later time.

• SD-WAN isn’t just a thing for branches. It’s an application-focused solution now. We’ve moved past the technical reasons for implementation and finally moved the needle on “getting rid of MPLS” and instead realized that the quality of service and other aspects of the software allow us to do more. That’s especially true for cloud initiatives. If you can guarantee QoS through your SD-WAN setup you’re already light years ahead of where we’ve been already.
• Automation isn’t just figuring out how to make hardware and software do things really fast. It’s also about helping humans understand which things need to be done fast and automatically and which things don’t. For all the amazing stuff that you can do with scripting and orchestration there are still tasks that should be done manually. And there are plenty of people problems in the process. Really smart companies that want to solve these issues should stop focusing on using technology to eliminate the people and instead learn how to integrate the people into the process.
• If you’re hoping to own the entire stack from top to bottom, you’re going to end up disappointed. Customers aren’t looking for mediocre solution from a single vendor. They’re not even looking for a great solution from a couple. They want the best and they’re not afraid to go where they want to get them. And when you realize that more and more engineering and architecture talent is focused on integrating already you will see that they don’t have any issues making your solution work with someone else’s instead of counting on you to integrate your platforms together at some point in the future.

Tom’s Take

Networking Field Day is always a great time for me to talk to some of the best people in the world and hear from some of the greatest companies out there about what’s coming down the pipeline. The world of networking is changing even more than it has in the last few software-defined years.