I’m wrapping up Networking Field Day 30 this week and as is always the case there was a lot of great discussion from both the presenters and the delegates outside of the presentations. It’s one of the reasons why I love doing this job even after almost ten years. I get to meet fun people and have an impact on so many things in the tech industry.

• Network-as-a-Service is coming. We recorded a roundtable discussion about it and I think the impact that it’s going to have on mid-sized businesses is massive. It’s going to be like cloud. Not just in operational capability. It’s also going to be a huge driver for what you can do with your network in support of applications. The snowflakes may melt under the weight of the cookies we make from the cookie cutter deployments.
• It feels like a lot of companies are trying to find what’s next. Part of that is coming from the ways that organizations are changing their outlook for what an office should be after the pandemic shutdowns. But still others are realizing they can’t use the same revenue stream for the next five years and hope to survive. This isn’t simply a game of trying to find an adjacent market to move into to drive growth to keep shareholders and investors happy. This is more about finding something that needs to be done because the alternative is no longer having a company.
• Sadly, it looks as though third party Twitter clients are gone for good. This is beyond irritating to me because of the way that I choose to consume Twitter. I’ve seen a lot of chatter in various comment threads about third parties making money from the good graces of Twitter but the fact is that those programs drive a LOT of the way that power users interact with the system. If the exodus wasn’t already accelerating I would imagine you’re going to see a lot more coming very, very soon.

Tom’s Take

Stay tuned for all the great info from Networking Field Day on the Tech Field Day YouTube channel and don’t forget to thank your networking team today. You may not need to call them today to tell them something is down but trust me they will appreciate you calling just to say you appreciate them.