The rapid shift to work from home (WFH) in the last one-plus years has drastically changed network demands. Prior to the pandemic, network designs were already in flux as traffic patterns increasingly shifted from the enterprise data center to the cloud, and technologies like SD-WAN saw widespread adoption for their ability to virtualize underlying network services to reduce cost and improve performance.
Since the pandemic, network considerations were mostly driven by the need to ensure reliable remote connectivity to internal and cloud-based apps, and to support the massive increase in video. To support WFH, many organizations simply relied on existing VPN capabilities, or allowed remote employees to access cloud-based apps through their residential Internet connection.
