As businesses across the globe pursue AI to revolutionize their businesses, the powerful infrastructure required to support these innovations and transformations is driving an increased focus on responsible purchase strategies. Recent research by TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group revealed that sustainability concerns are taking center stage as organizations grow their AI infrastructure initiatives and footprints.
Cybersecurity & Networking
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The hype around AI transformation has infiltrated business lines across all areas of organizations, and with freely available generative AI (GenAI) technology, anyone can take the opportunity to explore AI’s possibilities. Recent research by TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group closely examined the actions of formal stakeholders for AI initiatives today and reached some nuanced conclusions about who should be involved in these decisions and when.
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AI has become a key investment for organizations as they seek to foster innovation and gain a competitive edge. But selecting and deploying the right AI solution is still quite challenging, often entailing substantial initial and ongoing investments of time, people, and money. Recent research by TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group sought to understand the time-to-value situation for AI projects today and what this might say about innovation in the AI market in general.
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Organizations have been broadly and enthusiastically adopting initiatives involving artificial intelligence, and the maturity of those initiatives within business operations is on the rise. Recent research by TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group found two key drivers of these trends: anxieties that businesses will miss out on the advantages of generative AI (GenAI) and the increasing focus of vendors and partners on simplifying their products and services.
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As cyber attacks continue unabated, the global population depends upon cybersecurity professionals to protect them from a worldwide army of state-sponsored actors, cyber-criminals, hacktivists, and script kiddies alike. Unfortunately, cybersecurity teams are often understaffed, lacking advanced skills, and working in an environment of constant pressure.
To learn more about these trends, download the free infographic, The Life and Times of Cybersecurity Professionals Volume VI.
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The level of interest in SASE architectures has exploded recently as organizations struggle to use traditional, on-premises- based network and security solutions to support distributed, cloud-centric enterprise environments. The broad applicability of SASE leads to some confusion, and although SASE is often elevated to a CIO/CISO-led initiative, inconsistencies remain for many organizations in day-to-day collaboration across network and security teams.
To learn more about these trends, download the free infographic, A Network Perspective on SASE and SD-WAN.
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We live in an age where virtually anyone can install an 80-inch TV and surround sound systems in their home. So, owners of professional sports teams and concert venues must work hard to continuously provide a differentiated experience for fans attending events in person. In case the roar of the crowd and the excitement of being there isn’t enough, these organizations continue to modernize and improve the live experience in these stadiums.
Recently, I was able to get a behind-the-scenes tour of the newly renovated Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots and New England Revolution, to better understand how they are improving in-person experiences. If you are not aware, Gillette Stadium recently underwent a significant renovation in its north end zone to provide additional hospitality services, a massive outdoor screen, and modernize its video network to support broadcast TV, security and safety, and eventually deliver video content to the screens distributed throughout the stadium. Regardless of where you are, you never miss a play.
For those attending the game/event, it is impossible to miss the massive outdoor screen in the north end zone. This 22,000-square-foot screen (for context, that is almost half an acre) is the largest curved outdoor HD video board in the U.S. And in case you are wondering, no, this will not fit in your living room. Being over five times larger than the video board it replaced, it provides a great view of the action taking place on the field for almost the entire stadium. And of course, the new 22-story lighthouse with an observation deck behind the board is also quite distinctive.
While these additions have a dramatic visual impact, it is really what is going on behind the scenes that provides the more differentiated experience. A big part of this renovation was creating an in-house video production studio for the stadium. So, while production trucks will still be required for uplinks, all the game video feeds now run through this production room. This allows the stadium to control the content going to the screens in the stadium and why those attending the game get to see replays (NFL, MLS) on the big screen before those at home do—if at all. To always ensure high availability, the stadium leverages redundant on-premises data centers and multiple redundant network connections on each side of the stadium. As a side note, the data center environment we toured was as impressive as the screen—not a wire out of place—and everything was labelled according to the standards of the Kraft Group (owners of the Patriots and Revolution). To ensure all the video feeds can be collected from the cameras, then viewed in the production room, and delivered to broadcasters and the video screens, Gillette Stadium turned to Cisco Systems network technology for a wired solution that was designed and implemented by the Acadia Technology Group. The deployment also included the infrastructure to support the main press conference room as well as several breakout Cisco WebEx interview rooms.
In addition to game/event day, Gillette Stadium also created an operations control room to improve operational efficiencies. Again, aided by dozens of video panels, this main operations control room tracks weather, real-time automobile traffic, and foot traffic in and around the stadium. Aided by AI technology that can quickly alert this team, comprised of Gillette Stadium staff, local, state, or federal officials, of any issues that need to be addressed. For example, the AI-enabled scene analytics software could detect something as simple as a full trash can and alert maintenance to empty it or monitor inventory levels in self-checkout kiosks so staffers can ensure products are always available, to detecting a fan trying to scale a fence to an unauthorized area, which would alert security teams to act. Ultimately, this enables Gillette Stadium staff to provide the best possible and safest experience on game day or event.
As an aside, it is worth noting that Micheal Israel, the Kraft Group CIO who led the tour, is also in charge of the other Kraft businesses and that the innovative technology deployed at the stadium often gets implemented at the other Kraft Group locations to deliver greater operational efficiencies and safety. The aforementioned AI-enabled scene analytics capability and Cisco networks are just a few of the technologies that have been implemented, and they have led to improved processes and productivity at the Kraft Group recycling plants.
Why does all this matter? It demonstrates the value that innovative technology can have in improving not just a game day or concert experience but also any business process. Stadiums such as Gillette, SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, and others continue to use technology to deliver a differentiated and safe game day/concert experience. Video, Wi-Fi, and 5G networks all play a role in enabling these massive stadium environments to deliver an enhanced experience. It’s great to see Gillette Stadium (and the Kraft Group) continue to innovate and share their experiences with other stadiums to raise the bar for all stadium events. More importantly, businesses outside of sports and entertainment can learn from these technology deployments and leverage them to improve their own process, product, or ensure a safe and productive work environment—or provide a differentiated experience to their employees!
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The broadening distribution of applications and employees away from traditional corporate locations is fueling complexity and creating networking and security challenges. Secure access service edge (SASE) technology can help address these issues, but adoption paths can widely vary.
To learn more about these trends, download the free infographic, Security Services Edge (SSE) Leads the Way to SASE.
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Modern enterprise complexity is challenging cybersecurity programs. One of the biggest reasons is the broadening distribution of applications and employees away from traditional corporate locations, which is fueling complexity and creating networking and security challenges. Secure access service edge (SASE) technology can help address these issues, but adoption paths can widely vary. Indeed, the breadth of SASE and organizational considerations that must be accounted for when converging networking and security lead to a variety of starting points.
In order to investigate how businesses are faring with adoption plans, the use cases they seek to support, and the technologies they prioritize as part of SASE rollouts, TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group surveyed 390 IT and cybersecurity professionals at organizations in North America (US and Canada) responsible for evaluating, purchasing, and managing network and/or network security technology products and services, specifically security service edge technology and processes.
This study sought to answer the following questions:
- What are the drivers of interest in SASE? What are the initial use cases for SASE?
- How long do organizations expect it to take to fully adopt a SASE architecture?
- What cybersecurity challenges have been most impactful to organizations? What challenges do organizations face specifically with securing remote user access to corporate applications and resources?
- Do organizations expect their initial approach to SASE to be security- or network-first?
- What plans do organizations have to implement secure service edge technologies? What are the reasons organizations are interested in SSE?
- What challenges have organizations faced, or do they expect to face, when implementing SSE?
- What attributes are most important to organizations when considering an SSE solution?
- How are organizations prioritizing different security tools, such as CASB, ZTNA, and SWG, as they build out their SSE architectures?
- What do organizations believe are the most important attributes of a zero-trust network access solution as part of an SSE architecture?
- What capabilities do organizations find most important in secure web gateway and CASB solutions as part of an SSE architecture?
- How many technology vendors do organizations believe they will work with to support their SASE architecture? What are the drivers for organizations using more than one SASE vendor?
- How do organizations view the current cybersecurity landscape in terms of management difficulty? How does this vary, if at all, according to current SSE adoption status?
- What benefits have organizations recognized to date as a result of implementing SASE?
Survey participants represented a wide range of industries including manufacturing, technology, financial services, and retail/wholesale. For more details, please see the Research Methodology and Respondent Demographics sections of this report.
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The level of interest in secure access service edge (SASE) architectures has exploded recently as organizations struggle to use traditional, on-premises-based network and security solutions to support distributed, cloud-centric enterprise environments. While this has been an increasing challenge over the last few years, the pandemic and resulting spike in newly remote workers pushed many organizations to a tipping point when it comes to both security and network traffic. Additionally, the broad applicability of SASE leads to some confusion on where to begin and which technologies are required, exacerbated by legacy organizational dynamics. While Enterprise Strategy Group has seen SASE elevated to a CIO/CISO-led initiative in some cases, inconsistencies remain for many organizations in day-to-day collaboration across network and security teams.
In order to investigate how the network is factoring into SASE adoption plans, TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group surveyed 374 IT and networking professionals at organizations in North America (US and Canada) involved with networking technology and processes, specifically those familiar with both SD-WAN and SASE technologies.
This study sought to answer the following questions:
- Do IT professionals believe their organizations’ network environments have become more complex over the last two years? What networking challenges have been most impactful to organizations? Specifically, what challenges do organizations face specifically with connecting employees to corporate applications and resources?
- What types of network technologies comprise organizations’ network ecosystems?
- What is the status of organizations’ SASE plans in terms of both SD-WAN and security services edge? Do organizations expect their initial approach to SASE to be security- or network-first? What are the drivers of interest in SASE?
- How long do organizations expect it to take to fully adopt a SASE architecture?
- How many technology vendors do organizations expect to work with to support their SASE architectures, both initially and once their implementation is complete? For organizations that expect to use more than one vendor for SASE once their initiative is complete, what are the reasons behind this strategy?
- What are, or expected to be, organizations’ initial SASE use cases? What benefits have early SASE adopters recognized to date?
- What are, or will be, the drivers for organizations to deploy SD-WAN?
- How important is it to have AI/ML technology driving automation in organizations’ SD-WAN environments? What features make AI/ML important to these environments?
- What actions will organizations take over the next 12-18 months to implement or optimize their SD-WAN strategies?
- Do organizations plan to deploy SD-WAN to support their remote/hybrid workers? Would organizations be more likely to deploy SD-WAN technology to remote/hybrid workers, or do so more extensively, if it didn’t require deploying new hardware?
- What actions have organizations taken, or do they plan to take over the next 12 months, to improve the collaboration across the different groups responsible for networking and security?
Survey participants represented a wide range of industries including manufacturing, technology, financial services, and retail/wholesale. For more details, please see the Research Methodology and Respondent Demographics sections of this report.
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If you are not yet a Subscription Client but would like to learn more about accessing this report, please contact us.
