2022 Predictions - From Application Delivery and Service Provider Networks Perspective

Article by Sanjai Gangadharan, Area Vice President - South ASEAN at A10 Networks, Inc.

We’ve become an application-centric society. We use apps to help us do our work, to communicate, to stream entertainment, to monitor our health, and to do a whole lot more. Over the years, the number of desktop and mobile apps has grown dramatically. Where we deliver them from has changed too. The cloud has played a huge role as we move away from strictly on-premises data centers to a hybrid cloud and multi-cloud approach. And, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on how we built, delivered, and consumed our applications in the last 18 months. Here are some predictions for applications and application delivery in the coming year.

• Migration to the cloud will continue to grow and majority of enterprises will have adopted a hybrid cloud strategy
• With the growth in the number and use of essential business apps for online work and shopping, organizations will spend more budget on web application security to prevent cyber-attacks directed at vulnerable applications.
• Looking to streamline the application development and delivery lifecycle, more organizations will adopt a DevOps approach, generating greater interest in automation tools which will fuel market growth.
• Due to significant investment in data center hardware, more organizations than expected will take a hybrid cloud approach instead of “cloud only” for application delivery.
• The containerization of applications has become more popular – many of the enterprises will have containerized half or more of their applications.

Life changed dramatically in 2021 due to the pandemic. Many of us spent our days working from home. Students went online for school. Online shopping and app-based restaurant ordering and delivery dramatically increased, as did telehealth. All these shifts were made possible by applications. Apart from that, the service provider networks also witnessed lasting impact on how and where consumers and businesses would use networks services, how service providers would build out their networks and where they would invest in additional capacity. Below are a couple of predictions for 2022 for service providers:

• Digital Transformation will Accelerate: The pandemic will erase years of resistance by late adopters, social institutions and businesses that previously hadn’t bought into the “digital transformation” argument. Forced to go “online or die” individuals and businesses have learned new skills, overcome technology limitations and forged new business models. These will continue in 2022 and will accelerate many technology transitions that service providers are conducting 

• IPv6 will Finally Overtake IPv4: Hovering right around 33 percent for most of the year, according to Google, IPv6 will be used in more than 50 percent of Google searches globally. Boosted by the growth of 5G devices and networks, and increased pressure on CISOs to upgrade enterprise networks for strong network security, many enterprise and websites will accelerate their eventual conversion to IPv6 in 2021. However, many other ISPs, content providers and retailers, hard-hit by pandemic shutdowns, have web sites that are still IPv4 only and will remain unable to fund a conversion of their IT infrastructure. CGNAT can help extend their investment

• Service Providers Move to the Edge – Faster than Expected: Service providers will have to re-architect their access networks to accommodate the traffic shift from dense urban areas to suburban as work/play/learn at home continues, post-pandemic. Edge computing is forecast by IDC to exceed 50 percent of new infrastructure deployments by 2023 and identified by nearly all mobile operators as extremely important to future networks. Lifestyles will be permanently altered by the pandemic and many will not want to return to commutes and less flexible working conditions. Remote work will become a new, acceptable alternative in many industries. The recent announcements by Tesla and Oracle to move corporate headquarters from tech talent-rich Silicon Valley in CA to Texas demonstrates a new trend. This will ultimately impact real estate, mass transportation plans and other social institutions that assume large-scale commutes to a few valuable job destinations. This shift will give a boost to distributed edge networks, cloud services and wireless that are less dependent upon centralized traffic aggregation.