The 2020 took everyone by surprise, overturning the plans and forecasts of companies, which had to reinvent themselves to manage the difficulties caused by the pandemic triggered by Covid – 19. How will this reflect on 2021? Juniper Networks , a multinational specialized in products for the network, shared some thoughts on trends that will characterize the Service Provider sector .

Edge, security and the Enterprise-at-home concept

According to Juniper, one of the keywords for the 2021 will be edge . The increase in traffic experienced in 2020 will drive the growth of CDNs, and service providers will double their investments on the edge to bring applications and services closer to users, thus reducing latencies. People, as confirmed by numerous sector studies, will continue to work remotely, and this will push companies to invest in solutions such as “ Enterprise-at-home “, capable of protecting endpoints regardless of where they are located, not only within the company perimeter.

Smart working and growing dependence on the network will push service providers to adopt orchestration and automation based on AI and machine learning to manage traffic peaks, mobility and fragmentation that will generate complex and difficult to predict traffic patterns. To ensure business continuity, companies will also need to evaluate the service providers they will rely on for their employees, who will need to be able to guarantee a solid and secure infrastructure, even in poorly covered rural areas. In short, there will no longer be a clear separation between business networks and corporate networks, and the difference will be so nuanced that they can be considered as one.

The business opportunities offered by 5G

We have been talking for years about bridging the digital divide (and not only in Italy), and with the spread of 5G the goal will be closer, given that through FWA (Fixed Wireless Access) it will be able to guarantee ultra-fast connectivity even in rural areas where investments in fiber are not considered strategic. The pandemic, despite having pushed service providers to review some priorities, has not slowed down investments in 5G, so much so that Juniper plans to develop new applications – in particular gaming, virtual and augmented reality.

400 G: not only in data centers

Currently networks 400 G, capable of transferring data at the speed of 400 Gb / s , are mainly used to connect cloud data centers but in 2021, according to Juniper, there will be a boom in this technology, which will also be adopted in networks of national service providers, in CDNs.

A phenomenon that will see its peak in the second half of 2021. Only after 2021 on 400 G will make its appearance in metro networks, where 5G will bring even more traffic and network density.