Operations increasingly exist in a digital framework: employees travel for client meetings or work remotely, retail clerks take orders anywhere in the store, manufacturing and warehouse employees use tablets while on the floor, IoT devices gather data and perform advanced AI functions, and more. All are accessing data and apps that may be located in the cloud. What was once locked away in the data center has broken through the walls. Users – and what they need – can be anywhere.
Demands on IT infrastructure have changed as a result. While mobile work has grown tremendously and truly distributed edge computing has become a reality, many companies still depend on relatively centralized hub-and-spoke architectures.