The speed of business is accelerating the data center’s journey toward digital transformation, leading to the need for new hybrid network architectures that combine on-premises data centers with hybrid clouds. However, to meet the dynamic performance, scale, and interoperability demands of these hybrid physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructures, the underlying enabling technologies must be more reliable, energy-efficient, and secure than ever. Ensuring consistent visibility and control across these hybrid data center architectures comes with many challenges, including the need for a flexible security architecture that can adapt to change to ensure all network components are safe and operating effectively.
Despite the hype that the on-premises data center will soon be extinct, the reality is much more complex. On-premises and virtual data centers are vital pieces in today’s ever-evolving networking puzzle, with each part playing a critical role in enabling organizations to compete effectively in today’s digital marketplace. In this new model, security is essential—not just to protect resources and assets but to enable the network to accelerate and adapt without introducing unknown risks that can jeopardize the enterprise. The challenge is that few security solutions are designed to meet the demands of these new hybrid environments.