Cloud adoption is undoubtedly the cornerstone of digital transformation, and for many, it is the foundation for rapid, scalable application development and delivery. Companies of all sizes and from across all industries are racing to achieve the many benefits afforded by public, private or hybrid cloud infrastructure. According to a recent study, 20 percent of enterprises plan to more than double public cloud spending in 2018, and 71 percent will grow public cloud spending more than 20 percent.

Enterprises moving to the cloud are often seeking to improve employee collaboration, ensure redundancy, boost security and increase agility in application development. One of the top advantages afforded by the cloud is the ability to auto-scale in response to demand — a feature that has transformed what was once capacity planning into a more continuous cycle of capacity and resource management.

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As business leaders, we make decisions every day that have the potential to create some level of technical debt. We choose to deploy a new business application that streamlines HR processes but may require frequent patching, or we expedite delivery of a new product feature knowing there will be increased management overhead. To some extent, technical debt is unavoidable, but when debt accumulates over time, it will limit business velocity and stifle an organization’s ability to innovate.

For many enterprises, substantial technical debt is created by legacy applications, disparate platforms and processes, and outdated technology, and it is dragging down modernization initiatives. Organizations need to modernize their IT stack to compete in a digital economy, but – similar to the challenges of personal finance – you cannot begin to truly invest until you’ve paid off the debt you owe.

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We are witnessing a huge explosion in the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices as a growing number of new “smart” consumer items, appliances, and vehicles are brought to market. While these devices introduce conveniences and enable new exciting applications and experiences, they introduce a high level of security risk to business and consumer networks. This is because manufacturers are frequently lax when it comes to the security implications of deploying smart connected devices in the wild.

So why does IoT pose a potential risk to consumers? These devices fall under the “set it and forget it” bucket. They are typically easy to set up – you connect them to whatever network or networks you use regularly and then you don’t have to think about the devices again. Consumers are focused on functionality instead of the way the devices are communicating with the outside world, about updates to the devices, or about the network security characteristics of the devices.  

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The 2018 Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang represent the world’s first deployment of a broad-scale 5G network, thanks to a partnership between domestic telecom provider KT, Intel and Samsung.

The new capabilities have been on the horizon for some time. We saw 5G steal the show a year ago at Mobile World Congress, and Verizon and AT&T have each announced plans to offer 5G networks before the end of 2018. So, what does the emergence of 5G networks mean for enterprises?

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The latest and greatest innovation in tech was on display this month at CES, with top brands showing off the newest, hottest gadgets, appliances and machines. Where in years past we’ve seen the introduction of IoT devices or smart assistant capabilities, this year we saw the convergence of IoT, augmented reality and artificial intelligence, with Alexa-enabled smart mirrors, new AR headsets with smart assistants and connected ovens. What’s more - Samsung vowed again that all their products with be IOT compatible by 2020. These AI-enabled connected devices, along with the rise in augmented reality, require significant data and computing capabilities. Their introduction and adoption will drive the need for real-time computation to the edges of the internet, which will decentralize enterprise cloud deployments. DNS solutions that offer intelligent traffic management and high velocity automation will enable organizations to deliver the user experience expected for these technologies.

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Resilient application architectures have evolved dramatically over the years. In the age of monolithic applications, with static application deployments in large datacenter setups, resiliency required depth and redundancy in individual deployments. It needed always-on scale to meet the maximum expected workload, along with redundant connectivity and power.

Within a monolithic application environment, individual components – like servers – were expected to fail, and organizations built deployments with component-level redundancy as a result. For example, they created multiple database servers in a primary/secondary config or multiple application servers in an active/active config.

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Technologies like content delivery networks, cloud compute and storage, container schedulers, load balancers, web application firewalls, DDoS mitigation services and many more make up the building blocks that serve the online applications of organizations today. But the entry point to every one of those applications is an often-ignored bit of infrastructure: DNS. As the internet has mushroomed in size and traffic, DNS has adapted to become a critical factor in application delivery. Organizations that rely on content delivery networks (CDNs) can work with their DNS provider(s) to create a CDN strategy that best serves them and their customers.

CDN: the what and the why

A CDN’s job is what it sounds like: deliver content such as images, video, html files and javascript from a network of distributed systems to end-users. CDNs have been around for about as long as Managed DNS companies. Akamai is usually considered the first serious CDN player, and the company rose to prominence during the first dot-com boom. Generally, CDNs deliver content over HTTP or HTTPS, the web protocols, although there are occasionally use cases like video delivery where other protocols come into play.

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The internet is a smaller place than it seems. Despite the gigantic weight of the industries built on it, the near ubiquity of the internet in our lives, and the complexity and scale of modern online applications, at its core the internet operates atop a relatively small set of systems.

Pockets of deep knowledge and operational expertise around these key systems have developed over the years. There are tight-knit and cooperative communities focused on network operations, infosec, email and HTTP, to name just a few.

DNS—the entry point to nearly every online application and a key anchor of the internet —is no different. A relatively small community of deep experts and operators drives the protocol and its key operational aspects. Homes for this community include DNS-OARC, IETF/ICANN, email lists and regular small meetings of key operators.

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At the end of 2016, China had over 700 million internet users, more than double the number of internet users in the U.S. And as the Chinese tech market continues to shift from hardware to software and services, Forrester Research analysts predict this will drive software growth of 10 percent over the next couple years.

China is now a critical market for global technology companies and enterprises. It’s little wonder that tech giants like Apple, Facebook and others are clamoring to secure a hold there, even when it means addressing unique challenges and making certain compromises.

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There’s a trend emerging among many Internet-based companies that I find intriguing: they are creating their own edge delivery networks. Why? So that they can service their applications via these networks to enable greater resilience and performance for their users.

Rather than the standard, garden-variety content delivery networks (CDNs), these edge delivery networks are tailored specifically for the applications they’ve been built to service. In some cases, this means the edge networks leverage highly specific connectivity to regional internet service providers or between application facilities; in other cases, it means placing specialized hardware tuned to specific needs of the application in delivery facilities around the world. And most importantly, these networks are operating application-specific software and configurations that are customized beyond what’s possible in general-purpose, shared networks.

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We all know the flagship metrics by which Software-as-a-Service businesses are gauged — Customer Acquisition Cost, Customer Lifetime Value, churn and the like. Understanding these metrics is key to measuring the health and value of a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business, and if you’re the operator of a SaaS company, you should have a deep understanding of what each of these metrics means, how to measure them for your business and whether your metrics are healthy or indicate potential issues.

Every company is different, but a combination of common knowledge and some business-specific reasoning should give you a sense of whether your SaaS metrics jive with where you want your business to head.

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