Networking could be essential as emerging technologies reach their tipping point

A number of new technologies are emerging. Many of them depend heavily on networking upgrades.

By Donna Donnawitz
August 16, 2012
Every year, the Gartner Hype Cycle identifies technologies that are emerging as major players in a variety of sectors and measures their current and future place in the world. For the past few years, a number of prevalent solutions, ranging from cloud computing to smart devices, have held a key place in the hype cycle. This year, Gartner found that many of those technologies are now starting to go mainstream.

Hung LeHong, research vice president at Gartner, explained that technologies shifting from emerging to mainstream has become so prevalent that it is the common theme that arches over the entire report this year.

"The theme of this year's Hype Cycle is the concept of 'tipping points.' We are at an interesting moment, a time when many of the scenarios we've been talking about for a long time are almost becoming reality," said LeHong.

The Gartner Hype Cycle tracks technologies from the Technology Trigger to the Peak of Inflated Expectations through the Trough of Disillusionment and then toward the Slope of Enlightenment and Plateau of Productivity. For a while, cloud computing, private cloud computing, bring your own device and many similar technologies have been climbing to the top of the hype cycle. In this year's study, these solutions have begun to climb down from the pinnacle and toward the Trough of Disillusionment and other more advanced stages of the progression.

As these emerging technologies begin to move toward more widespread adoption and beyond the initial hype cycle, companies have to start considering how they will support increased use of the solutions. One of the common ties between all of these systems is networking. Smart devices use the network to connect to control consoles and similar platforms for real-time data distribution. Even smartphones and tablets, which function primarily on the mobile network, need fiber-optic infrastructure as the backhaul.

Cloud computing is changing internal and external networks. High-bandwidth interconnect links are needed between data centers, corporate headquarters and branch offices. At the same time, network traffic within the data center increases along with added bandwidth out to end users. Many experts agree that internal optical network installations are often necessary to support the demands created by the cloud.

As emerging technologies gain a firm hold in businesses, network upgrades could serve as the key enabler for innovation.

Perle has an extensive range of Managed and Unmanaged Fiber Media Converters to extended copper-based Ethernet equipment over a fiber optic link, multimode to multimode and multimode to single mode fiber up to 160km.

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