The times, they are changing – even for the traditional hub and spoke models of networking. These changes come with serious repercussions: control structures change; companies democratize; security is threatened; efficiency is increased; and the need for control grows exponentially. How did this change happen? Why is the hub and spoke model shifting? Why did it exist in the first place? And perhaps most importantly, what is next?
Understanding the traditional hub and spoke model
Let's go back to the early 2000s. IT directors decided around this time to reduce the number of servers by consolidating everything into main datacenters. This meant placing information, organization and consultation in centralized offices. Consolidation 'fixed' a lot of the issues caused by having many servers across various branch offices, such as the expensive need for extensive hardware and software, and the overall complexity of unifying many separate bodies. Virtualization allowed companies to build datacenters that were flexible, that were at a reasonable cost, and that were fairly simple to maintain. WAN optimization enabled companies to have remote servers without impacting the user experience too much.
How the hub and spoke model is changing
Recently, Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) and cloud computing have changed how companies network. Unified communications has allowed companies to communicate through text, voice, and video. This means international, company-wide conversations can happen through one system and one network. As a result, communication has begun to shift away from the 'spoke-to-hub' model to a "spoke-to-spoke" model. Companies are increasingly using more and more applications which are located in the cloud, stored in datacenters all over the world. Branch offices access these applications independently, over the public Internet. In essence, the hub has become decentralized, while branches have become increasingly autonomous.
What the changing model means for IT staff
With increased independence comes decreased coherence, a lack of control, a risk of inefficiency, and endless challenges to the networks themselves. Security threats from the lack of a central monitor watching what's happening across the internet. Performance threatened as many applications compete to run across the network, clogging the system and risking business critical applications. Costs can balloon by users accessing applications without guidance.
IT staff must find a way of drawing together all these increasingly autonomous branch offices to create a streamlined company structure. Increased awareness is necessary to knowing and understanding what actions are happening in the branch offices. Then comes a need to prioritize and protect business critical applications. Traditional methods of traffic control, previously located in the central hub of a company, are too expensive and complicated to manage to distribute them at individual branch offices.
Yet with changing demand has come new technology; recent tools for WAN optimization have been designed for the local office. As simple to install as a cable box, but performing enough to allow quality control across many levels of the business. They allow IT staff to manage and prioritize what happens along networks. Small enough for the branch office, these tools enable centralized control; thus they span the old and new types of networking.
While the times may be changing, not all change is bad. In some cases, such as with the shifting network model, change can allow for improved efficiency, increased flexibility, and overall better business practice.
(A full version of this article has been previously published on Business Computing World)
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