Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 48 | Page 40

CIO OPINION
Key verticals such as telecoms and IT , banking , financial services , insurance , government and defence , healthcare and life sciences , education , retail and manufacturing have shown tremendous commitment to modernising their DDI infrastructure .
if it is not supported by equally competent DDI , it can be challenging for a business to function after the transition . The biggest of these challenges involve uninterrupted networking and robust security . lead to network outage . Modern DDI platforms provide pre-built and customisable reporting tools that help networking teams in multiple crucial ways . Gauging application running status , security threats and resource utilisation in a timely and orderly manner are just a few of the benefits these tools supply .
Cloud-managed DDI is the future
The beauty and core value of the cloud are that it frees the organisation – and the IT team – from the day-to-day chores required to maintain the machines , devices and appliances that support data processing , storage and networking . Cloud-managed DDI makes life easier for the network administrator and business operators by solving many of the biggest challenges of modern networking . At the core of the cloudmanaged DDI evolution lies the need for a reliable and straightforward computing experience anywhere and at any scale .
Support for IPv6 Adoption – The IPv6 migration has been underway for several years now , yet many organisations have yet to make the full transition from IPv4 on to the new standard . IPv6 provides a vast abundance of IP addresses needed for the billions of smartphones , wearables and IoT devices coming online . However , many organisations are still lagging behind when it comes to having a DDI infrastructure in place to support IPv6 . As a consequence , they risk losing communication , revenue and customers if they don ’ t plan for IPv6 adoption now .
By analysing all the DNS mapping of network infrastructure , organisations can understand whether they can immediately shift to IPv6 or have some critical network dependencies that need IPv4 support . When organisations select a DDI network partner , they should check whether it provides dual support for IPv4 and IPv6 .
DNS Security – DNS is the foundation of every network conversation and also the first target for the majority of network cyberattacks . DDI has traditionally been regarded as a means to simplify and automate network management while provisioning and integrating other cloud orchestration systems . But as DNS security has come to the forefront for organisations , it ’ s now become a top priority that DDI solutions also provide smart DNS security .
Reporting and Analytics – The components of modern DDI services furnish invaluable data for networking teams . This data helps in keeping an eye on network operations , endpoint usage and vulnerabilities that can have negative impacts-thus alerting networking professionals of upcoming attacks or failures that could
A DDI solution that is cloud-native and uses softwaredefined architecture for core network services such as DNS , DHCP and IP address management is the best fit for organisations interested in complete cloud migration in the near future . It helps deliver a uniform customer experience , paving the way for SD-WAN and IoT adoption , both of which are on a steep upward trend .
Unified DDI
Although many organisations firmly believe that the cloud is the future , they are not always ready to migrate their entire data centre to the cloud at once for various reasons . Head office data security , network output and the IT team ’ s preference for bare metal over virtual infrastructure are few of these reasons . In such scenarios , on-premises DDI solutions already integrated with virtualisation platforms such as VMware or Microsoft Azure provide the needed feasibility with a unified DDI approach . Key verticals such as telecoms and IT , banking , financial services , insurance , government and defence , healthcare and life sciences , education , retail and manufacturing have shown tremendous commitment to modernising their DDI infrastructure .
This modernisation is possible with advanced DDI capabilities achieved by Edge Computing , distributed cloud data centres , virtualisation and cloud applications . On-premises DDI is likely to continue to be the first choice among enterprises where security and control are the highest priorities . Yet as cloud and unified DDI approaches continue to close the gap in performance , security and manageability , these options will become increasingly attractive to IT decision makers . p
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