Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 39 | Page 46

CIO OPINION
IT has a seat at the table in pushing forward ambitious forms of Digital Transformation .
Partha Narasimhan , CTO of Aruba , a Hewlett Packard
Enterprise company

The networking trends CIOs need to know as the hybrid workforce is set to evolve

As people seek more agile , automated infrastructures for hybrid work environments , CIOs must make way to allow for this . Partha Narasimhan , CTO of Aruba , a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company , outlines four trends that can provide CIOs and IT leaders with the tools to be better equipped for navigating the unpredictability of today and beyond .

We enter 2021 in a very different place from

where we were at the start of 2020 . The role of networking and more broadly , the IT function , has more often become the hero – and sometimes the scorn – of Business Continuity and resilience in the face of the pandemic . As CIOs soak up the praise or take their lumps , they must now look to the horizon and define their approach and strategy in a post-pandemic world . Aruba has identified four major trends that CIOs now face that can make or break an organisation ’ s IT programme :
• The rise of the hybrid workforce and how that will evolve during and after the pandemic
• The changing role of network security integrated across the fabric of the network
• Graduating from uptime networking metrics to user satisfaction metrics , examining networking holistically as part of the broader IT technology stack
• Staying the course in implementing automation in networking operations , despite challenges posed by the LAN , WAN and cloud
The hybrid workforce is here to stay
Despite recent advances in vaccines for COVID-19 , many roles may still not fully return to the office until late this year , and in many cases , not at all . After
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