As enterprises react to rapid changes in business models driven by macro-events, digital transformation, and redistribution of both the workforce and the workloads,agility and resiliencyin IT solutions and services are a key differentiator for success. Whether application workloads reside in the cloud, at the edge, or on-prem, the data center needs to be optimized for performance, reliability, and user experience as business and operational needs evolve.

Data center and cloud networking agility provide the ability to react quickly to changes and goes way beyond traditional measurements of speeds and feeds. Agility depends on being able to manage the network fabric holistically with emphasis on higher-level infrastructure orchestration platforms, automation tools, programmability through APIs, and end-to-end visibility through deep analytics with machine learning.

With the many permutations of cloud and data center infrastructures that exist in the global market, IT has a wealth of vendor options to evaluate for network solutions that match the needs of their enterprise and cloud data centers. Fortunately, there are analysts and technology journalists to help sift through the flood of data with independent research. What are the critical capabilities that set leaders of network infrastructure and management apart from followers? Let