Megaport: 2021 engineering predictions

Private Networks Will Help Secure a Dispersed Workforce  

Due to the pandemic and remote work, enterprise data is now flung to the wind. Companies will aggressively move more traffic off the internet and onto private networks to increase security as well as performance and reliability, eliminating the worry of a potential compromise. 

Don’t Forget the Machines: IoT Transforms Networks 

While everyone has been focused on the shift to remote work, IoT has continued its rapid expansion. In 2021, organizations will take a more holistic view of their networking strategy to support IoT and M2M environments to eliminate data silos and make the data more accessible wherever needed. 

Oil & Gas Industry 

Oil and gas companies, for example, are looking to feed field telemetry data, often siloed in data centers, into the cloud, but it has to do so in a reliable, secure way. 

Transportation / Automotive Industry 

Autonomous vehicles are coming. In Las Vegas, Lyft has given over 100,000 paid autonomous rides with backup drivers. And the trucking industry continues to experiment with autonomous transport trucks in areas of West Texas and Arizona.  

Connected cars and autonomous vehicles will require new and vastly more flexible approaches to networking to accommodate the constant flow of telemetry data in motion. Ultimately, networks that support connected and autonomous vehicles will need to be near ubiquitous and reliable. To get to that point effectively, the auto industry will develop their telemetry networks once, but then look to deploy them anywhere or everywhere. 

Retail Industry 

Retail has well-established telemetry networks for their point-of-sale solutions. But the pandemic has completely upended the industry. Retailers will be shuttering stores, expanding others and evolving their business models as we continue to face down the pandemic and eventually start to emerge from it. Introducing greater agility and flexibility into their network infrastructure will be essential to survival.  

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