Cisco 2024: AI adoption will drive network modernization, data-center evolution

To understand why, it’s important to acknowledge Ethernet’s evolution and role in enabling other major technology shifts, Davidson said. “Traditional workloads such as voice, video, storage, high-performance computing (HPC), and high-performance databases have created requirements toward making Ethernet ‘lossless’ that significantly improves reliability, lowers latency, and increases performance. Ethernet also provides economical scaling to large core clusters and smaller edge clusters,” Davidson said.

Network modernizations on tap

Modernizing network and data center infrastructure will continue to be an enterprise investment priority to keep pace with the explosion of workloads, create performance capacity and drive operational efficiency, Davidson said.   

“Today 100G network fabric technology is common, yet it’s not a stretch to think the industry will soon reach a tipping point where network architectures require higher performance capacities to support new applications, data, and workflows including AI/ML,” Davidson said. “There is an increasing demand for higher network speed and bandwidth advancements that accompany innovations in GPUs and NICs, reaching up to 400G and 800G speeds.”

Such demands mean fundamental changes to how data centers are built and operated, Davidson said. “The development of 400G/800G leaf-spine architectures, with 100G SerDes, addresses the growing demand for higher bandwidth on server and client sides. We will also see a growing emphasis on security and multi-tenancy to segregate data for Al workloads. And we will begin to see customers incorporate liquid cooling where applicable for optimal Al infrastructure energy consumption,” Davidson said.

Environmental, social, and governance initiatives are top priorities for companies today, and this has put added pressure on IT organizations, including network operations teams, to support sustainable IT and data center initiatives, Davidson said. “Modernizing network and data center infrastructure can be a key step, as many of the newest products were designed at the architecture level to operate more efficiently,” Davidson said.

In addition to the networking changes, 2024 will shine a spotlight on the importance of network visibility and assurance, Davidson added.

“We believe the dynamic nature of changing Internet performance will require always-on end-to-end assurance to plan and mitigate inevitable disruptions,” Davidson said. “In today’s digital economy, the connective tissue between customers, applications, and brands is the public Internet. As organizations continue to embrace cloud, SaaS, and SD-WAN, we know that they are grappling with the complexity of now being dependent on external networks that sit outside of their control. Outages and other disruptions are a matter of when, not if,” Davidson said.

The ability to connect, secure, and assure the delivery of digital experiences, no matter the underlying infrastructure, is critically important to mitigate any disruption to business operations, Davidson said.