What is SD WAN

March 6, 2019 | 210 views

SD-WAN is a software-defined networking technology for managing wide-area network connections. It has become the standard option for businesses that are looking to improve business application performance, increase agility, and enhance security, while reducing costs with transport independence across MPLS, LTE, and 3G/4G network carriers. SD-WAN simplifies operations with cloud-based management and automation.

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At IronNet, our mission is to develop cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions to defend companies, industries and nations from advanced threats. Our products and services provide the high-fidelity detection and visibility to close dangerous gaps in an enterprise’s security infrastructure. Using a combination of massive scale analytics, tradecraft expertise, integrated cyber hunt, and a game-changing collective defense capability, we help enterprises demonstrably reduce cyber risk in their environments and across their industry sector.

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SOFTWARE

Top 10 Low-Code App Development Platforms for Fast Custom App Creation

Article | July 13, 2022

Explore the top low-code platforms that enable fast and cost-effective app development with a strategic approach by creating and achieving MVPs and understanding the KPIs of a good platform. Contents 1 Low-Code Development Essentials: Creating and Deploying Effective MVPs 2 KPIs of a Good Low Code Development Platform 3 Top 10 Low-Code App Development Platforms 3.1 AIRKIT 3.2 BETTY BLOCKS 3.3 CREATIO 3.4 DECISIONS 3.5 INTERFACING 3.6 KISSFLOW 3.7 SKUID 3.8 TRACKVIA, INC. 3.9 ULTIMUS 3.10 XENOSS 4 Strategic Low-Code Development: Trend Forecast Analysis Low-code platforms have transformed software development, enabling fast and cost-effective app development. This article covers vital components like creating effective minimum viable products, execution strategies, and key performance indicators to look for in a good low code platform for mobile app development. The article also lists the top 10 platforms, like Airkit, Betty Blocks, and Creatio, which offer innovative solutions to reduce time-to-market and produce exceptional results. 1. Low-Code Development Essentials: Creating and Deploying Effective MVPs Creating a software product or app from scratch doesn't have to be long and tiresome when it can be fast and fun with the help of low-code application development platforms. Before you start building your app around the no code framework, you need to create a minimum viable product (MVP) that can thrive on its own in the market. Defining the attributes of your app to meet your value proposition is essential. Having a plan of execution alongside the best lowcode development tools leads to the success of your software development projects. Effective execution strategies and product development strategies are far more critical to the success of your product than the development process itself. Thanks to low-code platforms, developing and deploying the desired features in your app is faster and easier than ever before. Cutting down on the development time leaves you more time to think strategically about product design, marketing, and perhaps sales. 2. KPIs of a Good Low Code Development Platform Low-code platforms for mobile app development allow organizations to deliver new user experiences faster. While evaluating different low-code application development platforms that meet your business needs, we highly recommend these factors, KPIs, and features to look for: Drag-and-drop interface: Enables non-technical users to create apps, reducing IT burden. It boosts productivity and lowers development time and costs. Develop once and deploy anywhere: Low code mobile app development platforms create apps for multiple platforms (cross platforms) without extra coding. It cuts down on IT workload and speeds up time-to-market. Seamless integration with enterprise systems: Simplifies the integration of enterprise systems with low code app development platforms, trims development time and costs, and enhances system efficiency. Intelligent BI and analytics: Automatically analyzes data, minimizing the time and effort required for data analysis. Leverage insights for data-driven decisions and improves business outcomes. AI-enabled data enrichment: Automatically fills in missing values or adds more data points to enrich the data. Improves data quality and accuracy and reduces IT workload. Complete visibility of data with dashboards: Provides a real-time view of app performance and user behavior. Monitors and improves app performance and user experience. Compliance with international data security policies: Ensures compliance with GDPR, HIPAA, Intertek, BSI, and AICPA SOC, reducing the risk of data breaches and ensuring data privacy. Flexibility for coding and posting: Enables developers to use preferred coding languages and frameworks, improving developer productivity. Transparency and predictability with pricing: This provides transparency and predictability regarding pricing. Allows budgeting for app development and reduces the risk of cost overruns. Low-code platforms help businesses develop applications quickly and efficiently. They offer a visual development environment, integrate with existing systems, support rapid application development, cross-platform compatibility, customization, and security. They are an excellent solution for businesses wanting to build applications quickly and cost-effectively. 3. Top 10 Low-Code App Development Platforms Today's low-code development platforms, which use the most recent low code technology, put more emphasis on innovation and optimization of business processes than just quick development and deployment. When your prime focus is fast-paced app development, there are some platforms that go above and beyond to reduce time-to-market and produce exceptional results, as listed down below. 3.1 Airkit Building complex apps with beautiful front-end experiences requires custom components, workflows, and styles. Share and iterate with the team to collaborate on application development. Airkit uses a visual builder, conversation automation, agent automation, security, and integrations. Latching on to anything with pre-built integrations helps with fast and free additional functionalities. For excellent CX, use components for purpose-built CX across all platforms. Reusable components and templates for designing personalized cross platform buyer journeys. With app debuggers, you can debug, test, and preview apps and use multi-environment deployment with a single click. Manage and control security and scalability with role-based access, versioning and environments, as well as end-user authentication. 3.2 Betty Blocks Betty Blocks is an enterprise-grade no-code development platform that lets users build collaboratively with no limitations. It lets you build apps with rapid application development technology, automate processes, and maximize efficiency. It is utilized by citizen developers to build solutions that integrate with the current tech stack. Building internal applications, customer-facing apps, and process automations is simple and easy to innovate with Betty Blocks. It offers development, testing, and production environments on its public cloud as well as on-premise and cloud providers in its standard and enterprise plans, respectively. As far as free and fast integrations are concerned, it integrates with everything from its Betty Blocks Store. It also lets you build your own integrations using the API. Its intuitive drag-and-drop user interface builder allows reusability, radically shortens the time to market, and empowers the citizen development workforce. 3.3 Creatio Creatio is a no-code development platform with a compostable architecture. Creatio Studio allows for no-code application development with an extreme degree of freedom. It lets you select the available types of apps, connectors, and OOTB functionality templates to manage instances and facilitate the collaborative development process. It is packed with intuitive no-code design automation tools to create and modify pages and views, data models, workflows, and integrations in a no-code workplace. It has a library of predefined views, widgets, and templates to accelerate the design process. Optimize and manage structured and fluid processes using workflow management capabilities with advanced analytics. Add integrations with SOAP and REST integration connectors. Use AI and ML to automate your workflows and enhanced security and safety for enterprise application platform scalability. Using the collaborative process designer, accelerate process design and standardize process management with team efforts. 3.4 Decisions Decisions is a powerful low code automation platform and business process management software that is capable of building no-code and low code applications. It helps turn siloed decisions into centralized rules. Its no-code intelligent process automation platform enables the codification of business logic and automation decisions, manages workflows, finds and fixes problems, connects systems to unify operations, and designs seamless experiences. Its visual design interface helps to design, optimize, and launch complex processes without writing code. Building software apps that solve business problems by automating functions to simplify, standardize, and streamline business operations and stay compliant is easy with Decisions. 3.5 Interfacing. Intefacing offers a business transformation suite using low-code rapid application development technology. It primarily supports business process optimization, quality control, continuous improvement, change management, SOP development, digital transformation, business excellence, and stakeholder happiness. It extensively offers eFORMS, process automation, low code database table entity designer, system integration designer, tax monitoring and delegation, custom rules and actions, text and voice messaging services, custom dashboard design, and app mobile touchscreen for better control over your low code mobile app development. Interfacing allows building simple to complex consumer-focused applications and business processes in hours, not days. 3.6 Kissflow Kissflow's enterprise-grade low code application development platform lets businesses take control with no IT background. It helps digitize operations, automate processes, and modernize apps using its components. The software offers a comprehensive suite of features such as application builder, process designer, boards, reports, and analytics, and custom UI. It also provides collaboration, developer sandbox, extensive integrations, external portals, and roles-based access control for application deployment with new builds. Using a visual builder for forms with easy drag-and-drop options, work management, intuitive dashboards, communication, and collaboration, Kissflow has emerged as an industry standard in no-code development. Bring business and IT together with a DevOps approach, streamline ad-hoc requests, manage and control with a central console, and reap returns with high productivity and a lower time-to-market with Kissflow. 3.7 Skuid With Skuid, you can build low-code mobile apps from scratch for multiple platforms that are user-friendly. It allows design interdependence, composite apps, and rapid prototyping. Custom user experience options on Skuid NLX involve design decisions about interaction, navigation, and app structure. Skuid SFX helps build modern, custom Salesforce apps. It helps with lightning customization, portals and communities, and a high-performance engine. Skuid EXP for enterprise HR app creation brings features to maximize platform value, flexible deployment, and people-centered portal creation. Components on Skuid include account dashboards, customer request forms, opportunity management, quick orders, revenue and expense dashboards, dynamic forms, retail data dashboards, and a contact directory. These features help increase app adoption and innovation by 10x. 3.8 TrackVia, Inc. TrackVia helps automate processes in a business to connect and track everything that matters. It allows for seamless integration with existing ERP, CRM, BPM, financial systems, and more. It helps keep up with product and quality, compliance, custom workflows, supply chain management, project management, and field services. Its low-code app development platform enables users to build business apps without code and without limits with the help of its toolkit and a canvas. It brings intelligent workflow automation, single to multiple sandbox environments with unlimited applications and unlimited storage, and records for 1 administrator and 5 users. Its pricing plans include mobile, quick start, business, and enterprise for citizen developers in any industry. 3.9 Ultimus Ultimus offers a highly customizable platform with integration capabilities for business process management. It has a strong focus on security and compliance and offers scalability and dedicated support. Ultimus streamlines app development with a cost-effective platform, empowering non-IT business users to create custom apps easily. Its mobile-ready technology deploys on-cloud or on-premises servers, prioritizes decision-making, and improves the customer experience by eliminating isolated apps and data. A unified inbox and high-productivity portal fuses interactions with customers, employees, and partners. Ultimus avoids high upfront costs with flexible pricing options. 3.10 Xenoss Xenoss's mar-tech, low-code platform offers up to 40% cost savings and the fastest time-to-market in the industry. It has ad-tech and mar-tech parts like a bidding cluster, mission control, campaign front end, account server, logging cluster, predictor optimization engine, aggregator, reporter, DMP profile builder, DMP segment builder, DMP real-time audience DB cluster, health monitoring system, and real-time anti-fraud. Its feature set includes campaign management, budget management, creatives, supply integrations, device targeting, geographic targeting, audience targeting, dayparting, media planning, the DMP, automatic campaign optimization, manual campaign optimization, tracking, reporting, and analysis, support tools, and the data collection web SDK. It offers a customizable and integratable user-friendly platform. With a strong focus on scalability, it offers dedicated support. Its pricing is based on a per-user basis. 4. Strategic Low-Code Development: Trend Forecast Analysis Large companies will keep using low-code platforms for digital transformation in the near future because their visual interfaces and pre-built components can speed up software development. Strategic low-code development will be a must for reducing time-to-market, speeding up digital transformation, and putting security and compliance front and center. More and more people will use industry-specific solutions, AI integration, collaboration, and process automation, which will streamline operations and make them more efficient. Some of the best low code app development platforms will meet security and compliance requirements like HIPAA and PCI, so sensitive information will be safe. AI and machine learning tools will make it easier to solve problems and improve processes. This will bring IT and business operations closer than ever before. These automation platforms will be crucial to making businesses more profitable and stable because they will let them get the most done with the least amount of work.

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SOFTWARE

Empowering Industry 4.0 with Artificial Intelligence

Article | August 8, 2022

The next step in industrial technology is about robotics, computers and equipment becoming connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) and enhanced by machine learning algorithms. Industry 4.0 has the potential to be a powerful driver of economic growth, predicted to add between $500 billion- $1.5 trillion in value to the global economy between 2018 and 2022, according to a report by Capgemini.

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AI TECH

How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Businesses

Article | July 20, 2022

Whilst there are many people that associate AI with sci-fi novels and films, its reputation as an antagonist to fictional dystopic worlds is now becoming a thing of the past, as the technology becomes more and more integrated into our everyday lives. AI technologies have become increasingly more present in our daily lives, not just with Alexa’s in the home, but also throughout businesses everywhere, disrupting a variety of different industries with often tremendous results. The technology has helped to streamline even the most mundane of tasks whilst having a breath-taking impact on a company’s efficiency and productivity

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The advances of AI in healthcare

Article | February 11, 2020

With the Government investing £250 million into the project, the Lab will consider how to use AI for the benefit of patients – whether this be the deployment of existing AI methods, the development of new technologies or the testing of their safety. Amongst other things, the initiative will aim to deliver earlier diagnoses of cancer. It is estimated that in excess of 50,000 extra patients could see their cancer being detected at an early stage, thus boosting survival rates. More specifically, a study has shown that AI is quicker in identifying brain tumour tissue than a pathologist.This would have a positive knock-on effect in other areas, such as enabling money to be saved (that otherwise would have been spent on further treatment) and reducing the workload of staff (at a time when there is a crisis in NHS workforce numbers).

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Spotlight

IronNet Cybersecurity

At IronNet, our mission is to develop cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions to defend companies, industries and nations from advanced threats. Our products and services provide the high-fidelity detection and visibility to close dangerous gaps in an enterprise’s security infrastructure. Using a combination of massive scale analytics, tradecraft expertise, integrated cyber hunt, and a game-changing collective defense capability, we help enterprises demonstrably reduce cyber risk in their environments and across their industry sector.

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NetElastic Combines SD-WAN, Application Visibility on New Enterprise Router

SDxCentral | April 23, 2019

NFV startup NetElastic Systems launched an enterprise branch router that integrates both application visibility and SD-WAN. The EBR 1000A router is based on the company’s existing routing technology, but includes an integrated deep packet inspection engine that provides in-depth application visibility. It also relies on cloud or local-based management for service providers and enterprise end-users to prioritize application traffic across two WAN connections. NetElastic is a three-year old Santa Clara, California-based startup that offers a line of NFV and routing software built specifically for carrier networks and enterprises. This includes a virtual Broadband Network Gateway (vBNG), a virtual router, SD-WAN, virtual Provider Edge (vPE) router, and now its new enterprise router. According to Rich Sabin, director of marketing at NetElastic, the company began its foray into SD-WAN in 2018, “developing a carrier-centric solution suitable for smaller enterprise customers who are more cost conscious.” The company found that the first-generation of SD-WAN was sold directly to customers, but that service providers and carriers can help increase the scalability and profitability of the SD-WAN market. NetElastic also saw the need for an SD-WAN service that could deliver higher internet speeds as enterprises increasingly adopted high-speed broadband. NetElastic says that its SD-WAN can deliver 1 Gb/s running on low-cost white box appliances, and that its branch router can deliver up to 2 Gb/s, or a full gigabit per WAN link. The new router addresses application awareness at the enterprise branch. It monitors all available WAN connections for path performance, capacity, loss, jitter, and latency to route applications to the best path. It can also detect more than 1,000 predefined applications and other customer-defined applications.

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China Unicom Signals Intent to Be Among First With 5G

SDxCentral | April 23, 2019

China Unicom is gearing up to become the first Chinese carrier to launch commercial 5G services for consumers next month and firmly position China as one of the frontrunners that will drive the next generation of mobile technology. China seemed to have lost momentum compared to rival regions, after carriers in South Korea, Switzerland, and the United States moved ahead with their respective commercial 5G launches. China Unicom is now clearly putting its foot on the gas, placing 5G front and center at the carrier’s partner conference in Shanghai this week with a raft of announcements ranging from the launch of smartphone devices through to availability of its 5G network. For example, the Chinese carrier launched a “5G pioneer program” to enable “friendly” 5G users to sign up to trial consumer 5G services; unveiled the “5Gn” logo for future networks and services; confirmed full 5G coverage for trials in seven cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Xiongan) and partial coverage in 33 cities; and signaled the readiness of 5G smartphones from Huawei, ZTE, Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, and Nubia. Qualcomm Technologies also confirmed it is supporting China Unicom’s 5G rollout in collaboration with the smartphone vendors, although the U.S. chipset company additionally mentioned OnePlus in its release but excluded Huawei. China Unicom also made reference to two 5G alliances: one it referred to as the China Unicom 5G Application Innovation Alliance, which it said was launched at the conference with 32 partners in the fields of new media, industrial Internet, connected cars, healthcare, education, and tourism; and a second it called the 5G International Cooperation Alliance with the aim of exploring international 5G roaming. BT, NTT, Orange, and Telefonica were name checked here, although few other details were provided. Furthermore, China Unicom flagged the signing of a memorandum of strategic cooperation with Intel for the Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022 with a focus on smart applications for the venue. China Unicom and Nokia have also partnered on a cooperative 4G and 5G network running on a cloud-based radio access network (cRAN) in the Xiongan. The network, which the vendors have dubbed the “world’s largest field trial,” will target use cases for 5G and demonstrate how networks can separate software and hardware to more rapidly deploy 5G.

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Verizon’s 5G Future Tied to Spectrum, Technology Advances

SDxCentral | April 23, 2019

Verizon today said the foundation for 5G is being built now, but many of the most transformational aspects of the technology such as mobile edge computing, dynamic spectrum sharing, devices, and refarmed low-band spectrum to support 5G won’t arrive until 2020 or later. “5G has been a huge focus for us,” Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said on the company’s latest earnings call. With its standards-based mobile 5G network now available in select neighborhoods of Chicago and Minneapolis, and plans to reach 30 cities by the end of the year, the operator will “continue to deploy infrastructure in more cities, prioritizing cities that have made it easy to build there,” he said. “Our initial launches are performing as expected,” and more features and enhancements will become available through software, Vestberg said. “We’re now two years into the implementation of our next-generation intelligent edge network, which we expect to be largely completed by 2021. We’re realizing significant efficiencies and cost savings from our network transformation initiatives.” Capital spending during the first quarter of 2019 was down 6.5% year-over-year to $4.3 billion, and the company is maintaining a full-year capex guidance range of between $17 billion and $18 billion. “Our capital expenditures continue to support the growth in data and video traffic on our industry leading 4G LTE network, the launch and continued buildout of our 5G ultra wideband network, the upgrade to our intelligent edge network, and significant fiber deployment,” CFO Matthew Ellis said during the earnings call. “We have maintained our disciplined approach to capital allocation, focused on investing in our networks,” and “we’re well positioned to deliver on all of our capital allocation goals in the years ahead,” Vestberg said.

Read More

NetElastic Combines SD-WAN, Application Visibility on New Enterprise Router

SDxCentral | April 23, 2019

NFV startup NetElastic Systems launched an enterprise branch router that integrates both application visibility and SD-WAN. The EBR 1000A router is based on the company’s existing routing technology, but includes an integrated deep packet inspection engine that provides in-depth application visibility. It also relies on cloud or local-based management for service providers and enterprise end-users to prioritize application traffic across two WAN connections. NetElastic is a three-year old Santa Clara, California-based startup that offers a line of NFV and routing software built specifically for carrier networks and enterprises. This includes a virtual Broadband Network Gateway (vBNG), a virtual router, SD-WAN, virtual Provider Edge (vPE) router, and now its new enterprise router. According to Rich Sabin, director of marketing at NetElastic, the company began its foray into SD-WAN in 2018, “developing a carrier-centric solution suitable for smaller enterprise customers who are more cost conscious.” The company found that the first-generation of SD-WAN was sold directly to customers, but that service providers and carriers can help increase the scalability and profitability of the SD-WAN market. NetElastic also saw the need for an SD-WAN service that could deliver higher internet speeds as enterprises increasingly adopted high-speed broadband. NetElastic says that its SD-WAN can deliver 1 Gb/s running on low-cost white box appliances, and that its branch router can deliver up to 2 Gb/s, or a full gigabit per WAN link. The new router addresses application awareness at the enterprise branch. It monitors all available WAN connections for path performance, capacity, loss, jitter, and latency to route applications to the best path. It can also detect more than 1,000 predefined applications and other customer-defined applications.

Read More

China Unicom Signals Intent to Be Among First With 5G

SDxCentral | April 23, 2019

China Unicom is gearing up to become the first Chinese carrier to launch commercial 5G services for consumers next month and firmly position China as one of the frontrunners that will drive the next generation of mobile technology. China seemed to have lost momentum compared to rival regions, after carriers in South Korea, Switzerland, and the United States moved ahead with their respective commercial 5G launches. China Unicom is now clearly putting its foot on the gas, placing 5G front and center at the carrier’s partner conference in Shanghai this week with a raft of announcements ranging from the launch of smartphone devices through to availability of its 5G network. For example, the Chinese carrier launched a “5G pioneer program” to enable “friendly” 5G users to sign up to trial consumer 5G services; unveiled the “5Gn” logo for future networks and services; confirmed full 5G coverage for trials in seven cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Xiongan) and partial coverage in 33 cities; and signaled the readiness of 5G smartphones from Huawei, ZTE, Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, and Nubia. Qualcomm Technologies also confirmed it is supporting China Unicom’s 5G rollout in collaboration with the smartphone vendors, although the U.S. chipset company additionally mentioned OnePlus in its release but excluded Huawei. China Unicom also made reference to two 5G alliances: one it referred to as the China Unicom 5G Application Innovation Alliance, which it said was launched at the conference with 32 partners in the fields of new media, industrial Internet, connected cars, healthcare, education, and tourism; and a second it called the 5G International Cooperation Alliance with the aim of exploring international 5G roaming. BT, NTT, Orange, and Telefonica were name checked here, although few other details were provided. Furthermore, China Unicom flagged the signing of a memorandum of strategic cooperation with Intel for the Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022 with a focus on smart applications for the venue. China Unicom and Nokia have also partnered on a cooperative 4G and 5G network running on a cloud-based radio access network (cRAN) in the Xiongan. The network, which the vendors have dubbed the “world’s largest field trial,” will target use cases for 5G and demonstrate how networks can separate software and hardware to more rapidly deploy 5G.

Read More

Verizon’s 5G Future Tied to Spectrum, Technology Advances

SDxCentral | April 23, 2019

Verizon today said the foundation for 5G is being built now, but many of the most transformational aspects of the technology such as mobile edge computing, dynamic spectrum sharing, devices, and refarmed low-band spectrum to support 5G won’t arrive until 2020 or later. “5G has been a huge focus for us,” Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said on the company’s latest earnings call. With its standards-based mobile 5G network now available in select neighborhoods of Chicago and Minneapolis, and plans to reach 30 cities by the end of the year, the operator will “continue to deploy infrastructure in more cities, prioritizing cities that have made it easy to build there,” he said. “Our initial launches are performing as expected,” and more features and enhancements will become available through software, Vestberg said. “We’re now two years into the implementation of our next-generation intelligent edge network, which we expect to be largely completed by 2021. We’re realizing significant efficiencies and cost savings from our network transformation initiatives.” Capital spending during the first quarter of 2019 was down 6.5% year-over-year to $4.3 billion, and the company is maintaining a full-year capex guidance range of between $17 billion and $18 billion. “Our capital expenditures continue to support the growth in data and video traffic on our industry leading 4G LTE network, the launch and continued buildout of our 5G ultra wideband network, the upgrade to our intelligent edge network, and significant fiber deployment,” CFO Matthew Ellis said during the earnings call. “We have maintained our disciplined approach to capital allocation, focused on investing in our networks,” and “we’re well positioned to deliver on all of our capital allocation goals in the years ahead,” Vestberg said.

Read More

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