WEI Tech Exchange

Why Higher Education Turns to Technology to Meet Today’s Challenges

By Greg LaBrie |   Mar 09, 2023

Back in 2016, Georgia State University decided to address the annual phenomenon known as “summer melt” in which a sizable number of students enrolled during the summer session would fail to enroll in the fall. The school implemented a chatbot project called Pouncethat wasdesigned to regularly connect with incoming students. This practice, commonly referred to as nudge technology by Gartner, reminds students of upcoming meetings and deadlines. Additionally, and in the interest of this blog article, nudge technology also uses AI to answer frequently asked questions that incoming students often have.

Proving Its Value: A Day Zero Cost Analysis of Juniper Apstra

By Greg LaBrie |   Dec 15, 2022

To build a lasting house, you must first build a strong foundation. Without a strong foundation, you cannot build whatever you desire on it. The same principle can be applied to a data center. A data center requires a well-designed and stable infrastructure that offers the required agility to accommodate dynamically changing technology environments. Ultimately, this ensures greater longevity.

Zero-Trust Security Strategy With Juniper Networks' Intent-Based Networking

By Greg LaBrie |   Dec 08, 2022

This summer and fall, our team has written a great deal on how Juniper Networks' intent-based networking (IBN) technology is helping companies automate the configuration, deployment, and management of enterprise data center components. We’ve identified how IBN validates the operational state of the network to ensure that it matches its slated intentions. That’s important because in the end, your technology investments are only effective if they further the business objectives of the organization. IBN prevents your technology directives from going adrift.

But what about security? Security must always be part of any discussion involving new technology solutions due to the prevalence of cyberattacks that originate from an ever-expanding threat landscape. The increasing risk factors that companies face today are forcing them to adapt zero-trust security strategies to reduce their threat exposure. Juniper Apstra not only complies with a zero-trust security mandate, but it also helps enforce it.

Four Ways IBN Creates Measurable Business Value

By Greg LaBrie |   Nov 10, 2022

Enterprise technology vendors bombard IT leaders everywhere with messaging that emphasizes the value or added value that their solutions provide. However, value is an open-ended term, and as a consequence, eventually loses its effectiveness.

On the other hand, measured value is a whole other matter. The ability to assign a quantitative value to a respective solution allows for more informed decision making. That’s why Juniper Networks commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study to examine the potential return on investment (ROI) that an organization might realize from a Juniper Apstra deployment.

Five Data Center Pain Points That IBN Solves

By Greg LaBrie |   Oct 20, 2022

Modernized data centers require a great deal of investment and planning to be implemented and deployed correctly. As an IT leader, you must deploy the data center properly from the outset and ensure that it operates the way it was intended across its entire lifecycle. Otherwise, your enterprise will never realize its full potential and miss out on valuable ROI. While there are many challenges in building, operating, and supporting a data center today, we have identified five highly preventable pain points that companies find themselves struggling with today. The good news is that today’s intent-based networking (IBN) solutions such as Juniper Apstra can permanently relieve these common pain points.

5 Advantages Of A Juniper EVPN-VXLAN/IP Network

By Greg LaBrie |   Sep 22, 2022

Ethernet VPN-Virtual Extensible LAN (EVPN-VXLAN) is a network virtualization technology that supports large enterprise and multi-tenant environments. While single-vendor, chassis-based technologies may suffice for most traditional campus network architectures, they are not agile enough to support the scalability and expanding needs of today’s modern enterprises. EVPN-VXLAN/IP enables businesses to virtually connect geographically dispersed locations using Layer 2 (L2) bridging. It is ideal for data center interconnections, large campus environments, cloud-ready networks, and environments required to support substantially large numbers of endpoint devices.

Create, Validate, Deploy: Apstra’s 3-Step Process

By Greg LaBrie |   Sep 08, 2022

The common idiom, “Be as easy as one-two-three” is well embedded into our culture. It denotes that something is easy, simple, or intuitive enough to the point that it doesn’t require a serious amount of skill or effort. In turn, having the capability to break complex projects into shorter, more digestible three-step processes is something that modern professionals desire.

5 Ways to Segment Your Next Data Migration Project

By Greg LaBrie |   Sep 01, 2022

Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your next data center. There’s a great deal of complexity and moving parts to consider along with many potential pain points that cause delays. That’s why the design phase is so critical. Whether you are constructing a data center or erecting a building, you need a blueprint to guide your crew throughout the process. A data center blueprint is more than just drawing equipment racks with mounted devices. It needs to include granular details such as IP address pools, VLAN IDs, routing protocols, and security policies – all of which must be pushed out in the form of configuration settings for all interconnected devices.

Simplify Your Next Data Migration Project With Intent-Based Networking

By Greg LaBrie |   Aug 25, 2022

A data migration project is a huge undertaking. It’s a consuming venture that absorbs considerable resources to complete, which is why you must get it right. So, how will you conclude whether the project was a success or not? There will be multiple determining factors such as whether timetables and schedules were met and if the project stayed within budget. However, there’s one overriding measurement of success that is the most important of all: Does it achieve the business objectives that it was aligned with? In other words, will it fulfill its intended purpose? That’s what truly matters.

Level Up On IoT With Wi-Fi 6E

By Greg LaBrie |   Jul 14, 2022

When we talk about upgrading wireless infrastructure to the latest Wi-Fi 6E standard, it is instinctive to focus on client computing devices and smart phones. That’s because organizations want to optimize the user wireless experience for their employees and customers, and understandably so. However, for a growing number of enterprises, there’s another critical component to their wireless environment: IoT (Internet of things!). Organizations are integrating a growing fleet of IoT devices to take advantage of cutting-edge technologies. In 2022 alone, the global IoT market is expected to grow 18% to 14.4 billion active devices. If you’re only looking at optimizing the wireless experience for users, do not ignore IoT’s half of the equation!