FON: There’s need for optimized services to make an impact in 2020

With the hindsight that digital transformation is inevitable, Frontier Optical Networks (FON) asserts that adaption to market changes has fast expanded at an unprecedented speed, an experience that’s expected to accelerate in 2020.

Passionate about information security and automation, Abdirahman Jama, Senior Systems and Network Engineer, FON while making a presentation during the 2020 Year Ahead Summit themed: Turning Accelerated Disruption into Opportunities observed: “More than new skills, digital transformation is the result of cultural and individual transformation”.

Technology, said Jama is no longer just a tool for solving problems but one that facilitates everyday life and increasing productivity in enterprises. It becomes an ally of creativity, bringing man-machine, physical-digital and virtual-real closer together.

Given the increasing volatility of the Internet threat landscape, helping to secure websites is a critical Content Delivery Networks (CDN) requirement. Today’s most advanced CDNs, such as Akamai, have made information security a core competency, providing unique cloud-based solutions.

Abdirahman Jama, Senior Systems and Network Engineer, Frontier Optical Networks

Content Delivery Networks

Jama noted that in the world of the intricate Internet, Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) carry a significant portion of the world’s Internet traffic.

CDNs became an essential tool to successfully conduct business online since the Internet was not originally architected to do all of the amazing things that it does today. Since it wasn’t built to handle the demands of massive amount of data, live high definition video, flash sales, and large downloads that people expect today, CDNs offer the solution.

Of importance is that given the increasing volatility of the Internet threat landscape, helping to secure websites is a critical CDN requirement.

Jama averred that advanced CDNs, such as Akamai, have made information security a core competency, providing unique cloud-based solutions that are required by businesses today.

Upholding the assumption that changes “must happen,” particularly in enterprises, Jama noted that it is critical that organizations adapt a sense of urgency to adapat to change. In this case, they do not need to know the end point, but the direction in which they are going and should they not know how to get there, they ought to opt for collaborative efforts.

With a predication that CDN will add significant value to enterprises, Jama knitted his presentation titled: Delivering Optimized Digital Services to demonstrate performance, availability, security and intelligence as the major hallmarks of an advanced CDN in this era of automation.

But Why CDNs?

According to Jama, CDN carry a significant portion of the world’s Internet traffic, and owing to its ubiquitous presence, it mitigates the toughest challenges of delivering content over the Internet.

CDNs were specifically built to make the Internet work better, deliver media at scale, and to enable all of the connected experiences one can imagine. Everyone, from small and medium content providers, to the world’s large corporations rely on CDNs to provide a seamless web experience to their end-users said Jama.

CDNs have become essential tools to successfully conduct business online for one main reason: The Internet was not originally architected to do all of the amazing things that it does today! It simply wasn’t built to handle the demands of massive amount of data, live high definition video, flash sales, and large downloads that people expect today.

While recommending Akamai, Jama was categorical that CDN technology provides the primary benefits to businesses with among the key areas being optimized performance. This implies that connected content is delivered at speed. It’s the difference between a click giving one an immediate access to new content, and a click then a seven second wait while a page loads or a video buffers.

Excessive User Traffic

With CDN, a business is as well guaranteed of availability meaning that content remains accessible to end users under high-stress situations such as excessive user traffic, intermittent spikes, and potential server outages.

When traffic loads peak at millions of requests per second, even the most powerful origin servers would be put to the test. Without a CDN, all this traffic has to be absorbed by a content provider’s origin infrastructure. This can cause the origin to fail, resulting in a terrible end user experience and lost business. That’s when CDNs, with their massively distributed server infrastructure, are of immense value.

As the volume of high-value data and transactions on the Internet continues to grow, so do the forces of attackers looking to exploit it – and these forces are costing organizations big money.