The enterprise networking landscape is constantly evolving, driven by the increasing demands for traffic movement across complex multicloud environments. Network World’s Best of Enterprise Network (BENNY) 2024 awards celebrate the most innovative products in this dynamic industry. Despite being a mature field with established technologies like Wi-Fi and Ethernet, enterprise networking continues to innovate, addressing new challenges and opportunities. This year’s BENNY awards highlight categories and terms that were non-existent a decade ago, such as secure access service edge (SASE), SD-WAN, networking as a service (NaaS), and network detection and response (NDR). Additionally, artificial intelligence (AI) has significantly impacted networks, both by creating greater data movement demands and by incorporating AI and machine learning into tools for analyzing telemetry data and providing actionable intelligence.
Network Performance Management
The Network Performance Management category recognizes solutions that offer comprehensive observability and performance analysis across multicloud environments. This year’s winner, NETSCOUT’s nGenius Enterprise Performance Management, excels in providing borderless observability, solving application performance issues across different domains. As organizations adopt hybrid workforces, cloud migrations, and SaaS/UCaaS, the complexity of networks increases, creating visibility gaps. NETSCOUT’s nGenius addresses these challenges by offering service dependency mapping, synthetic testing, and packet-level insights to pinpoint root causes of performance issues.
LiveAction’s LiveNX, the finalist in this category, also offers robust capabilities for managing large, complex networks. By unifying and simplifying application and network data collection, correlation, and presentation, LiveNX provides full visibility into network and application performance in multivendor and multicloud environments. This enables IT teams to improve productivity, user experience, and troubleshooting efficiency. Both solutions demonstrate a strong commitment to ensuring that enterprises can maintain high performance and reliability even as their network environments become increasingly complex and demanding.
Network Automation
Network automation is crucial for managing the growing complexity of enterprise networks. Gluware’s Intelligent Network Automation, the winner in this category, offers prebuilt solutions that automate critical network tasks and ensure hyperautomation scalability. Key features include network discovery, drift detection, and OS upgrades. Customers benefit from a 95% reduction in network outages, 100% security policy compliance, and significant OS upgrade speed increases. The recent introduction of Gluware.ai tools, such as Gluware Co-Pilot, supports troubleshooting, data gathering, software vulnerability management, and lifecycle insights, offering a comprehensive suite of automation capabilities.
IBM Rapid Network Automation, the finalist, provides low-code workflows that span the tech stack, blending proprietary and abstracted vendor APIs for integrated automation. It offers automated incident resolution by reading and updating ITSM ticket data in real time, enabling closed-loop automation and reducing mean time to resolution through secure, consolidated automation tools. By leveraging these robust automation solutions, enterprises can significantly streamline their network operations, reduce manual interventions, and enhance overall network resilience.
SD-WAN, SASE
The SD-WAN and SASE category highlights solutions that integrate secure networking and performance on a single platform. Aryaka’s Unified SASE as a Service, the winner, offers a zero-trust approach and backbone deployments that ensure high-level security and flexibility in implementations. Aryaka AI>Perform enhances performance for AI workloads, while the OnePASS Architecture integrates security, SD-WAN, application acceleration, WAN optimization, observability, and third-party integrations. This comprehensive approach ensures that businesses can manage their network requirements effectively while maintaining robust security measures.
Versa’s Unified SASE Platform, the finalist, combines multiple security and networking products into a single solution with a unified software stack. Versa integrates with third-party tools to avoid vendor lock-in, allowing deployments on-premises, in branches, or cloud environments. It offers end-to-end observability and control, making it a versatile solution for various deployment scenarios. Both solutions present a forward-thinking approach to secure networking, addressing the evolving needs of enterprises operating in diverse and distributed environments.
Network Visibility and Observability
Network visibility and observability are essential for monitoring and managing network performance and security. ExtraHop RevealX, the winner in this category, provides 360-degree visibility into all network components and activities. It offers powerful insights for network performance monitoring and network detection and response (NDR), enhanced by six forms of AI. Its decryption capabilities handle encrypted traffic, aiding in ransomware attack detection and mitigation. This level of visibility and intelligence is crucial for organizations striving to maintain robust security postures in increasingly complex network environments.
Broadcom Network Observability, the finalist, delivers end-to-end network coverage with insights that enhance decision-making and prevent outages. It simplifies management with SD-WAN performance correlation and end-to-end visualizations from various network points, making organizations proactive rather than reactive. By leveraging these advanced visibility and observability tools, enterprises can ensure that their networks remain secure, efficient, and capable of meeting the demands of modern connectivity.
Automated Backup and Recovery
Automated backup and recovery solutions ensure data integrity and quick restoration in case of failures. BackBox Network Automation Manager, the winner, automates network backups across multiple vendors, ensuring restoration reliability through various checks. It enables single-click restores by validating backup files, offering consistency in multivendor environments and customization for compliance needs. This automated approach to backup and recovery is essential for maintaining business continuity and minimizing downtime in the event of network disruptions.
Kingston IronKey Vault Privacy 80 External SSD, the finalist, provides a secure data storage solution for SMBs with its hardware-encrypted external SSD and touchscreen interface. It balances security and usability with advanced features like dual password options and intuitive operation, centralizing critical data. These innovative solutions highlight the importance of robust backup and recovery mechanisms in protecting sensitive data and ensuring that organizations can quickly recover from unexpected network issues.
SDN/NaaS
The SDN/NaaS category honors solutions that simplify cloud connectivity and management. This year’s winner, Alkira’s On-Demand Networking-as-a-Service, consolidates multiple clouds, sites, and users into a single enterprise network. Its agentless operation, intuitive interface, and robust security measures enhance efficiency and versatility in managing cloud connectivity. This holistic solution empowers enterprises to handle their networking requirements more effectively and securely within a multicloud environment.
Nile Access Service, a finalist, showcases an architecture that integrates cloud-native delivery, AI, automation, zero-trust security, and bespoke network infrastructure. It simplifies network management, lowers total cost of ownership, and includes AI applications for tasks such as upgrades and planning. The service brings together ten different products for as-a-service delivery, underscoring the industry’s dedication to offering adaptable, scalable, and secure network services suited to modern enterprises.
In conclusion, the 2024 BENNY award winners highlight the industry’s ongoing innovation to meet the expanding complexities and demands of networking environments. These awardees provided cutting-edge solutions addressing network performance, automation, visibility, observability, and secure, reliable connections in multicloud settings. The integration of AI and edge computing solutions was particularly significant, driving efficiency and performance across diverse environments. This narrative effectively captured the unique contributions and importance of each award-winning solution, offering clear insights into advancements in the networking sector.
