The 10 Coolest New Networking Products Of 2021 (So Far)

So Far, So Good

The networking industry was already starting to chase emerging trends, like multi-cloud, AI, edge networking and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) as digital transformation was taking hold for many businesses. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic happened.

The pandemic accelerated the IT industry’s trajectory by five to 10 years, many solution providers say. As companies grappled with the work-from-home trend and security issues started to emerge, networking vendors turned the attention of their product development teams to focus on the combination of networking and security, the network edge, and embracing new forms of connectivity, such as cellular -- like 5G -- and Wi-Fi 6. Network automation also took precedence as companies looked for software and tools that could take work off their IT teams’ plates. All this while many companies quickly adopted cloud-based anything they could get their hands on.

In fact, cloud is quickly becoming the de facto platform for new digital services and existing traditional workloads, which is why 40 percent or all enterprise workloads will be deployed in cloud infrastructure and platform services by 2023, up from only 20 percent in 2020, according to research firm Gartner.

The leading networking vendors all saw the new obstacles immediately and came to the market with new solutions for the brand-new use cases that were popping up, while startups realized it was their time to shine and emerged from stealth mode with their cloud-first, automation-heavy solutions.

With many options on the market to choose from, here are 10 of the coolest new networking products of 2021, so far.

For more of the biggest startups, products and news stories of 2021 so far, click here  .   

See the Newest entry: The 10 Hottest Networking Products of 2022