At edgeNEXUS, we use a number of technologies to enhance application acceleration and the performance over network connections. The IT market is ever-changing and this is reflected in the evolving role of the load balancer. Whilst we can’t always predict future trends, edgeNEXUS is committed to being at the forefront of change and aligning our development and solutions towards application acceleration to both current and future trends.

Security

Security is still the single, largest concern when it comes to publishing an application over the Internet. Attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated and complex whilst the tools available to criminals are simpler than ever and widely available.

Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things refers to the ever-growing network of Internet-enabled devices that can communicate with each other, with us, and more importantly, with a central system to deliver information.

The IoT tends to focus on smaller devices such as environmental sensors or embedded electronics and appliances.

Network Function Virtualisation (NFV.)

Network Function Virtualisation, or NFV quite simply refers to the virtualisation of networking devices that have been traditionally delivered as hardware.  These could include routers, firewalls and of course load balancers.

NFV implementation allows for the dynamic provision of network components, services and applications in a matter of minutes.

Software Defined Networking (SDN)

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an umbrella term encompassing several kinds of network technology to deliver an agile and flexible network. The key technologies relating to SDN are functional separation, network virtualisation and automation through programmability.

The basis of SDN is virtualisation, which in its most simplistic form allows software to run separately from the underlying hardware. An SDN controller is an application in software-defined networking (SDN) that manages flow control to enable intelligent networking. SDN controllers are based on protocols, such as OpenFlow, that allow servers to tell switches where to send packets.

DevOps

DevOps is a heavily overused term with a broad definition, referring at times to a culture, a work methodology or a job remit.

DevOps defines the interaction and collaboration between development and operations. It is often linked to an “agile” methodology and culture applied to an operations process in order to support the development process, and can even refer simply to using automation in the development, testing and deployment of applications.

Containerisation

Containerisation can be thought of as a lightweight alternative to virtualisation.

Containerisation uses some containment features of the Linux kernel to provide isolation between applications. These applications all use the same host Kernel, providing a key difference between containerisation and full virtualisation.