When the European Commission ruled in 2009 that Intel had broken European Union antitrust laws and fined it €1.06 billion (US$1.44 billion at the time), it was just the beginning of a 15-year saga.

That saga ended Thursday with the European Court of Justice dismissing the Commission’s appeal of an earlier judgement against it, and ordering it to pay all costs. Intel is now off the hook for that billion-euro fine, now worth US$1.15 billion at current exchange rates.

The story began with an investigation into alleged anti-competitive practices by Intel that resulted in the 2009 judgement in which the Commission ruled that the company had engaged in practices to exclude competitors from the semiconductor market, citing rebates granted to computer manufacturers on the condition that they buy all or most of their processors from Intel.

In its judgement, the Commission fined Intel €1.06 billion and ordered it to cease the business practices it had deemed illegal at once.

Intel immediately said it would appeal.

F5 and Nvidia are expanding their partnership to help enterprises build AI infrastructure and bolster cloud-based application security.

Specifically, the companies will be integrating F5’s BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes platform and Nvidia BlueField-3 DPUs to offer customers a package capable of supporting AI networking and security duties while ensuring traffic management for cloud-based Kubernetes applications. 

F5’s BIG-IP Next application delivery platform features load balancing, application acceleration security, DNS services and application API management capabilities. It integrates with Kubernetes clusters for visibility, control, and Kubernetes application automation. BlueField-3 DPUs deliver higher-speed networking performance compared to traditional CPUs and can offload tasks such as packet processing, routing, and firewalling from core servers.

“The immense data processing requirements of AI place considerable strain on traditional network infrastructure, making it difficult to maintain optimal performance,” wrote Ahmed Guetari, general manager and vice president of products for F5, in a blog about the news.

By offloading and accelerating high-bandwidth network and security tasks—such as packet processing, encryption, and compression—BlueField-3 DPUs deliver cloud network connectivity. This optimization enhances overall performance and accelerates GPU access to data, Guetari wrote.

The idea is to let customers deploy scalable, secure AI solutions faster, with better performance, and while ensuring data remains protected, Guetari wrote.

F5 BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes deployed on Nvidia BlueField-3 DPUs offers a secure and compliant AI networking infrastructure, letting customers adopt advanced AI capabilities without compromising data privacy, wrote Ash Bhalgat, senior director of cloud, telco, and cybersecurity market development for networking at Nvidia,in a blog.

“By offloading tasks like load balancing, routing and security to the BlueField-3 DPU, F5 BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes efficiently routes AI prompts to LLM instances and reduces energy use. This ensures scalable AI performance while optimizing GPU resource utilization,” Bhalgat stated.

In addition, the collaboration aims to help governments and industries manage sensitive data while accelerating AI application delivery. The sovereign cloud market is projected to reach $250 billion by 2027, according to IDC. Meanwhile, ABI Research projects the market for AI foundation models will be $30 billion by 2027.

Sovereign clouds are built to meet strict data privacy and localization requirements. They’re critical for industries handling sensitive data, such as telecommunications and financial services, as well as government agencies, Bhalgat stated.

This isn’t the first time F5 and Nvidia have collaborated. For example, in 2021 they worked to integrate F5’s technology with the Nvidia Morpheus AI framework to offer pretrained AI models and help detect and mitigate security threats.

There are many types of files on Linux systems and numerous ways to look at them, from listing permissions to viewing content. You just need to pick the right command to get the information you need. The command to use to get information about a file – especially file content – depends on the type of file that you’re working with. This post describes the most basic commands, as well as some more complicated commands, that will give you information on files and file content.

Permissions and ownership

Listing files on Linux with the ls -l command provides information on the file’s owner and associated group. It also shows you what users can read, modify or execute the file as well as the size of the file (in bytes) and when the file was most recently updated. Here’s an example:

$ ls -l
total 4
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 jdoe jdoe  10 Jan  3  2024 hosts -> /etc/hosts
-rw-rw-rw-. 1 jdoe jdoe  80 Oct  1 12:02 loop
drwxr-xr-x. 1 jdoe jdoe  88 Oct 18 13:20 NOTES
-rw-r--r--. 1 jdoe jdoe   0 Oct  9 13:14 run_stats

The first column of the data above shows which of the read, write and execute permissions are provided to the file owner, the associated group and everyone else (at least every else who has access to the directory). The first character will tell you if what you’re looking at is a regular file (-), a directory (d) or a symbolic link (l) — a file that points to another file.

-rwxr-x---. 1 jdoe jdoe 589 May  2 11:44 shapes3

The rwxr-x— string above shows owner’s (read, write and execute), group’s (read and execute) and everyone else’s (no access) permissions. That dot at the end of the permissions indicates the SELinux security context.

While ls -l is likely the most commonly used ls command, a quick look at the ls command’s man page will show you that there are literally dozens of options available. For example, if you wanted to list the details for a directory rather than its contents, you would use a command like this:

$ ls -ld bin
drwxr-x---. 1 jdoe jdoe 86 Oct  9 13:21 bin

If you want to list files sizes in the “human-readable” format instead of bytes, you would add an “h” to the command as shown in the second command below. In this case, the file size is shown in kilobytes rather than bytes.

$ ls -ld TOPs
-rw-r--r--. 1 jdoe jdoe 9571 Oct 18 12:58 TOPs
$ ls -ldh TOPs
-rw-r--r--. 1 jdoe jdoe 9.4K Oct 18 12:58 TOPs

Viewing file content

The cat, head, tail, more and less commands allow you to view the content of text files. The cat command displays the entire file while head and tail display the first and last lines (defaulting to 10). The commands below display only three lines.

$ head -3 TZs
Africa/Abidjan
Africa/Accra
Africa/Addis_Ababa
$ tail -3 TZs
W-SU
WET
Zulu

The more command will show you a screenful of lines at a time or fewer if you add an option (e.g., more -10). Both the more and less commands allow you to back up while viewing file content, but less backs up a line at a time while more backs up a screen at a time.

Using the nl command

If you want to view the lines in a text file in a numbered format, you can use the nl command. Here’s an example of using nl along with head to see only the first three lines of the output.

$ nl TZs | head -3
     1  Africa/Abidjan
     2  Africa/Accra
     3  Africa/Addis_Ababa

Viewing other types of files

To view the content of files other than text files while working on the command line, you can use the od -bc command, but it’s going to show you the content in the octal and character (where available) formats shown below. The “E L F” in the output below is short for “executable and linkable format”. This format is used for storing binaries, libraries, core dumps and such.

$ od -bc /usr/bin/more | head -4
0000000 177 105 114 106 002 001 001 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000
        177   E   L   F 002 001 001  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0
0000020 003 000 076 000 001 000 000 000 040 070 000 000 000 000 000 000
        003  \0   >  \0 001  \0  \0  \0       8  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0

The JFIF sequence in the example below identifies the file as being in jpeg format.

$ od -bc hummingbird.jpg | head -6
0000000 377 330 377 340 000 020 112 106 111 106 000 001 001 001 000 110
        377 330 377 340  \0 020   J   F   I   F  \0 001 001 001  \0   H
0000020 000 110 000 000 377 341 032 130 105 170 151 146 000 000 111 111
         \0   H  \0  \0 377 341 032   X   E   x   i   f  \0  \0   I   I
0000040 052 000 010 000 000 000 005 000 032 001 005 000 001 000 000 000
          *  \0  \b  \0  \0  \0 005  \0 032 001 005  \0 001  \0  \0  \0

In the command below, output from the echo command is piped to the od -bc command to provide an easy example of how this command works. It shows the letters in “hello” followed by a newline character.

$ echo hello | od -bc
0000000 150 145 154 154 157 012
          h   e   l   l   o  \n

Wrap-up

Linux provides very useful options for viewing file attributes (like owners and permissions) as well as file content.

Supermicro announced the launch of a new storage system optimized for AI workloads using multiple Nvidia BlueField-3 data processing units (DPU) combined with an all-flash array.

The new Just a Bunch of Flash (JBOF) system features a 2U rack that can house up to four BlueField-3 DPUs. These units support 400Gb Ethernet or InfiniBand networking and provide hardware acceleration for demanding storage and networking workloads.

The Supermicro JBOF replaces the traditional storage CPU and memory subsystem with the BlueField-3 DPU and runs the storage application on the DPU’s 16 Arm cores. BlueField-3 accelerates networking traffic through hardware support for RoCE (RDMA over converged Ethernet), GPU direct storage and GPU initiated storage.

The dual-port JBOF architecture is designed for active-active clustering, ensuring high availability for scale-up storage applications as well as scale-out storage such as object storage and parallel file systems. The systems support 24 or 36 SSDs, with a maximum capacity of 1.105PB of raw storage using 30.71TB SSDs.

“Our balanced network and storage I/O design can saturate the full 400 Gb/s BlueField-3 line-rate realizing more than 250GB/s bandwidth of the Gen 5 SSDs,” said Charles Liang, president and CEO of Supermicro, in a statement.

As part of its collaboration with Nvidia, Supermicro is creating a new JBOF ecosystem including data platform company Hammerspace and object storage provider Cloudian to enable these storage infrastructure software platforms to run natively on the BlueField-3 DPU.

Read more about AI servers

• HPE, Dell launch another round of AI servers: The AI spin continues, with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Dell Technologies both introducing new servers oriented towards training large language models (LLM).
• Elon Musk’s Grok AI ‘compute factory’ will use Dell and Supermicro servers: The factory’s location is still shrouded in mystery and shrink wrap.
• Omdia: Servers for AI processing are big sellers: Once optional, GPUs are becoming mandatory in servers. Companies are prioritizing investment in highly configured server clusters for AI, research firm Omdia reports.
• Dell updates servers with AMD AI accelerators: The Dell PowerEdge XE9680 ships with Instinct MI300X accelerators, AMD’s high-end GPU accelerators that are designed to compete with Nvidia Hopper processors.
• AI server market: Cloud giants to command 60% demand: Nvidia, along with AMD and other leading ASIC chip manufacturers, is poised to drive the supply. However, ongoing restrictions on exports to China increased proprietary technologies, and intensified competition may present hurdles.

IT professionals with certifications in AWS, Google, and Nutanix earn more on average in the U.S., according to the most recent Skillsoft study, while traditional networking certs become more of a prerequisite for tech workers who are augmenting their networking know-how with cloud, security, and AI skills.

“Traditional networking certifications didn’t make this year’s list, mainly due to it being viewed as a prerequisite skill. However, networking is present in many of the certifications that made the list. We can think of cloud being the new way of networking and we have certifications such as Google Cloud – Professional Cloud Architect or AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate,” says Greg Fuller, vice president of Codecademy Enterprise.

Networking certifications are evolving by including cloud, security, and AI expertise alongside more classic networking capabilities. For instance, there is a trend toward certifications that have a networking component, such as Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) Security and CISSP – Certified Information Systems Security Professional. Still, the purest networking certification making this year’s list is Cisco’s CCNP Enterprise, which ranked among the highest-paying certifications in Europe and the Middle East with an average salary of $56,881.

“Most networking professionals are upskilling to cloud technologies that have a large networking component. Cisco remains strong on the list, but it would be the Professional level certifications that have made the list,” Fuller says. “Many networking certifications are adding [artificial intelligence/machine learning] such as the updated CCNA certification. Microsoft has the AI Fundamentals and AI Engineer certifications. New entrants are AWS AI Practitioner, and CompTIA has AI Essential+ coming. Nothing made our list this year, but more certifications are entering the market.”

Fuller says networking professionals can continue to upskill themselves with AI certifications that also focus on cloud computing. “The backbone of AI is cloud, so getting cloud certified is a first step and then look at some of the more specialized Cloud AI certifications,” he adds.

As networking and security teams continue to converge, certifications also address these collaborative capabilities. According to Fuller, CISSP and Cisco CCNP Security certifications continue to score high, and the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) certification is a strong contender for professionals looking to enhance their networking and security know-how.

Cashing in on cloud

The top four certifications on the list deal with cloud expertise, and that is no surprise to Skillsoft.

“This year’s list shows that cloud computing skills remain in high demand and can be quite lucrative for tech professionals,” Fuller explains.

AWS Certified Security – Specialty ranked sixth on the list for the past two years, and it continues to rise because not only does it deal with cloud skills, but it also addresses securing the environments. “The AWS Certified Security – Specialty certification validates the ability to secure data in the AWS cloud and successfully navigate complex security challenges,” according to a Skillsoft blog on the survey findings. Annual salaries for professionals with this certification averages $203,597.

Google Cloud – Professional Cloud Architect fell to the second spot from its number one ranking last year, and Skillsoft says it will continue to warrant higher pay because while cloud is widely adopted, it remains a challenging area when it comes to filling roles with the right skills. “It’s still tough to find professionals with the right skill set. While cybersecurity is the toughest area to source talent, cloud computing isn’t far behind,” Skillsoft reports. Annual salaries for professionals with this certification averages $190,204.

Nutanix Certified Professional – Multicloud Infrastructure (NCP-MCI) V6.5 validates the sustained demand for cloud computing skills, according to Skillsoft. Organizations today likely work with multiple cloud providers, which can offer many benefits but introduce management challenges. Nutanix says it’s cloud platform can simplify the management of cloud services, and “earning this certification proves your abilities to deploy and manage virtual infrastructure components and virtual machines, operational maintenance tasks, and initiate disaster recovery,” Skillsoft says. Annual salaries for professionals with this certification averages $175,409.

CCSP – Certified Cloud Security Professional certification from ISC2 validates a professional’s ability to apply best practices, as set by the ISC2 community, to secure cloud environments, and it also meets the U.S. Department of Defense’s 8140 compliance requirements. Skillsoft identifies this certification as an “excellent choice for advanced security practitioners who want to earn more credibility at work, validate the versatility of their skill set, and join a respected peer network.” Annual salaries for professionals with this certification averages $171,524.

While Skillsoft provides the average salaries of professionals with these certifications, it is important to note that many factors come into play when calculating compensation. The ranking provides a snapshot of the average certification holder, Skillsoft says.

“Overall, the IT job market is characterized by a significant imbalance between supply and demand, which continues to drive salaries higher. Our data suggests that tech professionals skilled in cloud computing, security, data privacy, and risk management, as well as able to handle complex, multi-faceted IT environments, will be well-positioned for success,” Fuller explains.

The 20 highest-paying IT certifications in the U.S.

Salaries top $200,000 for one of the highest paying certifications, according to Skillsoft’s annual ranking. More than 2,217 U.S. professionals participated in this year’s survey that found the following top 20 highest-paying certifications on average. Here is the list of 20 highest-paying certifications in the U.S. ranked from one to 20 plus their average salaries, according to the Skillsoft research.

• AWS Certified Security – Specialty: $203,597
• Google Cloud – Professional Cloud Architect: $190,204
• Nutanix Certified Professional – Multicloud Infrastructure (NCP-MCI) v6.5: $175,409
• CCSP – Certified Cloud Security Professional: $171,524
• CCNP Security: $168,159
• CISSP – Certified Information Systems Security Professional: $168,060
• CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure: $166,524
• CRISC – Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control: $165,890
• AWS Certified Developer – Associate: $165,171
• CIPP – Certified Information Privacy Professional: $161,439
• Microsoft 365 Certified: Administrator Expert: $160,044
• CISM – Certified Information Security Manager: $157,189
• CIPM – Certified Information Privacy Manager: $155,976
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate: $155,597
• CISA – Certified Information Systems Auditor: $155,362
• CGEIT – Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT: $152,838
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate: $148,849
• Google Cloud – Associate Cloud Engineer: $146,533
• CEH – Certified Ethical Hacker: $146,260
• CDPSE – Certified Data Privacy Solutions Engineer: $146,033

A few notable certifications that didn’t receive enough responses (Skillsoft requires 40 responses to gain a ranking) to make the list include: Google Cloud – Professional Data Engineer, with an average annual salary of $206,900; AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professionals, with an average annual salary of $221,069; and Information Security Systems Management Professional (ISSMP), with an average annual salary of $173,820.

These results reflect the 42% of survey responses from the U.S., and in November, a new volume of the IT Skills and Salary Report will be released, giving a more comprehensive view into global skills and certification trends. According to Skillsoft, more than 5,000 IT professionals around the world participated in the global survey.

Read more about network certifications

• AIOps certifications to elevate your IT career: Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, AWS, and others are offering training and certifications that can help IT pros demonstrate expertise in using artificial intelligence for IT operations, or AIOps.
• 9 career-boosting Wi-Fi certifications: Whether you’re just starting your IT career, have been in IT before Wi-Fi was a thing, or even if you have a non-IT position, there are certifications to help prove your wireless knowledge and skills.
• Cloud networking certs: Which is right for you? AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud offer career-boosting certifications in cloud networking.
• Cisco CCNA and AWS cloud networking rank among highest paying IT certifications: Cloud expertise and security know-how remain critical in building today’s networks, and these skills pay top dollar, according to Skillsoft. Demand for talent continues to outweigh supply.
• CompTIA to offer advanced cloud networking certification: CompTIA CloudNetX certification aims to validate the knowledge of network professionals who manage complex, hybrid cloud environments.
• Cisco debuts CCDE-AI Infrastructure certification: Cisco’s new certification aims to help prepare IT pros to design, provision and optimize networks and systems needed for demanding AI/ML workloads.

Nvidia on Thursday announced plans to deploy tens of thousands of Hopper GPUs in India to create AI factories and collaborate with Reliance Industries to develop AI infrastructure.

Yotta Data Services, Tata Communications, E2E Networks, and Netweb will lead the AI factories — large-scale data centers for producing AI. Nvidia added that the expansion will provide nearly 180 exaflops of computing power.

Nvidia also announced a partnership with Reliance Industries to build AI infrastructure in the country during a fireside chat between CEO Jensen Huang and Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani at Nvidia’s AI Summit in Mumbai. However, the companies did not disclose the partnership details or what the AI infrastructure would entail.

“India’s leading cloud infrastructure providers and server manufacturers are ramping up accelerated data center capacity,” Nvidia said in a statement. “By year’s end, they’ll have boosted Nvidia GPU deployment in the country by nearly 10x compared to 18 months ago.”

Nvidia said it anticipates that the initiative will allow developers to leverage domestic data center resources, powerful enough to support the development of large language models, complex scientific visualizations, and industrial digital twins.

The announcements follow reports that earlier this year, Nvidia proposed a joint chip development project with India.

To benefit Indian companies and their customers

Analysts suggest that this move could grant Indian companies, government, academic institutions, and startups better access to AI resources, emphasizing the importance of making these tools available to the broader Indian ecosystem.

“Until now, there was a shortage of chips, and priority was given to bigger companies and major service providers who work with larger firms,” said Pareekh Jain, CEO of Pareekh Consulting. “This investment in providers like Yotta, cloud services like E2E, and infrastructure providers like Tata Communications and Netweb aims to democratize AI in India, especially for government research institutes, startups, and smaller Indian enterprises.”

Yotta, a data center operator, is expanding AI capabilities in India with its Shakti Cloud platform, powered by Nvidia Hopper GPUs and AI Enterprise software, Nvidia said.

“At the technology level, Yotta’s AI infrastructure will, for the first time in India, house the world’s leading compute, connectivity, storage, and networking technologies at scale, making them available in a funnel format for public, academic, R&D, and enterprise applications—resources that no individual user could afford on their own,” said Danish Faruqui, CEO of Fab Economics.

Tata Communications is rolling out Nvidia Hopper GPUs on a large scale to enhance its public cloud infrastructure, supporting diverse AI applications. The company plans to introduce Nvidia Blackwell GPUs next year to further boost AI performance.

E2E Networks is extending its reach to enterprises in India, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, and the US with GPU-powered cloud servers optimized for high-performance tasks. Netweb is enhancing its AI offerings with an expansion of Tyrone AI systems, targeting enterprises and supercomputing centers in India and across Asia.

Jain believes the investment will help Indian tech companies become more AI-savvy, enabling some of their solutions to cater to a global market.

“India is already emerging as a SaaS capital, and the startup ecosystem here is very vibrant, similar to when the mobile wave hit 10 years ago,” Jain said. “Some AI startups from India could make a global impact. The second aspect is that as Indian enterprises become more AI-focused, AI solutions from abroad will find a larger market in India.”

Deployments for India’s IT services sector

In a separate statement, Nvidia said that it is partnering with Indian IT giants, including Infosys, TCS, Tech Mahindra, and Wipro, to drive AI adoption.

“India’s IT consulting giants are helping clients deploy AI with custom-built solutions that use the Nvidia AI Enterprise software platform,” the company said. “Clients can use these generative AI applications that include virtual agents that can learn, reason, and take action to drive new levels of productivity and foster breakthroughs to help solve complex challenges across healthcare, climate, agriculture, manufacturing, and more.”

The company said consulting experts are developing custom models using Nvidia NeMo and deploying AI in production with Nvidia NIM microservices.

“NeMo Curator is playing a key role in enabling consulting experts to train highly accurate sovereign AI for India and neighboring Southeast Asian countries,” the company stated. “With NeMo Curator, consulting companies are processing high-quality data at scale in these low-resource languages and generating synthetic data to augment their existing datasets.”

AI capabilities that support advanced cognitive functions such as reasoning, perception, learning, and decision-making, along with progress in data analytics and computing power, offer significant opportunities to expand IT services, according to Faruqui.

“Such a transformation of IT services towards cognitive services that build upon real-time data collection, aggregation, analytics, and compute will result in high-value and specialized jobs for the Indian IT industry,” Faruqui said. “In addition, this expansion of the Indian IT industry will shift it from a services-based model to a product-driven one, leveraging emerging use cases within India.”

Artificial intelligence is an early stage technology and the hype around it is palpable, but IT leaders need to take many challenges into consideration before making major commitments for their enterprises.

Analysts at this week’s Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo spent tons of time talking about the impact of AI on IT systems and teams. It began with the opening keynote, which asked the question: “The world of Artificial Intelligence is exhilarating and often exhausting, and the pace of innovation can seem impossible to keep up with. But what if you don’t have to?”

“CIOs can set the pace in their AI outcomes race,” said Hung LeHong, distinguished vice president analyst and Gartner Fellow. “If you have modest AI ambitions, in an industry that isn’t being remastered by AI yet, you can afford to go at a more measured pace. This is an AI-steady pace. For those organizations with bigger AI ambitions, or in an industry that’s being reinvented by AI, the pace will be faster. This is an AI-accelerated pace. Whether you’re moving at an AI-steady or AI-accelerated pace, you have to deliver value and outcomes.”

With that as a backdrop, Gartner analysts offered a number of takes on AI throughout the symposium. Here are 13 of the most interesting ideas:

• “Current spending on generative AI (GenAI) has been predominantly from technology companies building the supply-side infrastructure for GenAI,” said John-David Lovelock, distinguished vice president analyst at Gartner. “CIOs will begin to spend on GenAI, beyond proof-of-concept work, starting in 2025. More money will be spent, but the expectations that CIOs have for the capabilities of GenAI will drop. The reality of what can be accomplished with current GenAI models, and the state of CIO’s data will not meet today’s lofty expectations.”
• “GenAI will easily eclipse the effects that cloud and outsourcing vendors had on previous years regarding data center systems,” according to Lovelock. “It took 20 years for the cloud and outsourcing vendors to build up spending to $67 billion a year on servers. The demand of GenAI will help nearly triple server sales from 2023 to 2028.”
• With AI and data proliferating everywhere in the enterprise, AI and data are no longer centralized assets that IT directly controls. A Gartner survey of over 300 CIOs found that on average, only 35% of their AI capabilities will be built by their IT teams. This means that new approaches are needed to manage and protect data access and govern AI inputs and outputs and safely deliver AI value.
• To generate business value with generative AI (GenAI), people must consistently use GenAI tools in their workflow. In a second quarter 2024 Gartner survey of over 5,000 digital workers in the U.S., UK, India, Australia and China, employees said that they saved an average of 3.6 hours per week by using GenAI. But not all employees get the same degree of benefit from using GenAI. “Productivity gains from GenAI are not equally distributed. Gains vary by employee, not just because of their personal interest and levels of adoptions, but according to complexity of job and level of experience,” LeHong said.
• More than 90% of CIOs said that managing cost limits their ability to get value from AI for their enterprise, according to a Gartner survey of over 300 CIOs in June and July 2024. In fact, Gartner believes that cost is as big an AI risk as security or hallucinations. If CIOs don’t understand how their GenAI costs scale, Gartner estimates that they could make a 500%-1,000% error in their cost calculations.
• Some employees may feel a strong affinity for AI. Others may feel threatened or resentful. These intense reactions to AI can lead to unintended behavioral outcomes that negatively impact employees’ work performance, such as jealousy of those using AI and overdependence on AI tools.
• Few organizations are actively managing these behavioral outcomes. In the June/July Gartner survey, only 20% of CIOs said they focus on mitigating potential negative impacts of GenAI on employee well-being. “Most enterprises aren’t curious enough about how AI makes their employees feel. This matters because AI can lead to all sorts of unintended behavioral outcomes,” according to Mary Mesaglio, distinguished vice president analyst with Gartner.
• AI has the capability to perform sentiment analysis on workplace interactions and communications. This provides feedback to ensure that the overall sentiment aligns with desired behaviors which will allow for a motivated and engaged workforce. By 2028, 40% of large enterprises will deploy AI to manipulate and measure employee mood and behaviors, all in the name of profit.
• Organizations that deploy AI to eliminate middle management human workers will be able to capitalize on reduced labor costs in the short-term and long-term benefits savings. Through 2026, 20% of organizations will use AI to flatten their organizational structure, eliminating more than half of current middle management positions.
• “Advances in GenAI capabilities are likely to come at a breakneck pace over the next few years, and the tools that will become available over the next 2-5 years are very likely to be transformative.” According to Arun Chandrasekaran, distinguished vice president analyst at Gartner. “GenAI-enabled virtual assistants, such as ChatGPT, have attracted much attention, but a huge number of GenAI applications and use cases go even further.”
• “Massively pretrained foundation models, such as LLMs, are at the core of the GenAI wave. They are evolving to become more multimodal and instruction trained to be conversational. A growing ecosystem of GenAI tools and techniques helps organizations build, govern and customize GenAI powered applications,” Chandrasekaran said.
• “When compared to other Gartner Hype Cycles, the Generative AI Hype Cycle has almost all innovations in the innovation trigger or peak of inflated expectations, which is characteristic of an early-stage market,” Chandrasekaran said.
• “Move beyond productivity and consider ‘sidekick’ like use cases to fully deliver the promise of AI. Develop minimum viable products by composing and mixing multiple innovative AI techniques as the AI learning curve is incompressible,” said Erick Brethenoux, distinguished vice president analyst at Gartner.

Net neutrality is a topic that arouses nearly as many people as politics does, in no small part because it’s been a political issue. But nearly all of that emotion is at the consumer level. CIOs and network operations and planning professionals cite the topic as important in less than 5% of cases. Are they right? I don’t think so.

Starting in the 1990s, the Internet has transformed networking at every level. As broad IP services to consumers grew, network operators used IP infrastructure to offer IP VPN services to business, which gradually replaced much of the old time-division-multiplexed digital trunks. It’s fair to say that most enterprises today are using data services created by the Internet, and that alone should demonstrate that Internet policy has had, and will continue to have, a major impact on business services. In fact, several.

The most obvious impact is that neutrality policy has been aimed at encouraging over-the-top services, by encouraging competition. The “no discrimination against lawful content” is the single most common element in any regulations on the Internet or Internet access. This prevents giants in the OTT space from striking sweetheart deals with Internet providers at the expense of new players. This rule, though, has been broadened to prevent subtle anti-competitive behavior, and while many companies have benefited from the open Internet that neutrality policies have created, they’ve also been impacted by this subtle broadening of rules.

The most subtle impact is created by the “bill and keep” model of the Internet. Prior to the Internet, it was normal practice for multiple operators who participated in a service to divide the payment made by the user, a process called “settlement.” The Internet approach does away with service-specific settlement, which makes it difficult to control the QoS of a service across providers because only the consumer’s own ISP is paid. Lack of settlement is often cited as a major barrier, and at some points in the evolution of net neutrality policies, bill and keep has been explicitly required.

A less-subtle neutrality point has an even more direct impact on QoS. “Paid prioritization” of traffic, meaning allowing a user to pay for special handling, is almost always barred by net neutrality rules. This rule alone, in many countries, makes it almost impossible for network operators to sell any form of premium service. Add that to the lack of settlement and it’s easy to see why end-to-end QoS isn’t available on the Internet.

For network operators, these two neutrality-related points have closed off a potentially critical path to sustaining revenues and profits. QoS guarantees are a potential premium feature, and one that operators could charge for. In fact, QoS guarantees may be the only such feature that a significant number of Internet users recognize as valuable. In countries where net neutrality constrains premium handling, operators tell me that there is simply no way for the operator to impact user experience (UX), so selling the capability is impossible and operator impotence in this area devalues them to Internet users.

OK, but why should enterprises care? Let me count the ways.

1. Lack of Internet QoS makes inexpensive consumer-Internet infrastructure less useful to businesses as an access technology for remote sites and work-from-home sites. Of 447 enterprises who commented on remote site access, 422 said that lack of premium handling options for the Internet was one of the top two reasons for staying with more expensive options, like Ethernet.
2. Some business communications missions, especially those related to IoT or real-time applications, would benefit from or even require premium handling, particularly low packet loss and latency. Without it, these applications have to be supported through local compute resources, resources out in the wild where they’re more expensive to support.
3. Lack of a way to improve the profitability of consumer Internet access services leads to increased profit pressure on operators overall. Their only option besides subsidization is to increase prices on business services. Businesses note that they already pay “ten times or more” as much for capacity, and price increases can threaten the business case and ROI on applications companies already depend on, not to mention making it more difficult to launch new applications.
4. Neutrality policies, in the words of one big multinational, “blow in the political wind” in nearly every market, and those winds usually blow in different directions for each regulatory jurisdiction. The result is a haze of uncertainty about policies that lead to network planners’ hunkering down on the most restrictive possible outcomes anywhere they need service. “We have a five-year capital cycle for network gear,” one enterprise said. “We can’t easily accommodate policy changes every couple of years.”
5. Financial pressure leads to potentially radical changes in the network operator space, including M&A, service and service pricing changes, even changes in support policies and service coverage. All of this creates a risk to an enterprise, and one with a large market footprint may face more changes than planning can readily accommodate. One enterprise in a large and dispersed market has already had to engage three alternative access providers so far in 2024.

How enterprises can deal with these five factors, and perhaps additional ones that crop up as policies shift, is a problem in itself. Tracking regulatory policy in a dozen or more jurisdictions is simply too difficult for enterprises to undertake, and only 43 of the enterprises found any “satisfactory” third-party firm to do the job for them at a reasonable price. But 72 said they started by gaining contact with the regulatory affairs group of each of their operators. These people have a vested interest in regulatory engagement, and often a specific mandate to sustain an active relationship.

Almost all of these 72 enterprises use a small (one to three people) “watchdog staff” to engage with operators’ regulatory affairs teams and digest the trends for dissemination to planners and key managers/executives. So far, every one of them says the process satisfies their planning needs, which is a contrast to those using third-party firms, only half of which are similarly beneficial.

These enterprises also suggest that the sales teams in each regulatory jurisdiction be aware of local news regarding net neutrality and feed these developments back to the enterprise regulatory watchdog staff. News items can then be an indicator to look into and summarize any developments for dissemination within the enterprise. Enterprises that are themselves regulated may find their own regulatory contacts a useful source of local neutrality news, even though telecommunications policy is likely not handled by the same contacts.

Enterprises generally believe that lobbying for a given neutrality policy is unlikely to be helpful, but they agree that feeding back concerns through the regulatory affairs people of their network operators may help those operators set and communicate their own policies. That, in turn, could help business service users.

Internet policy impacts an enterprise’s increasingly critical relationship with prospects, customers, suppliers, partners, and even their own workers. It also impacts the business data service choices available, and the price and capability of each. Net neutrality policies are the single most significant regulatory influence on the Internet and data services, so while they’re politics and therefore messy and frustrating, you need to care about them and work hard to see where they’ll take your network.

Network and infrastructure roles continue to shift as enterprises adopt technologies such as AI-driven network operations, multicloud networking, zero trust network access (ZTNA), and SD-WAN. Here’s a recap of some of the latest industry research, hiring statistics, and certification trends that impact today’s network professionals, infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders, and data center teams. Check back for regular updates.

Cybersecurity skills shortage persists

There are not enough cybersecurity workers to fill the current number of open roles in the U.S. or globally as an ever-increasing threat landscape demands more security professionals. Recent data from CyberSeek shows that 265,000 more cybersecurity workers would be needed to solve current staffing needs. In addition, ISC2 Research reports that 90% of organizations report having skill gaps within their security teams in areas that include AI/ML (34%), cloud computing security (30%), and zero trust implementation (27%). Read the full story here.  

October 2024

Women in IT report gender bias in the workplace

A recent survey revealed that 71% of 327 full-time female IT respondents said they work longer hours in hopes of more quickly advancing their careers. In addition, 70% of respondents said men in IT were likely to advance their careers or receive promotions more quickly than women. Some 31% of those surveyed said they believe that men are promoted faster. And almost two-thirds said their workplaces are not doing enough to promote or achieve gender equality, according to Acronis.

To help foster more gender diversity, survey respondents said they could benefit from training and other courses, including: master classes, learning courses, and workshops (63%); networking events (58%); and memberships in professional organizations (44%). On the employer side, respondents said they believe organizations can help foster more gender equality in the workplace by offering mentorship opportunities (51%), actively hiring more diverse candidates (49%), and ensuring pay equity (49%). Read the full story here.

October 2024

Tech unemployment decreases in September

Technology occupation employment increased by 118,000 new positions in September, according to CompTIA’s analysis of recent data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The job growth pushed the tech unemployment rate down to 2.5% and included 8,583 net new positions for the month.

The CompTIA Tech Jobs Report shows that job postings for future tech hiring grew to more than 516,000 active postings, including 225,000 new listings added in September. The jobs that saw the largest growth in percentage points in September are tech support specialists and database administrators. New hiring was driven by cloud infrastructure, data processing and hosting, and tech services and customer software development sector, CompTIA concluded from the BLS data.

“It was never really a question of if, but when employers were going to resume hiring,” Tim Herbert, chief research officer, CompTIA, said in a statement. “A broad mix of companies viewed recent economic developments as the green light to move forward in addressing their tech talent needs.”

October 2024

CompTIA bolsters Cloud+ certification

CompTIA has updated its Cloud+ professional certification to include DevOps, combining software development know-how with network operations experience, and other areas of expertise such as troubleshooting common cloud management issues.

The updated certification course will cover cloud architecture, design, and deployment; security; provisioning and configuring cloud resources; managing operations throughout the cloud environment life cycle; automation and virtualization; backup and recovery; high-availability; fundamental DevOps concepts; and cloud management. The program will also include expertise on technologies such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things, according to CompTIA.

“Businesses need to ensure that their teams have the skills to manage cloud and hybrid environments,” said Teresa Sears, senior vice president of product management at CompTIA, said in a statement. “CompTIA Cloud+ gives team members the ability to manage complex migrations, oversee multi-cloud environments, secure data, and troubleshoot while maintaining cost-effective operations.”

Technology professionals with CompTIA Cloud+ or CompTIA Network+ certifications can further their skills and validate their knowledge with the CompTIA CloudNetX certification, which is scheduled to be released early next year and is part of the CompTIA Xpert Series, CompTIA says.

October 2024

Pearson debuts genAI certification

There’s a new genAI certification from Certiport, a Pearson VUE business. This week the provider unveiled its Generative AI Foundations certification, which is designed to equip professionals and students with the skills needed to work with genAI technologies. The certification will validate an individual’s knowledge in areas such as:

• Understanding generative AI methods and models
• Mastering the basics of prompt engineering and prompt refinement
• Grasping the societal impact of AI, including recognizing bias and understanding privacy concerns

The Generative AI Foundations certification is available now through Mindhub and Certiport as well as Pearson VUE’s online testing platform, OnVUE, and in test centers within the Certiport network.

October 2024

Mixed bag for network, system admin jobs

Recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that while there will be growth for many IT positions between now and 2033, some network and computer systems administrator roles are expected to decline. The number of computer network architects will climb 13.4%, and computer network support specialists will see a 7.3% gain in jobs. Network and computer systems administrators will see a decline of 2.6%, however.

Overall, the market segment that BLS calls “computer and mathematical occupations” is projected to grow 12.9% between 2023 and 2033, increasing by 699,000 jobs. That makes it the second fastest growing occupational group, behind healthcare support occupations (15.2%).

Read the full story here: 10-year forecast shows growth in network architect jobs while sysadmin roles shrink

September 2024

IT employment ticks down in August

IT employment ticked down .05% in August, resulting in the loss of 2,400 jobs, month-over-month, according to an analysis of the high-tech employment market by TechServe Alliance. On a yearly basis, the IT job market shrunk by .33% with a loss of 17,500 positions. On a more positive note, the staffing company noted that engineering positions saw a more than 1% increase in a year-over-year comparison, adding 29,800 jobs in the same period.

“As the overall job market softened in August, IT employment continued to struggle to gain momentum,” said Mark Roberts, TechServe’s CEO, in a statement. “Throughout 2024, job growth in IT has been effectively flat after 23 consecutive months of job losses. I continue to see IT employment moving sideways until the fog of uncertainty lifts over the economy, the national election, and ongoing geopolitical turbulence.”

September 2024

Employee education holding back AI success

Employee education and training around AI will become more and more critical as research reveals that a majority of employees do not know how to apply the technology to their jobs.

According to Slingshot’s 2024 Digital Work Trends Report, 77% of employees reported that don’t feel they are completely trained or have adequate training on the AI tools offered to them by managers. And for the most part, managers agree with just 27% saying that they feel employees are completely trained on the AI tools provided to employees.

The research, conducted in Q2 2024 by Dynata and based on 253 respondents, also noted that AI skills and quality data are significant barriers to AI success. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of all respondents noted that their organization doesn’t have AI experts on their team, which is preventing their employers from offering AI tools. Another 45% pointed to the quality of data within the organization as a top reason AI tools aren’t offered at work. A third reason that AI isn’t prevalent in some workplaces is that organizations don’t have the tech infrastructure in place to implement AI tools.

“Data is top of mind for employees too when it comes to AI: 33% of employers say their company would be ready to support AI if their company’s data was combed through for accuracy, and 32% say they need more training around data and AI before their company is ready,” the report reads.

September 2024

U.S. labor market continues downward slide

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) this week released its most recent employment data that shows the ratio of job openings per unemployed worker continues to steadily decline, indicating unemployment rates will continue to rise.

According to BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary (JOLTS) data, the number of job openings hit 7.7 million on the last day of July, while the hires stood at 5.5 million and “separations” increased to 5.4 million. Separations (3.3 million) include quits, layoffs, and discharges (1.8 million) for the same timeframe. The most recent numbers hint at more bad news for unemployment in the country, according to industry watchers.

“The labor market is no longer cooling down to its pre-pandemic temperature … it’s dropped below,” an Indeed Hiring Lab report on the BLS data stated. “The labor market is past moderation and trending toward deterioration.”

For IT professionals, the BLS data shows that jobs in high tech might grow slightly by 5,000 jobs in 2024, but that will not be enough growth to offset the number of unemployed IT workers—which Janco Associates estimates is about 145,000.

“According to the latest BLS data analyzed, there are now approximately 4.18 million jobs for IT professionals in the US. Layoffs at big tech companies continued to hurt overall IT hiring. Large high-tech firms continue to lay off to have better bottom lines. Included in that group of companies that have recently announced new layoffs are Intel, Microsoft, and Google,” said M. Victor Janulaitis, CEO of Janco, in a statement. “At the same time, BLS data shows that around 81,000 IT pros were hired but that 147,000 were looking for work in June. Our analysis predicts the same will be the case for July and August.”

September 2024

CompTIA unveils data science certification program

Technology pros seeking to validate their data science competencies can now prove their knowledge with CompTIA’s DataX certification program.

Part of CompTIA’s recently launched Xpert Series, the DataX program is based on input from data scientists working in private and public sectors and focuses on the skills critical to a data scientist’s success, such as: mathematics and statistics; modeling, analysis, and outcomes; operations and processes; machine learning; and specialized applications of data science. The program is designed for data scientists with five or more years of experience, and it identifies knowledge gaps as well as provides learning content to get candidates current on expert-level topics.

“Earning a CompTIA DataX certification is a reliable indicator of a professional’s commitment to excellence in the field of data science,” said Teresa Sears, senior vice president of product management, CompTIA, in a statement. “This program validates the advanced analytics skills that help organizations enhance efficiency, mitigate risks, and maximize the value of their data assets.”

August 2024

CompTIA partners to provide IT training and certifications across Africa

CompTIA is partnering with Gebeya Inc. to provide access to CompTIA’s library of IT, networking, cybersecurity and cloud computing courses. The collaboration will allow Africans interested in technology to access IT training and certification classes via CompTIA.

Gebeya, a Pan-African talent cloud technology provider, says its mission “is to close the digital skills gap and drive digital transformation across Africa.” Partnering with CompTIA will enable aspiring technology workers in Africa to bolster their skills. “Our strategic partnership with CompTIA allows us to integrate a comprehensive skilling module within the Gebeya Talent Cloud, enabling our customers and partners to offer unmatched access to world-class IT training and certifications to their talent communities,” said Amadou Daffe, Gebeya CEO, in a statement.

CompTIA offers vendor-neutral IT certifications that cover the fundamentals of several IT functions. The organization says its library of courses can help individuals stay current with today’s in-demand technology skills as well as enhance technical competency worldwide.

“We have a shared mission to close the digital skills gap in Africa,” said Benjamin Ndambuki, CompTIA’s territory development representative for Africa, in a statement. “With Gebeya’s extensive reach and local expertise and CompTIA’s globally recognized certifications, we are confident we can empower a new generation of African tech professionals to thrive in the digital economy.”

August 2024

U.S. job growth weaker than forecast, unemployment rate creeping upward  

New data released from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows earlier estimates of job growth were miscalculated. The agency reported this week that there were 818,000 fewer jobs added in the 12 months ending in March 2024 than previously reported. This information coupled with reports from Indeed that the unemployment rate continues to slowly increase is raising recession fears.

According to Indeed’s Hiring Lab, “on a three-month average basis, the unemployment rate has risen .55 percentage points since its low of 3.5% in January 2023.” The adjusted BLS numbers suggest weak hiring and a cooler market than previously projected, but Indeed says there are reasons for “cautious optimism” about the U.S. labor market. For instance, the amount of available job postings and growth in wages could continue to attract more workers to the labor force.

“In addition to a relative abundance of job opportunities, another factor that may be drawing workers back to the labor force in greater numbers is persistently strong wage growth, which has slowed from recent highs but remains on par with pre-pandemic levels,” Indeed reported.

August 2024

Talent gap threatens US semiconductor industry

The semiconductor industry could be facing a major labor shortage as industry growth has outpaced the availability of skilled workers in the US. A recent report by McKinsey & Company found that public and private investment in the semiconductor industry in the US will expand to more than $250 billion by 2032 and will bring more than 160,000 new job openings in engineering and technical support to the industry. This coupled with the steep decline of the US domestic semiconductor manufacturing workforce – which has dropped 43% from its peak employment levels in 2000 – means the industry will struggle to fill those jobs. At the current rate, the shortage of engineers and technicians could reach as high as 146,000 workers by 2029, according to the report.

August 2024

CompTIA wants to help build high-tech careers

New career resources from CompTIA are designed to teach people about specific tech-related roles and empower them to tailor a career path that best aligns with their skills and experiences.

“Too many people don’t know what it means to work in tech, so they’re scared, or they think the jobs are boring or are too hard,” said Todd Thibodeaux, president and CEO of CompTIA, in a statement. “We want to educate people about the dynamic employment opportunities available in tech; encourage them to know they can thrive in these jobs; and empower them with the knowledge and skills to succeed.”

Among the new resources is CompTIA Career Explorer, which the nonprofit organization says will help professionals tailor a career path that aligns with their workstyles and lifestyles. With the tool, jobseekers can test drive “a day in the life of specific job roles and challenge themselves with real-time, true-to-life problem solving” related to the jobs.

CompTIA Career+ will provide users with an immersive, interactive video experience that “showcases a day in the life of in-demand job roles,” according to CompTIA. This resource will feature up to 30 job roles, representing about 90% of all tech occupations.

The organization announced the new resources at its CompTIA ChannelCon and Partner Summit conference. “We want people to associate CompTIA with the competencies and skills to work in technology,” Thibodeaux said.

August 2024

Where STEM jobs pay the most

A new study conducted by Germany-based biotechnology provider Cytena shows that California provides the highest average salaries in the U.S. for those working in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professions.

Cytena analyzed salary data for more than 75 STEM jobs listed on company review website Glassdoor to determine which states in the U.S. paid the most for technology talent. California ranks first with an average salary of $124,937 across all the jobs in the study, which included positions ranging from medical professionals to mathematicians and data scientists to network and software engineers. Washington state placed a close second with the average annual salary falling just below $124,000, and New York landed in third place with an average annual salary of $114,437. Following the top three, Nevada, Maryland, Massachusetts, Idaho, Hawaii, Colorado, and Connecticut rounded out the top ten states in the U.S. that pay the highest salaries for STEM-related positions.

July 2024

SysAdmin Day 2024: Celebrate your systems administrators

Friday, July 26 marks the 25^th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day. Always celebrated on the last Friday in July, SysAdmin Day recognizes IT professionals who spend their days ensuring organizations and the infrastructure supporting them run smoothly. Some may say it is a thankless job, which is why Ted Kekatos created the day to honor the men and women working to install and configure hardware and software, manage networks and technology tools, help end users, and monitor the performance of the entire environment.

Network and systems admins field complaint calls and solve incidents for end users, often without hearing how much they helped their colleagues. The unsung heroes of IT, sysadmins deserve this day of recognition — they might even deserve a gesture or gift to acknowledge all the long hours they work and how much they do behind the scenes.

July 2024

NetBrain launches network automation certification program

NetBrain Technologies debuted its Network Automation Certification Program, which will recognize engineers with advanced network automation skills. The program will enable network engineers to validate their skills and communicate the skillsets to others, according to NetBrain. Initial exams for the program will be offered October 3 following the NetBrain Live Conference in Boston.

NetBrain currently lists three network automation certifications on its website:

• NetBrain Certified Automation Associate (NCAA): This certification demonstrates a mastery of the essentials of NetBrain Automation. Engineers with this certification can design, build, and implement automation that can be scaled networkwide to achieve an organization’s automation goals.
• NetBrain Certified Automation Professional (NCAP): This certification validates network engineers as experts with proficiencies in network automation to enhance critical troubleshooting and diagnostic workflows across network operations, security, and IT infrastructures.
• NetBrain Certified Automation Architect (NCAE): This certification distinguishes network engineers as network automation visionaries capable of shaping a corporate NetDevOps strategy from initial concept design and rollout through operation and enablement.

July 2024

Skillsoft develops genAI skills program with Microsoft

Skillsoft announced it collaborated with Microsoft to develop its AI Skill Accelerator program, which will help organizations upskill their workforce to effectively use Microsoft AI technologies such as Copilot and Azure Open AI as well as generative AI technologies more broadly. The goal is to drive improved business productivity and innovation using genAI applications more effectively.

“This collaboration with Microsoft is the first of many AI learning experiences we will deliver to help our customers and their talent—from everyday end users to business leaders to AI developers—acquire the skills and tools they need to succeed in the age of AI,” said Ron Hovsepian, executive chair at Skillsoft, in a statement. According to Skillsoft’s annual IT Skills and Salary report that surveyed 5,700 tech professionals worldwide, 43% of respondents say their team’s skills in AI need improvement.

Skillsoft’s AI Skill Accelerator offers a blended learning experience, including on-demand courses, one-on-one and group coaching, live instructor-led training, and hands-on practice labs. According to Skillsoft, the program will enable customers to:

• Assess the current state of AI-related technology and leadership skills across the workforce
• Index skills to make data-driven decisions about where talent can drive strategic business outcomes with AI
• Develop AI skills rapidly with emerging training methods powered by Microsoft’s Azure Open AI
• Reassess existing talent and skills gaps through post-training benchmarks

“Microsoft and Skillsoft have a long-standing relationship and share a common goal to enable AI transformation across every area of business,” said Jeana Jorgensen, corporate vice president of worldwide learning at Microsoft, in a statement. “This learning experience is designed to empower individuals and organizations to harness the full capabilities of generative AI, Microsoft Copilot, and Microsoft’s AI apps and services.”

July 2024

Tech industry adds jobs, IT unemployment increases

Data from IT employment trackers shows that the technology industry added more than 7,500 new workers in June, while at the same time the overall unemployment rate for IT pros increased.

According to CompTIA, the tech industry added some 7,540 new workers in June, which marks the biggest monthly increase so far this year. CompTIA’s analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data also shows that the positive growth was offset by a loss of 22,000 tech occupations throughout the U.S. economy. “Despite pockets of growth, the recent data indicates a degree of downward pressure on tech employment,“ said Tim Herbert, chief research officer, CompTIA, in a statement. “A combination of factors, including AI FOMO, likely contributes to segments of employers taking a wait and see approach with tech hiring.”

Separately, Janco Associates reported that the overall unemployment rate for IT pros in June grew to 5.9%, which is higher than the 4.1% U.S. national unemployment rate. Janco Associates also estimated that 7,700 jobs were added to the IT job market in May 2024. “The number of unemployed IT Pros rose from 129,000 to 147,000.  There still is a skills mismatch as positions continue to go unfilled as the available IT Pros do not have the requisite training and experience required. The BLS data shows that around 78,000 IT pros were hired but that 147,000 are looking for work,” Janco Associates reported.

July 2024

CompTIA Network+ cert gets an update

CompTIA updated its Network+ certification to include more extensive coverage of modern network environments, factors related to physical network installations, and know-how to better secure and harden networks.

Software-defined networking (SDN) and SD-WAN are covered in the updated Network+ exam, or N10-009. According to CompTIA, “the program introduces infrastructure as code (IaC), which is considered a transformative approach that leverages code for improved provisioning and support for computing infrastructure.”

The updated Network+ certification program also now integrates zero-trust architecture and other forms of network fortification. Read more in the full story: CompTIA updates Network+ certification

June 2024

AWS adds two AI-focused certifications

Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched two new certifications in artificial intelligence for IT professionals looking to boost their skills and land AI-related jobs. The additional know-how will help practitioners secure jobs that require emerging AI skills, which could offer a 47% higher salary in IT, according to an AWS study.

AWS Certified AI Practitioner is a foundational program that validates knowledge of AI, machine learning (ML), and generative AI concepts and use cases, according to AWS. Candidates who are familiar with using AI/ML technologies on AWS and who complete a 120-minute, 85-question course will be able to sharpen their skills with fundamental concepts as well as use cases for AI, ML, and genAI. The exam will cover topics such as prompt engineering, responsible AI, security and compliance for AI systems, and more.

AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer—Associate is a 170-minute exam with 85 questions that validates technical ability to implement ML workloads in production and to operationalize them. Individuals with at least one year of experience using Amazon SageMaker and other ML engineering AWS services would be good candidates for this certification. The exam will cover topics such as data preparation for ML models, feature engineering, model training, security, and more.

Registration for both new AWS certifications opens August 13.

June 2024

Cisco unveils AI-focused certification

Cisco’s new AI certification aims to help prepare IT pros to design, provision and optimize networks and systems needed for demanding AI/ML workloads. Unveiled at its Cisco Live conference in Las Vegas, the Cisco Certified Design Expert (CCDE)-AI Infrastructure certification is a vendor-agnostic, expert-level certification. With it, tech professionals will be able to design network architectures optimized for AI workloads, and “they’ll be able to do this while incorporating the unique business requirements of AI, such as trade-offs for cost optimization and power, and the matching of computing power and cloud needs to measured carbon use,” wrote Par Merat, vice president of Cisco Learning and Certifications, in a blog post about the new cert.

According to Cisco, the new CCDE-AI Infrastructure certification addresses topics including designing for GPU optimization as well as building high-performance generative AI network fabrics. Those seeking this certification will also learn about sustainability and compliance of networks that support AI. The skills will be needed across organizations, according to the Cisco AI Readiness Index, which found that 90% of organizations are investing to try to overcome AI skills gaps. Read more here: Cisco debuts CCDE-AI Infrastructure certification

June 2024

U.S. cybersecurity talent demand outpaces supply

As businesses continue to seek cybersecurity talent, the current supply of skilled workers will not meet the demand in 2024, according to recent data from CyberSeek, a data analysis and aggregation tool powered by a collaboration among Lightcast, NICE, and CompTIA.

There are only enough available workers to fill 85% of the current cybersecurity jobs throughout the U.S. economy, according to CyberSeek data, and more than 225,000 workers are needed to close the cybersecurity skills gap. The data also shows that job postings for all tech occupations declined by 37% between May 2023 and April 2024.

“Although demand for cybersecurity jobs is beginning to normalize to pre-pandemic levels, the longstanding cyber talent gap persists,” said Will Markow, vice president of applied research at Lightcast, in a statement. “At the same time, new threats and technologies are causing cybersecurity skill requirements to evolve at a breakneck pace, forcing employers, educators, and individuals to proactively anticipate and prepare for an ever-changing cyber landscape.”

Positions in the highest demand include network engineers, systems administrators, cybersecurity engineers, cybersecurity analysts, security engineers, systems engineers, information systems security officers, network administrators, information security analysts, and software engineers, according to the CyberSeek data.

“Building a robust cybersecurity presence often requires changes in talent acquisition strategies and tactics,” said Hannah Johnson, senior vice president, tech talent programs, CompTIA, in a statement. “That can include upskilling less experienced cybersecurity professionals for more advanced roles, or hiring people who demonstrate subject matter expertise via professional certifications or other credentials.”

June 2024

Average salary for IT pros surpasses $100k

Recent employment data shows that the median salary for IT professionals is now $100,399, with total compensation (including bonuses and fringe benefits) reaching $103,692. Management consulting firm Janco Associates, Inc. reported that IT salaries have risen by 3.28% in the past 12 months, even while the unemployment rate for IT workers hits 5%. Executives continue to see the biggest paychecks with total compensation packages increasing by 7.48% and median compensation reaching $184,354.

“Salary compression” is another trend Janco Associates noted. This occurs when new hires are offered salaries at the higher end of the pay range for existing positions, often getting paid more than current employees in the same roles.

Midsized enterprise companies are seeing more attrition than their large enterprise counterparts, while salaries in midsized companies are also rising faster than they are in large enterprises. Salary levels in midsized enterprises increased 5.46% versus 2.56% in larger enterprises, according to Janco Associates.

May 2024

AI, IT operations among the most in-demand IT skills

New research and survey results from IDC show that a growing lack of in-demand IT skills could be negatively impacting businesses’ bottom lines.

The IDC report, Enterprise Resilience: IT Skilling Strategies, 2024, reveals the most in-demand skills at enterprise organizations right now. Among the 811 respondents, artificial intelligence tops the list, cited by 45% of respondents, followed closely by IT operations (44%) and cloud solutions-architecture (36%). Other skills in demand right now include: API integration (33%), generative AI (32%), cloud solutions-data management/storage (32%), data analysis (30%), cybersecurity/data security (28%), IoT software development (28%), and IT service management (27%).

Nearly two-thirds (63%) of the IT leaders at North American organizations said the lack of these skills has delayed digital transformation initiatives, most by an average of three to 10 months. Survey respondents detailed the negative impacts of lacking skills in their IT organizations:

• Missed revenue goals: 62%
• Product delays: 61%
• Quality problems: 59%
• Declining customer satisfaction: 59%
• Lost revenue: 57%

Considering these survey results, IDC predicts that by 2026, 90% of organizations worldwide will feel the pain of the IT skills crisis, potentially costing up to $5.5 trillion in delays, quality issues, and revenue loss. “Getting the right people with the right skills into the right roles has never been so difficult,” says Gina Smith, PhD, research director for IDC’s IT Skills for Digital Business practice, said in a statement. “As IT skills shortages widen and the arrival of new technology accelerates, enterprises must find creative ways to hire, train, upskill, and reskill their employees. A culture of learning is the single best way to get there.”

May 2024

Organizations abandon IT projects due to skills gap

A lack of specific technology skills worries IT executives, who report they will not be able to adopt new technologies, maintain legacy systems, keep business opportunities, and retain clients if the skills gap persists.

In a recent survey by online professional training provider Pluralsight, 96% of technologists said their workload has increased due to the skills gap, and 78% also reported that they abandoned projects partway through because they didn’t have employees with the necessary IT skills to successfully finish. While most organizations (78%) said their skills gap has improved since last year, survey respondents reported that cybersecurity, cloud, and software development are the top three areas in which a skills gap exists. IT executives surveyed said they worry the skills gap in their organizations will make it difficult to:

• Adopt new technology: 57%
• Maintain legacy systems: 53%
• Keep business opportunities: 44%
• Retain clients: 33%

Pluralsight surveyed 1,400 executives and IT professionals across the U.S., U.K., and India to learn more about the technical skills gap and how organizations are addressing a lack of expertise in specific technology areas.

May 2024

Lack of skills stymies network automation efforts

Network automation continues to challenge IT leaders, and one factor is a lack of skills on staff.

When research firm Enterprise Management Associates surveyed 354 IT professionals about network automation, just 18% rated their network automation strategies as a complete success, and 54% said they have achieved partial success. The remaining 38% said they were uncertain of the level of success achieved or admitted failure with their network automation projects.

More than one-fourth (26.8%) of the respondents pointed to staffing issues such as skills gaps and staff churn as a business challenge. “The most challenging thing for me is the lack of network engineers who can contribute to automation,” said a network engineer at a midmarket business services company in the EMA report. “The community is small, and it’s hard to find people who can help you solve a problem.”

April 2024

CompTIA plans AI certification roadmap

IT certification and training group CompTIA is expanding its product and program roadmap to meet the growing demand for AI-related skill sets.

AI becoming critical to existing job functions. At the same time, new roles are starting to land on employers’ radar. “Two entirely new job roles—prompt engineering and AI systems architects—are emerging. These positions align with the AI priorities of many organizations,” said Teresa Sears, vice president of product management at CompTIA.

Millions of IT professionals will need to acquire new AI skills to meet the needs of the job market, said Thomas Reilly, CompTIA’s chief product officer, in a statement. “We intend to create a range of certifications and training offerings spanning the complete career arc, from foundational knowledge for pre-career and early career learners to advanced skills for professionals with years of workforce experience.”

February 2024

IT job growth flattened in 2023

The number of new IT jobs created in calendar year 2023 flattened with just 700 positions added, which signals continued concerns about the economy and growing demand for skills focused on emerging technologies. For comparison, 2022 saw 267,000 jobs added, with industry watchers attributing the dramatic difference to tech layoffs and other cost-cutting measures.

According to Janco Associates, despite companies adding some 21,300 jobs in the fourth quarter of 2023, the overall increase for the entire calendar year still comes to just 700 new positions. 

“Based on our analysis, the IT job market and opportunities for IT professionals are poor at best. In the past 12 months, telecommunications lost 26,400 jobs, content providers lost 9,300 jobs, and other information services lost 10,300 jobs,” said M. Victor Janulaitis, CEO at Janco, in a statement. “Gainers in the same period were computer system designers gaining 32,300 jobs and hosting providers gaining 14,000.”

January 2024

Positive hiring plans for new year

Robert Half reports that the job market will remain resilient heading into 2024. According to the talent solutions provider’s recent survey, more than half of U.S. companies plan to increase hiring in the first half of 2024. While the data is not limited to the IT sector, the research shows 57% plan to add new permanent positions in the first six months of the year while another 39% anticipate hiring for vacant positions and 67% will hire contract workers as a staffing strategy.

Specific to the technology sector, 69% of the more than 1,850 hiring managers surveyed reported they would be adding new permanent roles for those professions. Still, challenges will persist into the new year, according to Robert Half, which reported 90% of hiring managers have difficulty finding skilled professionals and 58% said it takes longer to hire for open roles compared to a year ago.

December 2023

Cisco CCNA and AWS cloud networking rank among highest paying IT certifications

Cloud expertise and security know-how remain critical in building today’s networks, and these skills pay top dollar, according to Skillsoft’s annual ranking of the most valuable IT certifications. At number one on its list of the 20 top-paying IT certifications is Google Cloud-Professional Cloud Architect with an average annual salary of $200,960.

In addition to several cloud certifications, there are five security, networking, and system architect certifications on Skillsoft’s top 20 list:

• ISACA Certified Information Security Manager (CISM): Average annual salaries for those with CISM certification is $167,396, a slight increase over last year’s 162,347 salary.
• ISC2 Certification Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP): This certification consistently delivers an average annual salary of $156,699, according to Skillsoft.
• ISACA Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA): Professionals with a CISA certification earn an average annual salary of $154,500, an increase over last year’s $142,336.
• AWS Certified Advanced Networking-Specialty: This certification commands an annual average salary of $153,031.
• Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA): This certification commands an average annual salary of $128,651.

November 2023

Alkira is expanding its namesake network-as-a-service (NaaS) platform with new zero trust network access (ZTNA) capabilities.

Alkira provides a SaaS service for on-demand network infrastructure. Its “backbone as a service” gives customers the ability to connect branch locations, cloud workloads and applications through Alkira’s fabric. The platform provides visibility, control and governance over the network as well as dynamic service insertion, allowing organizations to integrate third-party services like firewalls into their network.

The company was founded in 2018 by former Cisco employees who had previously founded SD-WAN vendor Viptella. Alkira raised $100 million in a Series C round of funding in May of this year.

The new ZTNA capability expands Alkira’s existing security features to enable more granular control for users that are on the network. The basic concept behind ZTNA overall is to make sure that all access is authenticated and that there is no implied trust, just because a user has access to a network.

“What ZTNA does is on the same fabric that you have, where you are doing on prem to on prem, cloud to cloud, on prem to cloud, everything to internet, so on and so forth, now you can also layer in users directly into that,” Manan Shah, senior vice president of products at Alkira, told Network World. “A user can directly terminate into a cloud exchange point and have the same kind of visibility, governance and control in terms of what resources that user can access on the network.”

Taking a network-centric approach to zero trust

The new ZTNA offering takes a distinctly network-focused approach to zero trust security, integrating directly with Alkira’s existing cloud networking fabric. Shah emphasized that the ZTNA capability is an expansion of Alkira’s existing services, not a replacement. The key additions are:

• Identity and access management: The new ZTNA functionality adds the ability to perform user authentication and authorization checks based on identity attributes.
• Granular policy control: With ZTNA, Alkira can now apply more granular access policies based on the user’s identity, device, location and other attributes. This allows for more fine-grained control over what resources a user can access.
• Posture checks: The ZTNA solution includes the ability to perform posture checks on the user’s device, such as checking browser version, OS version, installed antivirus, etc. This information is used to determine the appropriate access policies.
• Unified platform: Alkira’s approach integrates the ZTNA functionality directly into their networking platform, rather than having separate portals or management for user access vs. network connectivity. This provides a more holistic and streamlined solution.

How Alkira’s ZTNA works

On the user side, the new ZTNA capability requires a user agent to help execute the device posture checks.

Shah explained that when a user connects to the network, Alkira does an authentication check. That check validates a number of different device attributes. The platform also does a posture check based on the identity and user attributes that can come from any identity provider. 

Based on the posture and identity of the user, Alkira will place users in a specific network micro-segment. Based on the network and user access policies, the user will then be able to connect with the specific applications and services that they are authorized to access.

“We already had the traffic policies through which you can control how the traffic flows on the network,” Shah said. “What we have done is added the posture attributes and the identity attributes to the policy, so that now you can essentially check on the posture and identity in a further granular control over the resources that users can access.”

Visibility and control from the network to the user

A key aspect of Alkira’s approach is the built-in visibility and troubleshooting capabilities.

The platform provides administrators with detailed dashboards. The details include information on currently logged in users, traffic generation and access. That information is critical for network administrators, especially when there is an issue or a user that can’t get access.

“Since we focus on the platform aspect of networking, all of the visibility and troubleshooting is built into our fabric,” Shah said. “Because it’s built into the fabric, you can see on a per user level, what policies are impacting the user experience and what resources they have access to.”

Looking ahead to 2025, Alkira plans to expand its global presence and service offerings. The company’s focus remains on supporting customers as they transition to cloud environments. The company plans to expand its Cloud Exchange Point (CXP) footprint across the globe and add more connectivity options and network services to its platform.

“As more and more applications move to the cloud, all of the network services that used to run in the data center have to come closer to the cloud,” Shah stated. “The user, whether they’re coming from their home or coming from their work, they should have identical policies, identical access privileges and more importantly, connectivity that is closer to them as well.”

Read more about NaaS

• Can NaaS mitigate network skills gaps? NaaS promises to give enterprise organizations quick access to new technologies and improved performance while also filling critical skills gaps, according to EMA Research.
• NaaS buyer’s guide: Who is selling network as a service and what do you get? Network as a service comes in five distinct flavors depending on whether it’s offered by hardware vendors, telcos, cloud providers, muticloud vendors, or WAN-transport carriers.
• Redefining NaaS: It’s the internet: Network-as-a-service is popularly defined as expensing network technology and management rather than doing it yourself, but there’s a better way to look at it.
• Nile boosts NaaS offering with AI, customizable services: Startup Nile is filling out its cloud-based networking service with a goal of streamlining the setup and management of wired and wireless network operations.
• Aruba introduces a simplified NaaS offering: Agile NaaS brings streamlined provisioning; Aruba Central gets better visibility, performance features.

New middleware from Fujitsu has achieved more than a 2x increase in GPU computational efficiency for artificial intelligence (AI) workloads in trials according to the company, which designed the technology specifically to help solve the issue of GPU limitations and shortages related to computing demands of AI.

The goal of the middleware, which was released today to customers globally, is to improve resource allocation and memory management across various platforms and applications that use AI, according to a press release. Fujitsu already has been piloting it with various partners, with more technology trials planned to begin this month.

Fujitsu began testing its new middleware with AWL, Xtreme-D, and Morgenrot in May, with results demonstrating up to a 2.25x increase in computational efficiency when running AI workloads, the company said. The partners also saw a substantial increase in the number of concurrently handled AI processes across diverse cloud environments and servers when using the middleware.

“By enabling GPU sharing between multiple jobs, we achieved a remarkable near 10% reduction in overall execution time compared to running jobs sequentially on two GPUs,” observed Hisashi Ito, CTO of Morgenrot, in a press statement. “This parallel processing capability [allowed for] simultaneous execution of long training sessions for model building and shorter inference/testing tasks, all within constrained resources.”

This month, Tradom also will begin trials using the new product, while Sakura Internet is in the process of a conducting a feasibility study on the use of the technology for its data center operations, according to Fujitsu.

AI processing optimization

GPUs are better suited to AI processing than CPUs, and thus their use had been increasing dramatically. However, this also has driven up data center power consumption considerably and created a shortage of GPUs, and companies are looking for alternative solutions to optimize AI workloads.

“The rapid expansion of compute infrastructure to support training for genAI has created a major electrical power availability challenge,” said a Gartner research note on emerging technologies for energy-efficient generative AI compute systems by researchers Gaurav Gupta, Menglin Cao, Alan Priestley, Akhil Singh, and Joseph Unsworth.

This means those running AI data centers must find solutions to the problem now to mitigate the challenges for their operations, which include increased costs, insufficient power availability, and poorer sustainability performance.  “All of these will be eventually passed on to data center operators’ customers and end users,” the researchers noted.

At the same time, data centers must balance the bottlenecks in performance that the drive to GPU-assisted AI is causing, noted Eckhardt Fischer, senior research analyst for IDC. “Any improvement in the computer system to reduce this bottleneck will generally show a corresponding improvement in output,” he observed.

These bottlenecks for AI/genAI compute requirements include memory and networking, because “even the current Moore’s Law can’t keep up with explosive compute needs,” noted Gartner’s Gupta.

Optimizing resource allocation

Fujitsu’s AI computing broker middleware aims to solve this in part using a combination of adaptive GPU allocator technology developed by the company in November 2023, and AI-processing optimization technologies, the company said. This allows the middleware to automatically identify and optimize CPU and GPU resource allocation for AI processing in multiple programs, giving priority to processes with high execution efficiency.

However, rather than conventional resource allocation, which does the task on a per-job basis, Fujitsu’s AI computing broker dynamically allocates resources on a per-GPU basis, the company said. This is aimed at improving availability rates and allowing for the concurrent running of numerous AI processes without being concerned with GPU memory usage or physical capacity.

The concept behind the middleware makes sense, Gupta noted, as power consumption of GPUs “is a big concern and hence energy efficiency comes into picture.”

“This doesn’t solve the shortage problem, but improves utilization and hence efficiency of operations – so, in a way, you can do more with less – as long as technology works,” he said, which, as it’s early days, remains to be seen.

However, Gupta added, if Fujitsu’s AI-focused middleware can lead to any improvement in memory and GPU utilization, it is worth following, and observing its adoption and the future competitive landscape for similar solutions.

IBM has rolled out a new platform to help enterprise customers better handle the complicated data workflows and security risks that arise when managing AI deployments, hybrid cloud infrastructure, and quantum computing systems.

IBM Guardium Data Security Center is a SaaS-based offering that integrates a number of new IBM security packages. Customers can access a single dashboard view of their data assets, which allows security teams to take an integrated approach to data monitoring and governance, data detection and response, data and AI security posture management, and cryptography management.

“Generative AI and quantum computing provide immense opportunities, but they also bring new risks,” said Akiba Saeedi, vice president, IBM security product management, in a statement. “During this transformative time, organizations need to improve their crypto-agility and carefully monitor their AI models, training data, and usage.”

IBM Guardium AI Security

The platform features Guardium AI Security, which is software designed to manage security risks and data governance requirements for AI data and AI models. The module discovers AI deployments, oversees compliance, mitigates vulnerabilities, and protects sensitive data in AI models, IBM stated.

“IBM Guardium AI Security integrates with IBM watsonx and other generative AI SaaS providers. For example, IBM Guardium AI Security helps discover ‘shadow AI’ models and then shares them with IBM watsonx.governance, so they no longer elude governance,” IBM stated.

The Guardium AI Security module also helps secure AI systems by alerting customers when sensitive business data used for training AI is publicly exposed, unprotected, or vulnerable to theft, IBM stated. It monitors who in an organization can access, modify, or configure AI models during training or in production. And, it can detect prompt injections or jailbreak attempts on AI chatbots deployed by the enterprise, IBM stated.

IBM Guardium Quantum Safe

Another key module is Guardium Quantum Safe, which is designed to help customers protect their sensitive data and harden their environments against quantum-enabled cyber risks.

“The Guardium Quantum Safe module provides users with ongoing comprehensive visibility into, and greater control over, the cryptography used across their IT environment so they can prioritize vulnerabilities and create a targeted remediation roadmap,” IBM stated.

The module helps organizations manage their cryptographic security systems by applying security policies against their cryptographic inventory, discovering cryptographic vulnerabilities, and prioritizing remediation according to business objectives.

Guardium Quantum Safe integrates with common network operations and scanning tools, and it explores which cryptographic assets are used by which applications and network endpoints in order to secure sensitive or privileged data, IBM stated.

Customers can opt to integrate other modules into the broader IBM Guardium Data Security Center platform as well. For example, IBM Security Guardium Data Protection lets customers protect sensitive data across cloud and on-premises environments, and IBM Security Guardium Vulnerability Assessment lets users scan for database vulnerabilities on-premises or in the cloud.

IBM Guardium Data Security Center is expected to be available in November.

Distributed environments amp up security requirements

Recent research from IBM and Cisco points to the need to help enterprise customers better control security across multiple systems. 

The global average cost of a network data breach has climbed to a record $4.88 million – which represents a 10% increase from 2023 and the largest spike since the pandemic, according to IBM’s 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report.

“These multi-environment breaches cost more than $5 million on average and took the longest to identify and contain (283 days), highlighting the challenge of tracking and safeguarding data, including shadow data, and data in AI workloads, which can be unencrypted,” wrote IBM Security team member John Zorabedian in a blog discussing the research results.

Meanwhile, a recent Cisco study found that 92% of organizations have deployed two or more public cloud providers to host their workloads, and 34% are using more than four.

“However, each public cloud service provider, private data center, and hybrid cloud environment uses different network and security operational models. Organizations need to address the resulting management complexity with a strategy that enables better visibility and more consistent control of connectivity and security across disparate private and public cloud environments,” Cisco stated.

Artificial Intelligence continues to dominate this week’s Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo, as well as the research firm’s annual predictions list. 

“It is clear that no matter where we go, we cannot avoid the impact of AI,” Daryl Plummer, distinguished vice president  analyst, chief of research and Gartner Fellow told attendees. “AI is evolving as human use of AI evolves. Before we reach the point where humans can no longer keep up, we must embrace how much better AI can make us.”

Gartner’s top predictions for 2025 are as follows:

Through 2026, 20% of organizations will use AI to flatten their organizational structure, eliminating more than half of current middle management positions.

“Organizations that deploy AI to eliminate middle management human workers will be able to capitalize on reduced labor costs in the short-term and long-term benefits savings,” Gartner stated. “AI deployment will also allow for enhanced productivity and increased span of control by automating and scheduling tasks, reporting and performance monitoring for the remaining workforce which allows remaining managers to focus on more strategic, scalable and value-added activities.”

By 2029, 10% of global boards will use AI guidance to challenge executive decisions that are material to their business.

AI-generated insights will have far-reaching impacts on executive decision making and will empower board members to challenge executive decisions. “Impactful AI insights will at first seem like a minority report that doesn’t reflect the majority view of board members,” said Plummer. “However, as AI insights prove effective, they will gain acceptance among executives competing for decision support data to improve business results.”

By 2028, 40% of large enterprises will deploy AI to manipulate and measure employee mood and behaviors, all in the name of profit.

“AI has the capability to perform sentiment analysis on workplace interactions and communications. This provides feedback to ensure that the overall sentiment aligns with desired behaviors which will allow for a motivated and engaged workforce,” Gartner stated.

By 2027, 70% of new contracts for employees will include licensing and fair usage clauses for AI representations of their personas.

Large language models that emerge have no set end date, which means employees’ personal data that is captured by enterprise LLMs will remain part of the LLM not only during their employment, but after their employment. This will lead to a public debate that will question whether the employee or employer has the right of ownership of such digital personas, which may ultimately lead to lawsuits, Plummer said.

By 2027, 70% of healthcare providers will include emotional-AI-related terms and conditions in technology contracts or risk billions in financial harm.

“The increased workload of healthcare workers has resulted in workers leaving, an increase in patient demand and clinician burnout rates which is creating an empathy crisis. Using emotional AI on tasks such as collecting patient data can free up healthcare workers’ time to alleviate some of the burnout and frustration they experience with increased workload,” Gartner stated.

By 2028, 30% of S&P companies will use GenAI labeling, such as “xxGPT,” to reshape their branding while chasing new revenue.

“CMOs view GenAI as a tool that can launch both new products and business models. GenAI also allows for new revenue streams by bringing products to market faster while delivering better customer experiences and automating processes. As the GenAI landscape becomes more competitive, companies are differentiating themselves by developing specialized models tailored to their industry,” Gartner stated.

By 2028, 25% of enterprise breaches will be traced back to AI agent abuse, from both external and malicious internal actors.

New security and risk solutions will be necessary as AI agents significantly increase the already invisible attack surface at enterprises. This increase will force enterprises to protect their businesses from savvy external actors and disgruntled employees to create AI agents to carry out nefarious activities, Plummer said.

By 2028, 40% of CIOs will demand “Guardian Agents” be available to autonomously track, oversee, or contain the results of AI agent actions.

Enterprises’ interest in AI agents is growing, but as a new level of intelligence is added, new GenAI agents are poised to expand rapidly in strategic planning for product leaders. ‘Guardian Agents’ build on the notions of security monitoring, observability, compliance assurance, ethics, data filtering, log reviews and a host of other mechanisms of AI agents,” Gartner stated.

“In the near-term, security-related attacks of AI agents will be a new threat surface,” Plummer said. “The implementation of guardrails, security filters, human oversight, or even security observability are not sufficient to ensure consistently appropriate agent use.”

Through 2027, Fortune 500 companies will shift $500 billion from energy opex to microgrids to mitigate chronic energy risks and AI demand.

“Microgrids are power networks that connect generation, storage and loads in an independent energy system that can operate on its own or with the main grid to meet the energy needs of a specific area or facility,” Gartner stated. “Fortune 500 companies who spend some of their operating expenses on energy should consider investing in microgrids which will offer a better return than continuing to pay rising utility bills.”

By 2028, technological immersion will impact populations with digital addiction and social isolation, prompting 70% of organizations to implement anti-digital policies.

Gartner predicts that by 2028, about one billion people will be affected by digital addiction, which will lead to decreased productivity, increased stress and a spike in mental health disorders such anxiety and depression. Additionally, digital immersion will also negatively impact social skills, especially among younger generations that are more susceptible to these trends.

“The isolating effects of digital immersion will lead to a disjointed workforce causing enterprises to see a significant drop in productivity from their employees and associates,” Plummer said.

AI issues represented a significant portion of Gartner’s Top 10 strategic technology trends for 2025, which the firm also presented this week. For example, Gartner said it is expecting a proliferation of “agentic AI,” which refers to intelligent software entities that use AI techniques to complete tasks and achieve goals. By 2028, at least 15% of day-to-day work decisions will be made autonomously through agentic AI, up from 0% in 2024, Gartner predicts. Agentic AI will be incorporated into AI assistants and built into software, SaaS platforms, IoT devices and robotics.

The old adage “the enemy of my enemy is my ally” has been borne out again, with AMD and Intel joining forces with a number of their largest partners to create the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group, a consortium that aims to drive forward the ecosystem around x86 processors.

Now why would these two enemies become allies? One word: Arm. The processor that got its start in smartphones has been slowly expanding into desktop PCs and servers, where AMD and Intel have ruled for decades. With the alliance, AMD and Intel are partnering to defend their own market position against Arm.

“We are on the cusp of one of the most significant changes in the x86 architecture and ecosystem in decades – with a new level of customization, compatibility and scalability required to meet current and future customer demands,” said Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger in a statement. “We proudly stand alongside AMD and the founding members of the Advisory Group as we drive the future of computing.”

But the two aren’t going alone. Other members of the consortium include Broadcom, Dell, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lenovo, Meta, Oracle, Microsoft and Red Hat. In addition, Linux head developer Linus Torvalds and Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney will also have input.

The group wants to improve compatibility between different hardware and software platforms, simplify software development, and identify “new architectural requirements and functions.” AMD and Intel have different instruction sets beyond the core x86 architecture, such as for AI algorithms, but it seems now they’re looking to collaborate with the industry rather than go it alone.

Which is necessary step, says Jim McGregor, principal analyst with Tirias Research. “I’m sure a bit of it was frustration from the ecosystem and increased competition from Arm-based solutions. Intel and AMD working together to define functions and instructions is long overdue,” he told me.

Microsoft is probably the most interesting addition to the group, because its emphasis has been on GPUs and its own custom Arm project. The three major cloud providers – AWS, Google, and Microsoft – are all designing Arm server CPUs under the names brand names of Graviton, Axion, and Cobalt, respectively.

However, the real threat to Intel and AMD lies on the client side. Apple has now switched completely to its own Arm-based CPUs (Apple Silicon), Microsoft is driving Windows on Arm with Qualcomm Snapdragon processors, and Mediatek is working on a processor for notebooks for release in 2025.

“Arm is still limited in the server realm,” said McGregor. “However, it is also heat from the ecosystem. Just look at the advisor board they assembled. Those are the companies most likely looking for some consistency.”

The reliability of services delivered by ISPs, cloud providers and conferencing services is critical for enterprise organizations. ThousandEyes, a Cisco company, monitors how providers are handling any performance challenges and provides Network World with a weekly roundup of events that impact service delivery. Read on to see the latest analysis, and stop back next week for another update.

(Note: We have archived prior-year updates, including the 2023 outage report and our coverage during the Covid-19 years, when we began tracking the performance of cloud providers and ISPs.)

Internet report for Oct. 14-20, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 155 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of Oct. 14-20. That’s down 9% from 170 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 63 outages, which is a decline of 6% from 67 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, total ISP outages decreased from 105 to 95 outages, a 10% decrease compared to the week prior. In the U.S., ISP outages decreased from 45 to 37 outages, an 18% decrease.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages decreased from 24 to 19 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages decreased from six to four outages. 

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages decreased from three outages to one. In the U.S., there were zero collaboration app network outages, compared to two in the week prior.

Two notable outages

On October 17, Hurricane Electric, a network transit provider based in Fremont, CA, experienced an outage that affected customers and downstream partners across multiple regions, including the U.S., Canada, and New Zealand. The outage was first observed around 3:35 AM EDT and lasted for a total of 15 minutes. It initially appeared to be centered on Hurricane Electric nodes located in Portland, OR. Five minutes into the outage, the nodes located in Portland, OR, appeared to clear and were replaced by nodes located in Los Angeles, CA, in exhibiting outage conditions. Five minutes later, nodes located in Los Angeles, CA, appeared to clear, replaced by nodes located in San Jose, CA, and Portland, OR, in exhibiting outage conditions. Ten minutes after appearing to clear, nodes located in Portland, OR, began exhibiting outage conditions again. The outage was cleared at around 4:05 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On October 17, Level 3 Communications, a U.S.-based Tier 1 carrier, experienced an outage that affected multiple downstream partners and customers across various regions, including the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. The outage, which lasted for a total of 7 minutes, was first observed around 8:20 PM EDT and seemed to be centered on Level 3 nodes located in Detroit, MI. Approximately fifteen minutes after appearing to clear, nodes located in Detroit, MI, once again appeared to exhibit outage conditions. This second occurrence appeared to only impact the U.S. region. The outage was cleared around 8:45 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for Oct. 7-13, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 170 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of Oct. 7-13. That’s down 6% from 180 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 67 outages, which is a decline of 18% from 82 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, total ISP outages decreased from 107 to 105 outages, a 2% decrease compared to the week prior. In the U.S., ISP outages fell from 57 to 45 outages, a 21% decrease.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages decreased from 29 to 24 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages remained the same as the week prior, recording 6 outages.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages increased from two to three outages. In the U.S., there were two collaboration app network outages, which is the same number as the week prior.

Two notable outages

On October 8, GTT Communications, a Tier 1 provider headquartered in Tysons, VA, experienced an outage that impacted some of its partners and customers across multiple regions, including the U.S., Russia, and Singapore. The outage, which lasted 13 minutes, was first observed around 3:25 PM EDT and appeared to be centered on GTT nodes located in Atlanta, GA.  Around five minutes into the outage, a number of nodes located in Atlanta, GA, exhibiting outage conditions, reduced. This reduction in the number of nodes exhibiting outage conditions appeared to coincide with a decrease in the number of impacted regions, downstream partners, and customers. The outage was cleared around 3:40 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On October 11, Time Warner Cable, a U.S.-based ISP owned by Charter Communications, experienced a disruption that affected numerous customers and partners across the U.S. The outage, lasting a total of 18 minutes, occurred in a series of occurrences over a twenty-five-minute period, starting at around 5:50 PM EDT. Initially, it appeared to be centered on Time Warner Cable nodes in New York, NY, and Ashburn, VA. Five minutes after appearing to clear, nodes located in New York, NY, once again began exhibiting outage conditions. The outage was cleared around 6:15 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for Sept. 30-Oct. 6, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 180 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of Sept. 30-Oct. 6. That’s down 6% from 192 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 82 outages, which is a jump of 41% from 58 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, total ISP outages decreased from 131 to 107 outages, an 18% decrease compared to the week prior. In the U.S., ISP outages climbed from 47 to 57 outages, a 21% increase.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages increased from 24 to 29 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages jumped from one to six outages.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages remained at the same level as the week prior, recording two outages. In the U.S., there were two collaboration app network outages, up from one outage a week earlier.

Two notable outages

On October 2, Cogent Communications, a multinational transit provider based in the U.S., experienced an outage that impacted multiple downstream providers and its own customers across various regions, including the U.S., the U.K., Belgium, France, India, Ireland, Mexico, Singapore, Brazil, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, and South Africa. The outage lasted for a total of twenty-three minutes and was divided into two occurrences over a period of 40 minutes. The first occurrence of the outage was observed around 10:25 PM EDT and initially seemed to be centered on Cogent nodes located in El Paso, TX, Dallas, TX, Washington, D.C., New York, NY, Newark, NJ, and Philadelphia, PA. Five minutes into the outage, nodes located in Philadelphia, PA, and El Paso, TX, appeared to clear and were replaced by nodes located in Cleveland, OH, London, England, Boston, MA, Atlanta, GA, Miami, FL, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Austin, TX in exhibiting outage conditions. This rise in nodes exhibiting outage conditions, appeared to coincide with an increase in the number of impacted downstream partners and customers. A further five minutes later, nodes located in Cleveland, OH, London, England, Miami, FL, Newark, NJ, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Austin, TX, appeared to clear, replaced by nodes located in Raleigh, NC, in exhibiting outage conditions. Fifteen minutes after all nodes appeared to clear, nodes located in Cleveland, OH, once again appeared to exhibit outage conditions. The outage was cleared around 11:05 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On October 4, TATA Communications (America) Inc., a global ISP and part of the Indian-owned TATA Communications, experienced an outage that impacted some of its downstream partners and customers in multiple regions, including the U.S., Australia, Singapore, and The Philippines. The outage, lasting a total of 8 minutes, was first observed around 5:50 PM EDT and appeared to be centered on TATA nodes located in Chicago, IL. Five minutes after appearing to clear, the nodes located in Chicago, IL, once again appeared to exhibit outage conditions. The outage was cleared around 2:05 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for Sept. 23-29, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 192 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of Sept. 23-29. That’s up 8% from 178 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 58 outages, which down 9% from 64 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, total ISP outages increased from 117 to 131 outages, a 12% increase compared to the week prior. In the U.S., ISP outages increased from 41 to 47 outages, a 15% increase.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages increased from 16 to 24 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages dropped from three to one outage. 

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages increased from one to two outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages remained at one outage for the third week in a row.

Two notable outages

On September 28, Hurricane Electric, a network transit provider based in Fremont, CA, experienced an outage that affected customers and downstream partners across multiple regions, including the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and India. The outage was first observed around 7:22 PM EDT and lasted for a total of one hour and 13 minutes. It initially appeared to be centered on Hurricane Electric nodes located in Chicago, IL. Five minutes into the outage, the nodes exhibiting outage conditions expanded to include nodes located in Toronto, Canada.  Fifteen minutes after first being observed, nodes located in Chicago, IL, and Toronto, Canada, appeared to clear and were replaced by nodes located in Nashville, TN, in exhibiting outage conditions. Ten minutes after appearing to clear, nodes located in Chicago, IL, began exhibiting outage conditions again, replacing nodes located in Nashville, TN. A further ten minutes later the nodes in Chicago, IL, appeared to clear, replaced once again by nodes located in Nashville, TN, in exhibiting outage conditions. Twenty-five minutes after appearing to clear, the nodes located in Nashville, TN, once again appeared to exhibit outage conditions. The outage was cleared at around 8:35 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On September 23, NTT America, a global Tier 1 provider and subsidiary of NTT Global, experienced a series of outages over a three hour period. These outages impacted multiple downstream providers and customers across various regions, including the U.S., India and The Netherlands. The outage, which lasted a total of one hour and 40 minutes, was first observed around 5:15 PM EDT and initially appeared to be centered on NTT nodes located in Seattle, WA. Approximately fifteen minutes after first being observed, the nodes exhibiting outage conditions expanded to include nodes located in Dallas, TX. This increase in affected nodes appeared to coincide with an increase in the number of impacted downstream customers and partners. Around 7:15 PM EDT nodes located in Seattle, WA appeared to clear, leaving only nodes located in Dallas, TX, exhibiting outage conditions for the remainder of the outage. The outage was cleared around 8:15 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for Sept. 16-22, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 178 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of Sept. 16-22. That’s a decrease of 5% from 170 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 64 outages, which down 25% from 86 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, total ISP outages increased from 111 to 117 outages, a 5% increase compared to the week prior. In the U.S., ISP outages fell from 59 to 41 outages, a 31% decrease.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages decreased from 19 to 16 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages dropped from six to three outages. 

Collaboration app network outages: Globally and in the U.S., there was only one collaboration app network outage, which is the same as the previous week.

Two notable outages

On September 18, TATA Communications (America) Inc., a global ISP and part of the Indian-owned TATA Communications, experienced an outage that impacted many of its downstream partners and customers in multiple regions, including the U.S., Japan, Vietnam, and India. The outage, lasting 9 minutes, was first observed around 7:35 AM EDT and initially appeared to be centered on TATA nodes located in Los Angeles, CA. Five minutes into the outage, the nodes located in Los Angeles, CA, appeared to clear and were replaced by nodes located in Newark, NJ, in exhibiting outage conditions. The outage was cleared around 7:45 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On September 19, Hurricane Electric, a network transit provider based in Fremont, CA, experienced an outage that affected customers and downstream partners across multiple regions, including the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, and Vietnam. The outage was first observed around 5:20 PM EDT and lasted for a total of 6 minutes. It initially appeared to be centered on Hurricane Electric nodes located in Portland, OR, and San Jose, CA. Five minutes after appearing to clear, nodes located in Portland, OR, were joined by nodes located in San Jose, CA, in exhibiting outage conditions. This increase in affected nodes appeared to coincide with an increase in the number of impacted downstream customers and partners. The outage was cleared at around 5:35 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for Sept. 9-15, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 170 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of Sept. 9-16. That’s a decrease of 2% from 174 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 86 outages, which nearly even with 87 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, total ISP outages decreased from 121 to 111 outages, an 8% decrease compared to the week prior. In the U.S., ISP outages fell from 68 to 59 outages, a 13% decrease.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages remained the same as the week prior, recording 19 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages doubled from three to six outages. 

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages decreased from three to one outage. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages decreased from two to one outage.

Two notable outages

On September 10, Hurricane Electric, a network transit provider based in Fremont, CA, experienced an outage that affected customers and downstream partners across multiple regions, including the U.S., Japan, Canada, Mexico, and Australia. The outage was first observed around 10:45 PM EDT and lasted for a total of 47 minutes. It initially appeared to be centered on Hurricane Electric nodes located in San Jose, CA, and Salt Lake City, UT. Fifteen minutes into the outage, the nodes located in Salt Lake City, UT, appeared to clear, leaving just the nodes located in San Jose, CA, exhibiting outage conditions. Five minutes after appearing to clear nodes located in San Jose, CA, began exhibiting outage conditions again. The outage was cleared at around 11:40 PM AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On September 14, NTT America, a global Tier 1 service provider and subsidiary of NTT Global, experienced an outage that impacted some of its customers and downstream partners in multiple regions, including the U.S. and Hong Kong. The outage lasted for 9 minutes and was first observed around 4:55 AM EDT. It initially centered on NTT nodes located in Chicago, IL, and Dallas, TX. Around five minutes into the outage, the nodes located in Chicago, IL, and Dallas, TX, were joined by nodes located in San Jose, CA, in exhibiting outage conditions. This increase in affected nodes appeared to coincide with an increase in the number of impacted downstream customers and partners. The outage was cleared around 5:05 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for Sept. 2-8, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 174 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of Sept. 2-8. That’s a decrease of 9% from 191 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 87 outages, which is up 13% from 77 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, total ISP outages decreased from 134 to 121 outages, a 10% decrease compared to the week prior. In the U.S., ISP outages climbed from 54 to 68 outages, a 26% increase.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages decreased from 24 to 19 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages decreased from eight to three outages.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages increased from two to three outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages remained the same for the fourth week in a row, recording 2 outages.

Two notable outages

On Sept. 4, Zayo Group, a U.S. based Tier 1 carrier headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, experienced an outage that impacted some of its partners and customers in multiple regions, including the U.S., Japan, and Canada. The outage lasted around 28 minutes in total and was divided into two occurrences over a thirty-five-minute period. First observed around 2:05 AM EDT, the outage appeared to center on Zayo Group nodes located in Seattle, WA. The outage was cleared around 2:40 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On Sept. 5, Hurricane Electric, a network transit provider based in Fremont, CA, experienced an outage that affected customers and downstream partners across multiple regions, including the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. The outage was first observed around 3:45 AM EDT and lasted for a total of 32 minutes. It initially appeared to be centered on Hurricane Electric nodes located in Kansas City, MO. Five minutes into the outage, the nodes located in Kansas City, MO, were replaced by nodes located in Chicago, IL, in exhibiting outage conditions. Five minutes after appearing to clear, nodes located in Kansas City, MO, began exhibiting outage conditions again. Around ten minutes into the second occurrence, the nodes located in Kansas City, MO, were replaced by nodes located in Chicago, IL, exhibiting outage conditions. The outage was cleared at around 4:45 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for Aug. 26 – Sept. 1, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 191 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of Aug. 26 – Sept. 1. That’s a decrease of 6% from 204 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 77 outages, which is down 23% from 100 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, total ISP outages decreased from 142 to 134 outages, a 6% decrease compared to the week prior. In the U.S., ISP outages dropped from 71 to 54 outages, a 24% decrease.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages remained the same as the week prior, recording 24 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages decreased from 10 to eight outages

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages decreased from five to two outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages remained the same as the week prior, recording two outages.

Two notable outages

On Aug. 27, UUNET Verizon, acquired by Verizon in 2006 and now operating as Verizon Business, experienced an outage that affected customers and partners across multiple regions, including the U.S., Canada, China, Japan, the Philippines, and India. The outage lasted a total of 22 minutes over a 35-minute period. First observed around 12:55 AM EDT, the outage initially centered on Verizon Business nodes in Seattle, WA. Five minutes later, nodes in Seattle, WA, were joined by nodes in New York, NY, Jersey City, NJ, Newark, NJ, Los Angeles, CA, and Chicago, IL, all exhibiting outage conditions. This coincided with an increase in the number of impacted regions, downstream partners, and customers. Five minutes later, the nodes in Newark, NJ, and Jersey City, NJ, appeared to clear and were replaced by nodes in Washington, D.C., Seattle, WA, Richmond, VA, Ashburn, VA, and Providence, RI, all exhibiting outage conditions. Around twenty minutes after first being observed and five minutes after appearing to clear, nodes located in Seattle, WA, and Washington, D.C., once again exhibited outage conditions. The outage was cleared around 1:30 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On Aug. 28, Level 3 Communications, a U.S.-based Tier 1 carrier acquired by Lumen (previously CenturyLink) in 2017, experienced an outage that affected multiple downstream partners and customers across various regions, including the U.S., Brazil, the Netherlands, Egypt, India, Germany, Mexico, and the U.K. The outage, which lasted for 14 minutes, was first observed around 3:30 AM EDT and seemed to be centered on Level 3 nodes located in San Francisco, CA. Approximately five minutes after first being observed, some of the nodes in San Francisco, CA, appeared to clear. The reduction in impacted nodes seemed to coincide with a decrease in impacted regions. The outage was cleared around 3:45 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for Aug. 19-25, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 204 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of Aug. 19-25. That’s a decrease of 3% from 211 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 100 outages, which is up 27% from 79 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, total ISP outages increased from 135 to 142 outages, a 5% increase compared to the week prior. In the U.S., ISP outages jumped from 45 to 71 outages, a 58% increase.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages increased from 20 to 24 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages decreased from 11 to 10 outages.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages increased from three to five outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages remained the same as the week prior, recording two outages.

Two notable outages

On Aug. 22, UUNET Verizon, acquired by Verizon in 2006 and now operating as Verizon Business, experienced an outage that impacted customers and partners across multiple regions including the U.S., Canada, Japan, the Philippines, and India. The outage, lasting 24 minutes, was first observed around 12:45 AM EDT and appeared to initially be centered on Verizon Business nodes located in Seattle, WA. Five minutes after first being observed, nodes located in Seattle, WA, were joined by nodes located in Ashburn, VA, Richmond, VA, Denver, CO, New York, NY, and Chicago, IL, in exhibiting outage conditions. This rise in the number of node locations exhibiting outage conditions appeared to coincide with an increase in the number of impacted regions, downstream partners, and customers. The outage was cleared around 1:10 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On Aug. 20, NTT America, a global Tier 1 provider and subsidiary of NTT Global, experienced a series of outages over a 40-minute period. These outages impacted multiple downstream providers and customers across various regions, including the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Hong Kong, Malaysia, India, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, France, Australia, and Canada. The outage, which lasted a total of 21 minutes, was first observed around 10:10 PM EDT and initially appeared to be centered on NTT nodes located in Seattle, WA. Approximately fifteen minutes after appearing to clear, NTT America nodes in Newark, NJ, and Chicago, IL, began exhibiting outage conditions. About 10 minutes into the second occurrence, the nodes located in Newark, NJ, and Chicago, IL, were joined by nodes located in Seattle, WA, and New York, NY, in exhibiting outage conditions. Approximately 35 minutes after being first observed, all nodes, with the exception of those located in Seattle, WA, appeared to clear. The outage was cleared around 10:40 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for Aug. 12-18, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 211 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of Aug. 12-18. That’s an increase of 3% from 204 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 79 outages, which is down 23% from 103 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, total ISP outages increased slightly from 134 to 135 outages. In the U.S., ISP outages decreased from 69 to 45 outages, a 35% increase.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages increased slightly from 18 to 20 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages increased from five to 11 outages.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages remained the same as the week prior, recording 3 outages. In the U.S., there were two collaboration app network outages, up from one the week before. 

Three notable outages

On Aug. 14, TATA Communications (America) Inc., a global ISP and part of the Indian-owned TATA Communications, experienced an outage that impacted many of its downstream partners and customers in multiple regions, including the U.S., India, Germany, Colombia, Singapore, the U.K., Portugal, Mexico, and Chile. The outage lasted 42 minutes in total and was divided into two occurrences over a 50-minute period. It was first observed around 3:45 AM EDT. The first period of the outage, lasting around 3 minutes, appeared to be centered on TATA nodes located in New York, NY. Five minutes after the first occurrence cleared, the outage reappeared, with nodes located in New York, NY, and Newark, NJ, exhibiting outage conditions. Around 10 minutes into the second occurrence, the nodes located in New Jersey, NJ, appeared to clear and were replaced by nodes located in London, England, exhibiting outage conditions. A further 10 minutes later, nodes located in New York, NY, and London, England, were once again joined by nodes located in Newark, NJ, in exhibiting outage conditions. This rise in the number of node locations exhibiting outage conditions appeared to coincide with an increase in the number of impacted regions, downstream partners, and customers. The outage was cleared around 4:35 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On Aug. 14, Zayo Group, a U.S. based Tier 1 carrier headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, experienced an outage that impacted some of its partners and customers across multiple regions, including the U.S., Canada, and Japan. The outage lasted around 19 minutes, was first observed around 12:00 AM EDT, and appeared to center on Zayo Group nodes located in Seattle, WA. Within five minutes of being first observed, there was an increase in the number of nodes in Seattle, WA, exhibiting outage conditions. This rise in the number of nodes exhibiting outage conditions appeared to coincide with an increase in the number of impacted downstream partners and customers. The outage was cleared around 12:20 AM EST. Click here for an interactive view.

On Aug. 12, Google experienced an outage in a European Google Point of Presence (POP) due to the failure of both the primary and backup power feeds caused by a substation switchgear failure. This outage impacted a significant portion of Google’s Front Ends (GFEs) in the europe-west2 region, as well as some networking equipment. The power loss affected the availability of Cloud CDN, Cloud Load Balancing, Hybrid Connectivity, Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), and related services within the europe-west2 region. Consequently, the Internet routes advertised by Google were temporarily withdrawn in networks connected to Google’s network. Subsequently, the withdrawn routes were automatically replaced by other Google-advertised routes that were not reliant on the impacted networking equipment. Click here for an interactive view and here for a more detailed analysis.

Internet report for Aug. 5-11, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 204 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of Aug. 5-11. That’s an increase of 11% from 183 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 103 outages, which is up 32% from 78 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, total ISP outages increased from 121 to 134 outages, an 11% increase compared to the week prior. In the U.S., ISP outages increased from 55 to 69 outages, a 25% increase.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages dropped from 27 to 18 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages decreased from eight to five outages.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages dropped from 25 to three outages. In the U.S., there was one collaboration app network outage, up from zero the week before. 

Two notable outages

On Aug. 5, Cogent Communications, a multinational transit provider based in the US, experienced an outage that impacted multiple downstream providers and its own customers across various regions, including the U.S., India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Canada, Japan, the U.K., Mexico, China, South Korea, New Zealand, Brazil, Sweden, South Africa, the Netherlands, Egypt, Australia, Argentina, Colombia, Portugal, and Germany. The outage lasted for a total of fifty-three minutes and was divided into two occurrences over a period of one hour and 5 minutes. The first occurrence of the outage was observed around 1:10 PM EDT and initially seemed to be centered on Cogent nodes located in El Paso, TX, Los Angeles, CA, San Diego, CA, Houston, TX, Phoenix, AZ, Dallas, TX, Washington, D.C., Toronto, Canada, and Tokyo, Japan. Five minutes into the outage, all the nodes appeared to clear except those located in El Paso, TX, Los Angeles, CA, and San Diego, CA, which continued to exhibit outage conditions.  Around 25 minutes after first being observed, the nodes located in San Diego, CA, Los Angeles, CA, and El Paso, TX, were joined by nodes located in Phoenix, AZ, and Salt Lake City, UT, in exhibiting outage conditions. Ten minutes after appearing to clear, nodes located in Los Angeles, CA, once again appeared to exhibit outage conditions. Around five minutes into this second occurrence, the nodes located in Los Angeles, CA, were joined by nodes located in San Diego, CA, and San Antonio, TX, in exhibiting outage conditions. Five minutes later, nodes located in San Antonio, TX, appeared to clear, replaced by nodes located in El Paso, TX, that joined nodes located in San Diego, CA, Phoenix, AZ, and Los Angeles, CA, in exhibiting outage conditions. The outage was cleared around 2:15 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On Aug. 7, NTT America, a global Tier 1 provider and subsidiary of NTT Global, experienced a series of outages over a period of one hour and 30 minutes. These outages impacted multiple downstream providers and customers across various regions, including the U.S., Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. The outage, which lasted a total of 31 minutes, was first observed around 8:30 PM EDT and initially appeared to be centered on NTT nodes located in San Jose, CA. Approximately ten minutes after the initial outage, NTT America nodes in Seattle, WA, began exhibiting outage conditions. About 20 minutes into the second occurrence, the nodes located in Seattle, WA, were joined by nodes located in Dallas, TX, in exhibiting outage conditions. Approximately 45 minutes after the first occurrence, and around 55 minutes after first being observed, nodes located in San Jose, CA, started exhibiting outage conditions again. The outage was cleared around 10:00 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for July 29 – Aug. 4, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 183 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of July 29 – Aug. 4. That’s a decrease of 10% from 204 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 78 outages, which is up 28% from 61 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages remained the same as the week prior: 121 outages. In the U.S., outages climbed sharply from 36 to 55 outages, a 53% increase.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages increased from 24 to 27 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages remained the same as the week prior, recording 8 outages.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages increased from 19 to 25 outages. In the U.S., there were zero collaboration app network outages. 

Two notable outages

On Aug. 2, Comcast Communications, a Tier 2 provider headquartered in Philadelphia, PA, experienced an outage that impacted a number of downstream partners and customers across the U.S. and Canada. The outage, lasting 9 minutes, was first observed around 11:55 AM EDT and appeared to be centered on Comcast nodes located in Atlanta, GA. Five minutes into the outage, a number of nodes located in Atlanta, GA, appeared to clear. This reduction in nodes exhibiting outage conditions coincided with a reduction in the number of impacted downstream partners and customers. The outage was cleared around 12:05 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On Aug. 4, GTT Communications, a Tier 1 provider headquartered in Tysons, VA, experienced an outage that affected some of its partners and customers across multiple regions, including the U.S., the Netherlands, Germany, Bulgaria, Egypt, Spain, Belgium, the U.K., Mexico, South Korea, and Japan. The outage lasted a total of 14 minutes and occurred in two occurrences over a 20-minute period, beginning around 7:35 PM EDT. The first occurrence, which lasted around 9 minutes, initially appeared to be centered on GTT nodes located in Frankfurt, Germany. Around five minutes into the outage, the nodes located in Frankfurt, Germany, were joined by nodes located in Marseille, France, in exhibiting outage conditions. Five minutes after appearing to clear, a second occurrence was observed, this time appearing to center on nodes located in San Jose, CA, Seattle, WA, and Los Angeles, CA. The outage was resolved around 7:55 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for July 22-28, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 204 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of July 22-28. That’s an increase of 9% from 187 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 61 outages, which is down 34% from 93 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages increased from 119 to 121 outages, a 2% increase compared to the week prior. In the U.S., outages fell sharply from 67 to 36 outages, a 46% decline.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages slightly decreased from 26 to 24 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages increased from five to eight outages. 

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages more than tripled from six to 19 outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages increased from two to three outages. 

Two notable outages

On July 28, GTT Communications, a Tier 1 ISP headquartered in Tysons, VA, experienced an outage that impacted some of its partners and customers across multiple regions, including the U.S., the Netherlands, Germany, New Zealand, and Australia. The outage, which lasted 8 minutes, was first observed around 6:30 PM EDT and appeared to initially center on GTT nodes located in San Jose, CA, Aachen, Germany, Dusseldorf, Germany, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Around five minutes into the outage, all the nodes, except those located in San Jose, CA, appeared to clear, which were also joined by nodes located in Frankfurt, Germany, in exhibiting outage conditions. This change of location of nodes exhibiting outage conditions appeared to coincide with a decrease in the number of impacted regions, downstream partners, and customers. The outage was cleared around 6:40 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On July 24, Cogent Communications, a multinational transit provider based in the U.S., experienced a series of outages over a period of one hour and forty-five minutes that impacted multiple downstream providers and its own customers across various regions, including the U.S., the U.K., Portugal, Spain, Germany, New Zealand, Taiwan, South Africa, and The Netherlands. The outage, lasting a total of 17 minutes, was first observed around 7:10 AM EDT and initially seemed to be centered on Cogent nodes located in San Diego, CA. Around five minutes after first being observed, the nodes located in San Diego, CA appeared to clear and were replaced by nodes located in Bilbao, Spain, exhibiting outage conditions. Forty-five minutes after appearing to clear, nodes located in Bilbao, Spain began exhibiting outage conditions again, this time joined by nodes located in Houston, TX, Oakland, CA, Phoenix, AZ, and Raleigh, NC. The outage then appeared to clear for around forty minutes before nodes located in Portland, OR, began exhibiting outage conditions. The outage was cleared around 8:55 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for July 15-21, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 187 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of July 15-21. That’s an increase of 2% from 183 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 93 outages, which is up 12% from 83 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages increased from 103 to 119 outages, a 16% increase compared to the week prior. In the U.S., outages climbed from 52 to 67 outages, a 29% increase.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages decreased from 28 to 26 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages increased from four to five outages.  

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages dropped sharply from 20 to six outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages decreased from 11 to two outages. 

Three notable outages

On July 18, Microsoft experienced a network outage that affected access to various Azure services and customer accounts configured with a single-region service in the Central U.S. region. During the outage, Microsoft nodes located in Des Moines, IA, experienced conditions that impacted connectivity to the Azure Central U.S. region. Microsoft announced that the issue was related to Azure Storage availability, which began affecting some customers around 5:40 PM EDT. Intermittent disruption and connectivity issues were observed during the outage. Click here for an interactive view.

On July 29, Comcast Communications experienced an outage that affected several downstream partners and customers across the U.S. The outage lasted a total of 12 minutes and consisted of three occurrences over a two-hour and forty-minute period. The first occurrence took place around 10:25 AM EDT and appeared to be centered on Comcast nodes located in Houston, TX, and Dallas, TX. Approximately two hours and twenty minutes later, the nodes in Dallas, TX, once again exhibited outage conditions. About two hours and thirty-five minutes after the initial observation, the third occurrence was seen once again centering on nodes in Dallas, TX, and Houston, TX. The outage was resolved around 1:05 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On July 21, Hurricane Electric, a network transit provider based in Fremont, CA, experienced an outage that affected customers and downstream partners across multiple regions, including the U.S., Australia, Kenya, Israel, Canada, and the U.K. The outage was first observed around 3:30 AM EDT and lasted for a total of 13 minutes. It initially appeared to be centered on Hurricane Electric nodes located in New York, NY, Portland, OR, and San Jose, CA. Twenty-Five minutes after appearing to clear nodes located in San Jose, CA, began exhibiting outage conditions again. The outage was cleared at around 4:00 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for July 8-14, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 183 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of July 8-14. That’s an increase of 21% from 151 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 83 outages, which is up 57% from 53 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages increased from 95 to 103 outages, an 8% increase compared to the week prior. In the U.S., outages climbed from 31 to 52 outages, a 68% increase.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages increased from 16 to 28 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages decreased from five to four outages.  

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages increased from 12 to 20 outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages jumped from four to 11 outages. 

Two notable outages

On July 13, Hurricane Electric, a network transit provider based in Fremont, CA, experienced an outage that affected customers and downstream partners across multiple regions, including the U.S., the Netherlands, China, the U.K., Spain, South Africa, Kenya, Canada, and Belgium. The outage was first observed around 9:35 AM EDT and lasted for a total of 43 minutes. It initially appeared to be centered on Hurricane Electric nodes located in New York, NY. Fifteen minutes after first being observed, nodes located in New York, NY, were joined by nodes in Ashburn, VA, and Bilbao, Spain, in exhibiting outage conditions. Around 5 minutes after appearing to clear, Hurricane Electric nodes located in Ashburn, VA, once again exhibited outage conditions before, around five minutes later, being joined once again by nodes located in New York, NY. The outage was cleared at around 9:25 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On July 13, Time Warner Cable, a U.S. based ISP owned by Charter Communications, experienced a disruption that impacted a number of customers and partners across the U.S. The outage was first observed at around 7:55 PM EDT and appeared to center on Time Warner Cable nodes located in New York, NY.  Five minutes after first being observed, the number of nodes located in New York, NY, exhibiting outage conditions increased. The outage lasted a total of 23 minutes and was cleared at around 8:20 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for July 1-7, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 151 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of July 1-7. That’s a decline of 30% from 216 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 53 outages, which is down 21% from 67 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages decreased from 131 to 95 outages, a 27% decline compared to the week prior. In the U.S., outages fell from 41 to 31 outages, a 24% decrease.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages decreased from 24 to 16 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages increased from four to five outages.  

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages declined from 17 to 12 outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages decreased from six to four outages. 

Two notable outages

On July 6, Hurricane Electric, a network transit provider headquartered in Fremont, CA, experienced an outage that impacted customers and downstream partners across multiple regions, including the U.S., the Netherlands, and Belgium. First observed around 1:45 AM EDT, the outage lasted for a total of 10 minutes. It appeared to initially center on Hurricane Electric nodes located in New York, NY, and Chicago, IL. Around 35 minutes after appearing to clear, Hurricane Electric nodes located in Dallas, TX, exhibited outage conditions before being replaced by nodes located in Chicago, IL, around five minutes later. The outage was cleared at around 2:35 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On July 2, NTT America, a global Tier 1 ISP and subsidiary of NTT Global, experienced an outage that impacted some of its customers and downstream partners across multiple regions, including the U.S., Hong Kong, and Mexico. The outage, lasting a total of 8 minutes, was divided into two occurrences over a 25-minute period. Initially observed around 1:10 PM EDT, the first occurrence appeared to center on NTT nodes located in Dallas, TX. Around fifteen minutes after appearing to clear, the nodes located in Dallas, TX, began exhibiting outage conditions again. The outage was cleared around 1:35 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for June 24-30, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 216 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of June 24-30. That’s down 16% from 256 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 67 outages, which is down 29% from 94 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages decreased from 178 to 131 outages, a 26% decline compared to the week prior. In the U.S., outages fell from 69 to 41 outages, a 41% decrease.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages increased from 21 to 24 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages increased from three to four outages.  

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages declined from 26 to 17 outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages decreased from nine to six outages. 

Two notable outages

On June 28, NTT America, a global Tier 1 service provider and subsidiary of NTT Global, experienced an outage that impacted some of its customers and downstream partners in multiple regions, including the U.S., Switzerland, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Japan. The outage lasted for 19 minutes and was first observed around 7:30 AM EDT. It initially centered on NTT nodes located in Chicago, IL and New York, NY. Around five minutes into the outage, the nodes located in Chicago, IL, appeared to clear. This decrease in affected nodes appeared to coincide with a decrease in the number of impacted downstream customers and partners. The outage was cleared around 7:50 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On June 27, Cogent Communications, a multinational transit provider based in the US, experienced a series of outages over a period of one hour and five minutes that impacted multiple downstream providers and its own customers across various regions, including the U.S., Mexico, Spain, Chile, and Peru. Lasting a total of 10 minutes, the outage was first observed around 9:45 AM EDT and initially seemed to be centered on Cogent nodes located in Austin, TX. Twenty-five minutes after appearing to clear, nodes located in Houston, TX, began exhibiting outage conditions. The outage was cleared around 10:50 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for June 17-23, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 256 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of June 17-23. That’s a jump of 38% from 186 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 94 outages, which is up 38% from 68 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages increased from 116 to 178 outages, a 53% jump compared to the week prior. In the U.S., outages increased from 43 to 69 outages, a 60% increase.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages decreased from 25 to 21 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages decreased from nine to three outages.  

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages more than doubled from to 26 outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages increased from five to nine outages. 

Two notable outages

On June 21, NTT America, a global Tier 1 service provider and subsidiary of NTT Global, experienced an outage that impacted some of its customers and downstream partners in multiple regions, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, Singapore, India, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Japan. The outage lasted a total of 14 minutes and was first observed around 3:45 AM EDT. It initially centered on NTT nodes located in Chicago, IL. Around five minutes into the outage, the nodes exhibiting outage conditions, increased to include nodes located in San Jose, CA, Seattle, WA, and Dallas, TX. This increase in affected nodes appeared to coincide with an increase in the number of impacted downstream customers and partners. Five minutes later, all the nodes except for those located in Chicago, IL, appeared to clear. The outage was cleared around 4:00 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On June 20, Level 3 Communications, a U.S.-based Tier 1 carrier, experienced an outage that impacted multiple downstream partners and customers in multiple regions, including the U.S., the Netherlands, Mexico, India, and Germany. The outage lasted a total of 11 minutes over a twenty-five-minute period. It was first observed around 4:15 AM EDT and appeared to be centered on Level 3 nodes located in San Francisco, CA. Around ten minutes after appearing to clear, the nodes located in San Francisco, CA, began exhibiting outage conditions again. The outage was cleared around 4:40 AM UTC. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for June 10-16, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 186 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of June 10-16. That’s down 6% from 197 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 68 outages, which is up 6% from 64 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages decreased from 127 to 116 outages, a 9% decrease compared to the week prior. In the U.S., the number of ISP outages remained at the same level as the week prior, recording 43 outages.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages remained the same as the week prior: 25 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages increased from eight to nine outages.  

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages dropped from 19 to 11 outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages decreased from six to five outages. 

Two notable outages

On June 12, NTT America, a global Tier 1 service provider and subsidiary of NTT Global, experienced an outage that impacted some of its customers and downstream partners in multiple regions, including the U.S., the U.K., the Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, Romania, Australia, Egypt, Canada, France, Belgium, Switzerland, India, Poland, Austria, South Africa, Singapore, Mexico, and Japan. The outage lasted for one hour and 17 minutes in total and was first observed around 2:00 PM EDT. It appeared to be centered on NTT nodes located in Ashburn, VA. Twenty minutes after appearing to clear, nodes located in Ashburn, VA, began exhibiting outage conditions again. Five minutes into this outage occurrence, the nodes located in Ashburn, VA, were joined by nodes located in Atlanta, GA, in exhibiting outage conditions. The outage was cleared around 3:40 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On June 13, Arelion (formerly known as Telia Carrier), a global Tier 1 provider headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, experienced an outage that impacted customers and downstream partners across multiple regions, including the U.S., the U.K., Germany, Luxembourg, Ireland, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Norway, Mexico, India, France, and Italy. The disruption, which lasted a total of 13 minutes, was first observed around 12:35 PM EDT and appeared to initially center on nodes located in Phoenix, AZ. Five minutes after being first observed, the nodes located in Phoenix, AZ, cleared and were replaced by nodes located in Ghent, Belgium, Frankfurt, Germany, and Stockholm, Sweden, in exhibiting outage conditions. Around 12:45 PM EDT, all the nodes appeared to clear but five minutes later, nodes located in Madrid, Spain, Stockholm, Sweden, Dublin, Ireland, and London, England, began exhibiting outage conditions. This rise in nodes and locations exhibiting outage conditions also appeared to coincide with an increase in the number of downstream customers, partners, and regions impacted. The outage was cleared around 12:55 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for June 3-9, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 197 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of June 3-9. That’s up 14% from 173 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 64 outages, which is up 14% from 56 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages rose from 92 to 127 outages, a 38% increase compared to the week prior. In the U.S., the number of ISP outages increased 26% from 34 to 43 outages.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages decreased from 27 to 25 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages increased from six to eight outages

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages dropped from 38 to 19 outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages climbed from 10 to six outages. 

Two notable outages

On June 6, Level 3 Communications, a U.S.-based Tier 1 carrier, experienced an outage that impacted multiple downstream partners and customers across the U.S. The outage lasted a total of 13 minutes over a twenty-five-minute period and was first observed around 12:10 AM EDT and appeared to initially be centered on Level 3 nodes located in Atlanta, GA, Orlando, FL, and Tampa, FL. After five minutes, the nodes in Orlando, FL, appeared to clear. This reduction in nodes exhibiting outage conditions coincided with a reduction in the number of impacted downstream partners and customers. The outage was cleared around 12:35 AM UTC. Click here for an interactive view.

On June 6, NTT America, a global Tier 1 service provider and subsidiary of NTT Global, experienced an outage that impacted some of its customers and downstream partners in multiple regions, including the U.S., the U.K., the Philippines, Germany, the Netherlands, and Japan. The outage lasted for 13 minutes and was first observed around 2:45 AM EDT. It initially centered on NTT nodes located in Los Angeles, CA, Chicago, IL, Miami, FL, London, England, and Ashburn, VA. Around five minutes into the outage, the nodes in these locations appeared to clear and were replaced by nodes located in Seattle, WA, exhibiting outage conditions. This decrease in affected nodes appeared to coincide with a decrease in the number of impacted downstream customers and partners. Five minutes later, the nodes in Seattle, WA, cleared and were replaced by nodes located in Newark, NJ, Ashburn, VA, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, London, England, and Paris, France, which exhibited outage conditions. The outage was cleared around 3:00 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for May 27- June 2, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 173 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of May 27- June 2. That’s down 14% from 202 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 56 outages, which is down 14% from 65 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages decreased from 121 to 92 outages, a 24% decline compared to the week prior. In the U.S., the number of ISP outages decreased 33% from 51 to 34 outages.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages decreased from 37 to 27 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages increased from five to six outages

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages more than doubled, jumping from 14 to 38 outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages climbed from three to 10 outages. 

Two notable outages

On May 28, Rackspace Technology, a U.S. managed cloud computing provider headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, experienced an outage that impacted multiple downstream providers, as well as Rackspace customers within multiple regions including the U.S., Canada, Germany, Mexico, France, the Netherlands, Singapore, Chile, Switzerland, Vietnam, Brazil, South Africa, Spain, and Turkey. The outage, lasting a total of 14 minutes, was first observed around 9:00 AM EDT and appeared to center on Rackspace nodes located in Chicago, IL. Around five minutes into the outage, a number of nodes located in Chicago, IL exhibiting outage conditions, appeared to clear. This decrease in impacted nodes appeared to coincide with a reduction of impacted regions. The outage was cleared around 9:15 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On May 29, Microsoft experienced an outage on its network that impacted some downstream partners and access to services running on Microsoft environments in multiple regions including the U.S., China, Ireland, Hong Kong, the U.K., India and Australia. The outage, which lasted 14 minutes, was first observed around 5:25 PM EDT and appeared to initially center on Microsoft nodes located in Des Moines, IA, Newark, NJ, Cleveland, OH, Atlanta, GA, Miami, FL, and Portland, OR. Around five minutes after first being observed, nodes located in Atlanta, GA, and Miami, FL, appeared to clear and were replaced by nodes located in Paris, France, Tokyo, Japan and Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in exhibiting outage conditions. The outage was cleared around 5:40 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for May 20-26, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 202 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of May 20-26. That’s down 11% from 227 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 65 outages, which is down 23% from 84 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages decreased from 157 to 121 outages, a 23% decline compared to the week prior. In the U.S., the number of ISP outages decreased 11% from 57 to 51 outages.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages increased from 33 to 37 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages decreased from 10 to five outages

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages jumped from six to 14 outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages remained the same as the week prior, recording 3 outages. 

Two notable outages

On May 21, Time Warner Cable, a U.S.-based ISP, experienced a disruption that affected numerous customers and partners across multiple regions, including the U.S., U.K., Canada, Singapore, Thailand, and Mexico. The outage occurred in a series of occurrences over a two-hour period, starting at around 6:05 AM EDT. Initially, the issue appeared to be centered on Time Warner Cable nodes in New York, NY. Five minutes after the first observation, the number of affected nodes in New York, NY, increased and nodes in Denver, CO, and Los Angeles, CA, were also impacted. Another five minutes later, the nodes in Denver, CO, and Los Angeles, CA, were no longer affected, but nodes in Chicago, IL, started exhibiting outage conditions. Twenty-five minutes after the initial observation, nodes in New York, NY, and Chicago, IL, were affected again, along with nodes in Denver, CO, and Dallas, TX. Four minutes later, all nodes seemed to recover, but then nodes in New York, NY, Chicago, IL, and Denver, CO, experienced outage conditions and recoveries across five further occurrences. The outage lasted a total of 49 minutes and was resolved around 8:05 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On May 21, GTT Communications, a Tier 1 provider headquartered in Tysons, VA, experienced an outage that affected some of its partners and customers across multiple regions, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands. The outage lasted a total of 32 minutes and occurred in three occurrences over a one hour and 15-minute period, beginning around 3:05 PM EDT. The first occurrence, which lasted around 19 minutes, seemed to be centered on GTT nodes located in Seattle, WA, San Jose, CA, Los Angeles, CA, and San Francisco, CA. Five minutes after it appeared to be resolved, a second occurrence was observed, this time affecting nodes in San Jose, CA, Seattle, WA, and Los Angeles, CA. This reduction in affected nodes coincided with a decrease in the number of regions and partners impacted. Thirty-five minutes after the nodes in San Jose, CA, and Los Angeles, CA, appeared to be cleared, they exhibited outage conditions once again. The outage was resolved around 4:20 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for May 13-19, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 227 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of May 13-19. That’s up a sizable 43% from 159 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 84 outages, which is up 27% from 66 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages increased from 105 to 157 outages, a 50% leap compared to the week prior. In the U.S., the number of ISP outages increased 43% from 40 to 57 outages.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages increased from 18 to 33 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages increased from nine to 10.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages decreased from seven to six outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages increased from two to three outages.

Two notable outages

On May 19, Cogent Communications, a U.S.-based multinational transit provider, experienced an outage that impacted multiple downstream providers as well as Cogent customers across various regions, including the U.S., the U.K., Mexico, Spain, Singapore, Brazil, Turkey, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, China, Portugal, Chile, Peru, Canada, India, Thailand, South Korea, France, and Japan. The outage, which lasted 19 minutes, was first observed around 4:55 PM EDT and initially centered on Cogent nodes located in Nashville, TN. Five minutes after first being observed, the nodes experiencing outage conditions expanded to include nodes in Houston, TX, Atlanta, GA, New York, NY, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, PA. Five minutes later, the number of locations with nodes exhibiting outage conditions expanded again, this time including nodes in Bilbao, Spain, Dallas, TX, Phoenix, AZ, Charlotte, NC, and Indianapolis, IN. As a result, the number of impacted customers and providers increased. The outage was resolved around 5:15 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On May 16, Rackspace Technology, a U.S. managed cloud computing provider headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, experienced a series of outages over a period of four hours and fifteen minutes that impacted multiple downstream providers, as well as Rackspace customers within multiple regions including the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Germany, Singapore, Chile, Brazil, France, Spain, South Africa, Vietnam, Turkey, and Switzerland. The outage, lasting a total of 28 minutes, was first observed around 5:00 AM EDT and appeared to center on Rackspace nodes located in Chicago, IL. The outage was cleared around 9:15 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for May 6-12, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 159 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of May 6-12. That’s down 5% from 151 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 66 outages, which is up 32% from 50 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages declined from 113 to 105 outages, a 7% decrease compared to the week prior. In the U.S., the number of ISP outages increased slightly (3%) from 39 to 40 outages.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages increased from 15 to 18 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages jumped from two to nine.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages decreased from nine to seven outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages fell from three to two outages.

Two notable outages

On May 8, Time Warner Cable, a U.S. based ISP, experienced a disruption that impacted a number of customers and partners across the U.S. The outage was first observed at around 7:45 PM EDT and appeared to center on Time Warner Cable nodes located in New York, NY.  Five minutes after first being observed, the number of nodes located in New York, NY, exhibiting outage conditions increased. The outage lasted a total of 23 minutes and was cleared at around 8:10 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On May 7, Comcast Communications experienced an outage that impacted a number of downstream partners and customers across the U.S. and Canada. The outage, lasting 8 minutes, was first observed around 1:20 AM EDT and appeared to be centered on Comcast nodes located in Chicago, IL and Ashburn, VA. Five minutes into the outage, the nodes located in Ashburn, VA, appeared to clear, leaving the nodes located in Chicago, IL, exhibiting outage conditions. The apparent decrease of nodes exhibiting outage conditions appeared to coincide with a decrease in the number of impacted downstream customers and partners. The outage was cleared around 1:30 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for April 29- May 5, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 151 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of April 29- May 5. That’s down slightly (3%) from 156 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 50 outages, which is down 7% from 54 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages increased from 104 to 113 outages, a 9% increase compared to the week prior. In the U.S., the number of ISP outages increased 5% from 37 to 39 outages.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages decreased from 22 to 15 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages decreased from six to two.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages increased from eight to nine outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages fell from four to three outages.

Two notable outages

On April 29, NTT America, a global Tier 1 ISP and subsidiary of NTT Global, experienced an outage that impacted some of its customers and downstream partners in multiple regions, including the U.S., Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Singapore, the Netherlands, Hungary, Turkey, Brazil, India, Argentina, Australia, the U.K., Thailand, Malaysia, Mexico, and Canada. The outage, lasting 24 minutes, was first observed around 2:40 PM EDT and appeared to initially center on NTT nodes located in San Jose, CA. Around five minutes into the outage, the nodes located in San Jose, CA, appeared to clear, and were replaced by nodes located in Tokyo, Japan, in exhibiting outage conditions. Ten minutes after first being observed, the nodes located in Tokyo, Japan, were joined by nodes located in Osaka, Japan, Singapore, Dallas, TX, and Los Angeles, CA, in exhibiting outage conditions. The outage was cleared around 3:05 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On April 29, Cogent Communications, a multinational transit provider based in the US, experienced an outage that impacted multiple downstream providers and customers across various regions, including the U.S., Brazil, the U.K., Canada, Chile, Mexico, Japan, Germany, Spain, and France. The outage, lasting for a total of one hour and 12 minutes, was divided into two occurrences over a period of 35 minutes. The first occurrence was observed around 2:45 AM EDT and initially seemed to be centered on Cogent nodes located in Ashburn, VA, and Washington, D.C. Five minutes into the outage, the nodes located in Ashburn, VA, appeared to clear and were replaced by nodes located in Baltimore, MD, New York, NY, and Phoenix, AZ, along with nodes located in Washington, D.C., in exhibiting outage conditions. This increase in nodes exhibiting outage conditions also appeared to coincide with an increase in the number of downstream customers, partners, and regions impacted. Twenty minutes after appearing to clear, nodes located in New York, NY, and Washington, D.C., were joined by nodes located in Houston, TX, in exhibiting outage conditions. The outage was cleared around 3:20 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for April 22-28, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 156 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of April 22-28. That’s down 8% from 170 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 54 outages, which is down 36% from 85 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages increased from 99 to 104 outages, a 5% increase compared to the week prior. In the U.S., the number of ISP outages decreased 31% from 54 to 37 outages.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages remained the same as the week prior, recording 22 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages decreased from 10 to six.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages decreased from nine to eight outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages stayed at the same level as the week before: four outages.

Two notable outages

On April 26, Time Warner Cable, a U.S. based ISP, experienced a disruption that impacted a number of customers and partners across the U.S. The outage was distributed across two occurrences over a twenty-five-minute period and was first observed at around 7:45 PM EDT and appeared to center on Time Warner Cable nodes located in New York, NY.  Ten minutes after first being observed, the number of nodes located in New York, NY, exhibiting outage conditions increased. The outage lasted a total of 17 minutes and was cleared at around 8:10 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On April 24, NTT America, a global Tier 1 ISP and subsidiary of NTT Global, experienced an outage that impacted some of its customers and downstream partners in multiple regions, including the U.S., Germany, India, China, Hong Kong, Canada, and Japan. The outage, lasting 9 minutes, was first observed around 7:15 AM EDT and appeared to initially center on NTT nodes located in San Jose, CA. Around five minutes into the outage, the nodes located in San Jose, CA, were joined by nodes located in Dallas, TX, in exhibiting outage conditions. The outage was cleared around 7:25 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for April 15-21, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 170 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of April 15-21. That’s up 11% from 161 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 85 outages, which is up 18% from 72 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages decreased from 107 to 99 outages, a 7% decline compared to the week prior. In the U.S., the number of ISP outages climbed 6% from 51 to 54 outages.

Public cloud network outages: Both globally (22) and in the U.S. (10), cloud provider network outages remained the same as the week prior.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages increased from five to nine outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages increased from two to four outages.

Two notable outages

On April 20, Cogent Communications, a multinational transit provider based in the US, experienced an outage that impacted multiple downstream providers and its own customers across various regions, including the US, Canada, Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, South Africa, Hong Kong, Singapore, the U.K., Italy, France, and Spain. The outage, lasting a total of one hour and 32 minutes, was divided into a series of occurrences over a period of two hours and 28 minutes. The first occurrence was observed around 10:55 PM EDT and initially seemed to be centered on Cogent nodes located in Seattle, WA, Portland, OR, and Hong Kong. Five minutes into the outage, the nodes located in Hong Kong appeared to clear and were replaced by nodes located in Minneapolis, MN, and Cleveland OH, in exhibiting outage conditions. Thirty-five minutes into the first occurrence, the number of nodes exhibiting outage conditions increased to include nodes located in Seattle, WA, Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, MN, Cleveland, OH, Boston, MA, and Bilbao, Spain. This increase in nodes exhibiting outage conditions also appeared to coincide with an increase in the number of downstream customers, partners, and regions impacted. A second occurrence was observed around five minutes after the issue initially appeared to have cleared. This second occurrence lasted approximately fourteen minutes and seemed to initially be centered around nodes located in Cleveland, OH. Around five minutes into the second occurrence, nodes located in Cleveland, OH, appeared to be temporarily replaced by nodes located in Seattle, WA, and Chicago, IL, before they themselves were replaced once again by nodes located in Cleveland, OH.  Around 15 minutes after appearing to clear, a third occurrence was observed, this time appearing to be centered around nodes located in Bilbao, Spain, and Cleveland, OH. The outage was cleared around 1:25 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On April 17, NTT America, a global Tier 1 ISP and subsidiary of NTT Global, experienced an outage that impacted some of its customers and downstream partners across multiple regions including the U.S., the U.K., the Netherlands, and Germany. The outage, lasting 17 minutes, was first observed around 2:55 AM EDT and appeared to initially center on NTT nodes located in Seattle, WA. Five minutes into the outage nodes located in Seattle, WA, were joined by nodes located in Dallas, TX, in exhibiting outage conditions. The outage was cleared around 3:15 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for April 8-14, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 161 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of April 8-14. That’s up 11% from 154 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 72 outages, which is up 4% from 69 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages increased from 97 to 107 outages, a 10% increase compared to the week prior. In the U.S., the number of ISP outages climbed 13% from 45 to 51 outages.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages increased from 16 to 22 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages decreased from 14 to 10 outages.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages remained at the same level as the week prior, recording 5 outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages decreased from three to two outages.

Two notable outages

On April 8, Rackspace Technology, a U.S. managed cloud computing provider headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, experienced an outage that impacted multiple downstream providers, as well as Rackspace customers within multiple regions including the U.S., Japan, Vietnam, Spain, Canada, Germany, Singapore, France, the Netherlands, the U.K., Brazil, and South Africa. The outage, lasting a total of 14 minutes, was first observed around 9:00 AM EDT and appeared to center on Rackspace nodes located in Chicago, IL. Around five minutes into the outage, the number of nodes located in Chicago, IL, exhibiting outage conditions, appeared to clear. This decrease in impacted nodes appeared to coincide with a reduction of impacted regions. The outage was cleared around 9:15 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On Apr 10, GTT Communications, a Tier 1 ISP headquartered in Tysons, VA, experienced an outage that impacted some of its partners and customers across multiple regions, including the U.S., the U.K., Brazil, and Canada. The outage, lasting 9 minutes, was first observed around 8:10 AM EDT and appeared to initially be centered on GTT nodes located in Los Angeles, CA. Around five minutes into the outage the nodes located in Los Angeles appeared to clear and were replaced by nodes located in New York, NY, in exhibiting outage conditions. This change in location of nodes exhibiting outage conditions appeared to coincide with an increase in the number of impacted regions, downstream partners and customers. The outage was cleared around 8:20 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for April 1-7, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 145 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of April 1-7. That’s up 23% from 118 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 69 outages, which is up 21% from 57 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Both globally and in the U.S., ISP outages increased by 45% compared to the week prior. Globally, the number of ISP outages climbed from 67 to 97. In the U.S., the number of ISP outages jumped from 31 to 45 outages.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages declined slightly from 17 to 16 outages. In the U.S., they remained at the same level (14) as the previous week.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages fell from 13 to five outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages dropped from eight to three outages.

Two notable outages

On April 2, Hurricane Electric, a network transit provider headquartered in Fremont, CA, experienced an outage that impacted customers and downstream partners across multiple regions, including the U.S., Taiwan, Australia, Germany, Japan, the U.K., Ireland, India, and China. The outage, lasting 12 minutes, was first observed around 12:40 PM EDT and initially appeared to center on Hurricane Electric nodes located in New York, NY, Los Angeles, CA, and San Jose, CA. Five minutes into the outage, the nodes exhibiting outage conditions expanded to include nodes located in Chicago, IL, and Ashburn, VA. This coincided with an increase in the number of downstream partners and countries impacted. The outage was cleared around 12:55 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On April 2, BT, a multinational Tier 1 ISP headquartered in London, U.K., experienced an outage on their European backbone that impacted customers and downstream partners across multiple regions, including the U.S., the U.K., Switzerland, Spain, and Germany. The disruption, lasting 24 minutes, was first observed around 7:20 PM EDT and appeared to center on nodes located in London, England. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for March 25-31, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 118 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of March 18-24. That’s down 28% from 164 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 57 outages, which is down slightly from 58 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages was nearly cut in half, falling from 128 to 67 outages, a 48% decrease compared to the week prior. In the U.S., the number of ISP outages fell slightly from 43 to 31 outages, a decline of 28%.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, total cloud provider network outages nearly tripled, jumping from six to 17 outages. In the U.S., cloud provider network outages jumped from three to 14 outages

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages more than doubled, increasing from six to 13. Similarly, in the U.S., collaboration app network outages doubled from four to eight.

Two notable outages

On March 29, Arelion (formerly known as Telia Carrier), a global Tier 1 ISP headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, experienced an outage that impacted customers and downstream partners across multiple regions, including the U.S., the Netherlands, and Japan. The disruption, lasting a total of 8 minutes, was first observed around 5:26 AM EDT and appeared to center on nodes located in Phoenix, AZ. The outage was cleared around 5:35 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On March 29, Cogent Communications, a U.S. based multinational transit provider, experienced an outage that impacted multiple downstream providers as well as Cogent customers across multiple regions, including the U.S., Canada, Germany, and Japan. The outage, lasting 9 minutes, was first observed around 1:45 AM EDT and appeared to initially center on Cogent nodes located in San Francisco, CA, Salt Lake City, UT, and Seattle, WA. Five minutes after first being observed, the nodes located in San Francisco, CA, Salt Lake City, UT and Seattle, WA, appeared to recover and were replaced by nodes located in Kansas City, MO in exhibiting outage conditions. As a result, the number of customers and providers impacted was reduced. The outage was cleared around 1:55 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for March 18-24, 2024

After a spike the week before, global outages decreased last week. ThousandEyes reported 164 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of March 18-24. That’s down 20% from 206 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 58 outages, which is down 33% from 87 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages fell slightly from 131 to 128 outages, a 2% decrease compared to the week prior. In the U.S., the number of ISP outages fell slightly from 46 to 43 outages.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages decreased from 10 to six outages. In the U.S., they decreased from six to three outages.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages fell dramatically from 34 to six outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages dropped from 28 to four outages.

Two notable outages

On March 20, Cogent Communications, a multinational transit provider based in the US, experienced an outage that impacted multiple downstream providers and its own customers across various regions, including the US, Italy, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Canada, Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Chile, Brazil, Kenya, Singapore, Mexico, Switzerland, Spain, Australia, Finland, Japan, Ireland, and Norway. The outage occurred for a total of 24 minutes, divided into three occurrences over a period of one hour and fifteen minutes. The first occurrence of the outage was observed around 12:50 AM EDT and initially seemed to be centered on Cogent nodes located in Frankfurt, Munich, and Hamburg in Germany, in Paris, France, and Kyiv, Ukraine. A second occurrence was observed around fifteen minutes after the issue initially appeared to have cleared. This second occurrence lasted approximately eighteen minutes and seemed to be centered around nodes located in Frankfurt, Munich, and Hamburg, Germany. Around ten minutes into the second occurrence, nodes located in Frankfurt, Munich and Hamburg, Germany, were joined by nodes located in Nuremberg, Germany, San Francisco, CA, San Jose, CA, Zurich, Switzerland, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Paris, France in exhibiting outage conditions. Around 30 minutes after appearing to clear, a third occurrence was observed, this time appearing to be centered around nodes located in Toronto, Canada. The outage was cleared around 2:05 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On March 24, Hurricane Electric, a network transit provider headquartered in Fremont, CA, experienced an outage that impacted customers and downstream partners across multiple regions, including the U.S., China, Australia, Germany, the U.K., and Japan. The outage, first observed around 1:10 PM EDT, lasted 7 minutes in total and appeared to center on Hurricane Electric nodes located in New York, NY, and San Jose, CA. The outage was cleared at around 1:20 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Internet report for March 11-17, 2024

After weeks of decreasing, global outages increased significantly last week. ThousandEyes reported 206 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of March 11-17. That’s up 45% from 142 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 87 outages, which is up 38% from 63 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages increased from 91 to 131 outages, a 44% increase compared to the week prior. In the U.S., the number of ISP outages climbed slightly from 44 to 46 outages.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages increased from six to 10 outages. In the U.S., they increased from four to six outages.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages spiked from six to 34 outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages jumped from 3 to 28 outages.

Two notable outages

On March 16, Cogent Communications, a U.S. based multinational transit provider, experienced an outage that impacted multiple downstream providers as well as Cogent customers across multiple regions, including the U.S., Ireland, the U.K., Sweden, Austria, Germany, and Italy. The outage, lasting a total of 12 minutes, was divided into two occurrences over a one-hour and ten-minute period. The first occurrence was observed at around 6:30 PM EDT and appeared to initially be centered on Cogent nodes located in Baltimore, MD and New York, NY. Five minutes into the first occurrence, the nodes located in New York, NY, were replaced by nodes located in Philadelphia, PA, in exhibiting outage conditions. One hour after the issue initially appeared to have cleared, a second occurrence was observed. This second occurrence lasted approximately four minutes and appeared to be centered around nodes located in Baltimore, MD, Philadelphia, PA, New York, NY, and Newark, NJ. The outage was cleared around 7:45 PM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

On March 12, Hurricane Electric, a network transit provider headquartered in Fremont, CA, experienced an outage that impacted customers and downstream partners across the U.S. and Canada. The outage, first observed around 2:00 AM EDT, lasted 7 minutes in total and was divided into two occurrences over a thirty-minute period. The first occurrence appeared to initially center on Hurricane Electric nodes located in Chicago, IL. Twenty minutes after appearing to clear, the nodes located in Chicago, IL, were joined by nodes located in Seattle, WA in exhibiting outage conditions. This increase in impacted nodes appeared to coincide with an increase in the number of impacted downstream customers and partners. The outage was cleared at around 2:30 AM EDT. Click here for an interactive view.

Additional details from ThousandEyes are available here.

Internet report for March 4-10, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 142 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of March 4-10. That’s down 8% from 155 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 63 outages, which is down 10% from 70 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages decreased from 95 to 91 outages, a 4% decrease compared to the week prior. In the U.S., the number of ISP outages stayed the same at 44 outages.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages fell from 13 to six outages. In the U.S., they decreased from seven to four outages.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages decreased from eight outages to six. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages stayed at the same level as the week before: three outages.

Three notable outages

On March 5, several Meta services, including Facebook and Instagram, experienced a disruption that impacted users attempting to login, preventing them from accessing those applications. The disruption was first observed around 10:00 AM EST. During the disruption, Meta’s web servers remained reachable, with network paths to Meta services showing no significant error conditions, suggesting that a backend service, such as authentication, was the cause of the issue. The service was fully restored around 11:40 AM EST. More detailed analysis here.

On March 5, Comcast Communications experienced an outage that impacted a number of downstream partners and customers as well as the reachability of many applications and services, including Webex, Salesforce, and AWS. The outage, lasting 1 hour and 48 minutes, was first observed around 2:45 PM EST and appeared to impact traffic as it traversed Comcast’s network backbone in Texas, with Comcast nodes located in Dallas, TX and Houston TX, exhibiting outage conditions. The outage was completely cleared around 4:40 PM EST. More detailed analysis here.

On March 6, LinkedIn experienced a service disruption that impacted its mobile and desktop global user base. The disruption was first observed around 3:45 PM EST, with users experiencing service unavailable error messages. The major portion of the disruption lasted around one hour, during which time no network issues were observed connecting to LinkedIn web servers, further indicating the issue was application related. At around 4:38 PM EST, the service started to recover and was totally clear for all users around 4:50 PM EST. More detailed analysis here.

Additional details from ThousandEyes are available here.

Internet report for Feb. 26-March 3, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 155 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of Feb. 26-March 3. That’s down 6% from 165 outages the week prior. Specific to the U.S., there were 70 outages, which is up 19% from 59 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages decreased from 111 to 95 outages, a 14% decrease compared to the week prior. In the U.S., ISP outages increased 10%, climbing from 40 to 44 outages.

Public cloud network outages: After weeks of decreasing, cloud provider network outages began increasing again last week. Globally, cloud provider network outages climbed from eight to 13 outages. In the U.S., they increased from four to seven outages.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages increased from five outages to eight. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages rose from two to three outages.

Two notable outages

On Feb. 27, Level 3 Communications, a U.S. based Tier 1 carrier acquired by Lumen, experienced an outage that impacted multiple downstream partners and customers across the U.S. The outage, lasting a total of 18 minutes over a twenty-five-minute period, was first observed around 2:25 AM EST and appeared to be centered on Level 3 nodes located in Cleveland, OH. The outage was cleared around 2:50 AM EST. Click here for an interactive view.

On Feb. 28, Time Warner Cable, a U.S. based ISP, experienced a disruption that impacted a number of customers and partners across the U.S. The outage was first observed at around 2:00 PM EST and appeared to center on Time Warner Cable nodes located in New York, NY.  Five minutes into the outage, the number of nodes located in New York, NY, exhibiting outage conditions increased. The outage lasted 14 minutes and was cleared at around 2:15 PM EST. Click here for an interactive view.

Additional details from ThousandEyes are available here.

Internet report for Feb. 19-25, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 165 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of Feb. 19-25. That’s down significantly from 243 outages in the week prior – a decrease of 32%. Specific to the U.S., there were 59 outages, which is down 34% from 90 outages the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages decreased from 121 to 111 outages, an 8% decrease compared to the week prior. In the U.S., ISP outages decreased from 48 to 40 outages, a 17% decrease compared to the previous week.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages decreased significantly from 42 to eight outages, a 81% decrease compared to the week prior. In the U.S., they fell from eight to four outages.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages decreased from seven outages to five. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages remained at the same level as the week prior: two outages.

Two notable outages

On Feb. 22, Hurricane Electric, a network transit provider headquartered in Fremont, CA, experienced an outage that impacted customers and downstream partners across multiple regions, including the U.S., Australia, China, the U.K., Japan, Singapore, India, France, and Canada. The outage, first observed around 9:10 AM EST, lasted 32 minutes in total and was divided into two occurrences over a forty-five-minute period. The first occurrence appeared to initially center on Hurricane Electric nodes located in New York, NY, Phoenix, AZ and Indianapolis, IN. Ten minutes after appearing to clear, the nodes located in New York, NY, were joined by nodes located in San Jose, CA in exhibiting outage conditions. Five minutes into the second occurrence, the disruption appeared to radiate out, and the nodes located in New York, NY, Phoenix, AZ and Indianapolis, IN, were joined by nodes located in Seattle, WA, Denver, CO, Ashburn, VA, Kansas City, MO and Omaha, NE in exhibiting outage conditions. This increase in impacted nodes appeared to coincide with an increase in the number of impacted downstream customers and partners. The outage was cleared at around 9:55 AM EST. Click here for an interactive view.

On Feb. 21, Time Warner Cable, a U.S. based ISP, experienced a disruption that impacted a number of customers and partners across the U.S. The outage was first observed at around 2:45 PM EST and appeared to center on Time Warner Cable nodes located in New York, NY.  Fifteen minutes into the outage, the number of nodes located in New York, NY, exhibiting outage conditions increased. The outage lasted 23 minutes and was cleared at around 3:10 PM EST. Click here for an interactive view.

Additional details from ThousandEyes are available here.

Internet report for Feb. 12-18, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 243 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of Feb. 12-18. That’s down from 319 outages in the week prior – a decrease of 24%. Specific to the U.S., there were 90 outages, which is down slightly from 91 the week prior. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages decreased from 134 to 121 outages, a 10% decrease compared to the week prior. In the U.S., ISP outages decreased from 60 to 48 outages, a 20% decrease compared to the previous week.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages decreased significantly from 107 to 42 outages, a 61% decrease compared to the week prior. In the U.S., they doubled from four to eight outages.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages decreased from 11 outages to seven. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages decreased from 5 to 2 outages.

Two notable outages

On Feb. 16, Hurricane Electric, a network transit provider headquartered in Fremont, CA, experienced an outage that impacted customers and downstream partners across multiple regions, including the U.S., Egypt, Sweden, the U.K., Japan, Mexico, Australia, Argentina, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada. The outage, first observed around 8:25 AM EST, lasted 23 minutes in total and was divided into two occurrences over a thirty-minute period. The first occurrence appeared to initially center on Hurricane Electric nodes located in New York, NY. Fifteen minutes into the first occurrence, the nodes located in New York, NY, were joined by nodes located in Paris, France and Amsterdam, the Netherlands in exhibiting outage conditions.  Five minutes after appearing to clear, nodes located in New York, NY once again began exhibiting outage conditions. The outage was cleared at around 8:55 AM EST. Click here for an interactive view.

On Feb. 17, AT&T experienced an outage on their network that impacted AT&T customers and partners across the U.S. The outage, lasting around 14 minutes, was first observed around 3:40 PM EST, appearing to center on AT&T nodes located in Little Rock, AR. Five minutes after first being observed, the number of nodes exhibiting outage conditions located in Little Rock, AR, appeared to rise. This increase in nodes exhibiting outage conditions appeared to coincide with a rise in the number of impacted partners and customers. The outage was cleared at around 3:55 PM EST. Click here for an interactive view.

Additional details from ThousandEyes are available here.

Internet report for Feb. 5-11, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 319 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of Feb. 5-11. That’s up from 265 outages in the week prior – an increase of 20%. Specific to the U.S., there were 91 outages. That’s up from 45 outages the week prior, an increase of 102%. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages increased from 106 to 134 outages, a 26% increase compared to the week prior. In the U.S., ISP outages more than doubled from 28 to 60 outages, a 114% increase compared to the previous week.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages decreased slightly from 117 to 107, a 9% decrease compared to the week prior. In the U.S., they decreased from five to four outages.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages climbed from three outages to 11. In the U.S., there were five collaboration app network outages, up from zero the week prior.

Two notable outages

On Feb. 7, Time Warner Cable, a U.S. based ISP, experienced a disruption that impacted a number of customers and partners across multiple regions, including the U.S., Ireland, the U.K., Canada, India, Australia, Singapore, Japan, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Indonesia, Hong Kong, South Korea, China, and Brazil. The outage was observed across a series of occurrences over the course of forty-five minutes. First observed at around 4:50 PM EST, the outage, consisting of five equally spaced four-minute periods, appeared to initially center on Time Warner Cable nodes in New York, NY. Five minutes after appearing to clear, nodes located in New York, NY, were again observed exhibiting outage conditions, joined by nodes located in San Jose, CA. By the third period, the nodes located in San Jose, CA, had appeared to clear and were instead replaced by nodes located in Los Angeles, CA, in exhibiting outage conditions, in addition to nodes located in New York, NY. The outage lasted a total of 20 minutes and was cleared at around 5:35 PM EST. Click here for an interactive view.

On Feb. 6, NTT America, a global Tier 1 ISP and subsidiary of NTT Global, experienced an outage that impacted some of its customers and downstream partners in multiple regions, including the U.S., Germany, the U.K., the Netherlands, and Hong Kong The outage, lasting 24 minutes, was first observed around 8:10 PM EST and appeared to initially center on NTT nodes located in Chicago, IL and Dallas, TX. Around five minutes into the outage, the nodes located in Chicago, IL and Dallas, TX, were joined by nodes located in Newark, NJ, in exhibiting outage conditions. The apparent increase of nodes exhibiting outage conditions appeared to coincide with an increase in the number of impacted downstream customers and partners. The outage was cleared around 8:35 PM EST. Click here for an interactive view.

Additional details from ThousandEyes are available here.

Internet report for Jan. 29- Feb. 4, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 265 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of Jan. 29- Feb. 4. That’s more than double the number of outages in the week prior (126). Specific to the U.S., there were 45 outages. That’s down from 55 outages the week prior, a decrease of 18%. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages was 106, an increase of 15% compared to 92 outages the previous week. In the U.S., ISP outages decreased by 28%, dropping from 39 to 28 outages.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages skyrocketed from five to 117 last week (the increase appeared to be a result of an increase in outages in the APJC region). In the U.S., they increased from two to five outages.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages decreased from five outages to three. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages decreased from one outage to zero.

Two notable outages

On Jan. 31, Comcast Communications experienced an outage that impacted a number of downstream partners and customers across multiple regions including the U.S., Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Canada, Germany, South Korea, Japan, and Australia. The outage, lasting 18 minutes, was first observed around 8:00 PM EST and appeared to be centered on Comcast nodes located in Ashburn, VA. Ten minutes into the outage, the nodes exhibiting outage conditions, located in Ashburn, VA, appeared to increase. The apparent increase of nodes exhibiting outage conditions appeared to coincide with an increase in the number of impacted downstream customers and partners. The outage was cleared around 8:20 PM EST. Click here for an interactive view.

On Feb. 2, NTT America, a global Tier 1 ISP and subsidiary of NTT Global, experienced an outage that impacted some of its customers and downstream partners in multiple regions, including the U.S., Germany, the Netherlands, and the U.K. The outage, lasting 23 minutes, was first observed around 1:25 PM EST and appeared to center on NTT nodes located in Dallas, TX and Chicago, IL. The outage was cleared around 1:50 PM EST. Click here for an interactive view.

Additional details from ThousandEyes are available here.

Internet report for Jan. 22-28, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 126 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of Jan. 22-28. That’s down from 156 the week prior, a decrease of 19%. Specific to the U.S., there were 55 outages. That’s down from 91 outages the week prior, a decrease of 40%. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages was 92, a decrease of 14% compared to 107 outages the previous week. In the U.S., ISP outages decreased by 35%, dropping from 60 to 39 outages.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages dropped from 14 to five last week. In the U.S., they decreased from seven to two outages.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages remained the same as the week prior: five outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages decreased from four outages to one.

Three notable outages

On Jan. 26, Microsoft experienced an issue that affected its customers in various regions around the globe. The outage was first observed around 11:00 AM EST and seemed to cause service failures in Microsoft Teams, which affected the usability of the application for users across the globe. While there was no packet loss when connecting to the Microsoft Teams edge servers, the failures were consistent with reported issues within Microsoft’s network that may have prevented the edge servers from reaching the application components on the backend. The incident was resolved for many users by 6:10 PM EST. Click here for an interactive view.

On Jan. 24, Akamai experienced an outage on its network that impacted content delivery connectivity for customers and partners using Akamai Edge delivery services in the Washington D.C. area. The outage was first observed around 12:10 PM EST and appeared to center on Akamai nodes located in Washington D.C. The outage lasted a total of 24 minutes. Akamai announced that normal operations had resumed at 1:00 PM EST. Click here for an interactive view.

On Jan. 23, Internap, a U.S based cloud service provider, experienced an outage that impacted many of its downstream partners and customers in multiple regions, including the U.S., and Singapore. The outage, which was first observed around 2:30 AM EST, lasted 18 minutes in total and appeared to be centered on Internap nodes located in Boston, MA. The outage was at its peak around fifteen minutes after being observed, with the highest number of impacted regions, partners, and customers. The outage was cleared around 2:55 AM EST. Click here for an interactive view.

Additional details from ThousandEyes are available here.

Internet report for Jan. 15-21, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 156 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of Jan. 15-21. That’s up from 151 the week prior, an increase of 3%. Specific to the U.S., there were 91 outages. That’s up significantly from 63 outages the week prior, an increase of 44%. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages was 107, an increase of 8% compared to 83 outages the previous week, and in the U.S. ISP outages increased by 58%, climbing from 38 to 60 outages.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages dropped from 30 to 14 last week. In the U.S., they increased from six to seven outages.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages decreased from seven to five outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages stayed at the same level: four outages.

Two notable outages

On Jan. 16, Oracle experienced an outage on its network that impacted Oracle customers and downstream partners interacting with Oracle Cloud services in multiple regions, including the U.S., Canada, China, Panama, Norway, the Netherlands, India, Germany, Malaysia, Sweden, Czech Republic, and Norway. The outage was first observed around 8:45 AM EST and appeared to center on Oracle nodes located in various regions worldwide, including Ashburn, VA, Tokyo, Japan, San Jose, CA, Melbourne, Australia, Cardiff, Wales, London, England, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Frankfurt, Germany, Slough, England, Phoenix, AZ, San Francisco, CA, Atlanta, GA, Washington D.C., Richmond, VA, Sydney, Australia, New York, NY, Osaka, Japan, and Chicago, IL. Thirty-five minutes after first being observed, all the nodes exhibiting outage conditions appeared to clear. A further ten minutes later, nodes located in Toronto, Canada, Phoenix, AZ, Frankfurt, Germany, Cleveland, OH, Slough, England, Ashburn, VA, Washington, D.C., Cardiff, Wales, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Montreal, Canada, London, England, Sydney, Australia, and Melbourne, Australia began exhibiting outage conditions again.  The outage lasted 40 minutes in total and was cleared at around 9:50 AM EST. Click here for an interactive view.

On Jan. 20, Hurricane Electric, a network transit provider headquartered in Fremont, CA, experienced an outage that impacted customers and downstream partners across multiple regions, including the U.S., Thailand, Hong Kong, India, Japan, and Australia. The outage, first observed around 7:15 PM EST, lasted 11 minutes in total and was divided into two occurrences over a one-hour five-minute period. The first occurrence appeared to center on Hurricane Electric nodes located in Los Angeles, CA. Fifty minutes after the first occurrence appeared to clear, the second occurrence was observed. Lasting 8 minutes, the outage initially appeared to center on nodes located in Los Angeles, CA. Around five minutes into the second occurrence, the nodes in Los Angeles, CA were joined by nodes located in San Jose, CA, in exhibiting outage conditions. The outage was cleared at around 8:20 PM EST. Click here for an interactive view.

Additional details from ThousandEyes are available here.

Internet report for Jan. 8-14, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 151 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week of Jan. 8-14. That’s up from 122 the week prior, an increase of 24%. Specific to the U.S., there were 63 outages. That’s up from 58 outages the week prior, an increase of 9%. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages was 83, an increase of 8% compared to the previous week, and in the U.S. they increased by 6%, climbing from 36 to 38 outages.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages jumped from 19 to 30 last week. In the U.S., they decreased from 10 to six outages.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages increased from five to seven outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages increased from one to four outages.

Two notable outages

On Jan. 14, Zayo Group, a U.S. based Tier 1 carrier headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, experienced an outage that impacted some of its partners and customers across multiple regions including the U.S., Canada, Sweden, and Germany. The outage lasted around 14 minutes, was first observed around 7:10 PM EST, and appeared to initially center on Zayo Group nodes located in Houston, TX. Ten minutes after first being observed, nodes located in Houston, TX, were joined by nodes located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in exhibiting outage conditions. This rise of the number of nodes exhibiting outage conditions appeared to coincide with an increase in the number of impacted downstream partners and customers. The outage was cleared around 7:25 PM EST. Click here for an interactive view.

On Jan. 13, Time Warner Cable, a U.S. based ISP, experienced a disruption that impacted a number of customers and partners across the U.S. The outage was first observed at around 12:45 PM EST and appeared to center on Time Warner Cable nodes located in New York, NY.  Fifteen minutes into the outage, the number of nodes located in New York, NY, exhibiting outage conditions increased. The outage lasted 19 minutes and was cleared at around 1:05 PM EST. Click here for an interactive view.

Additional details from ThousandEyes are available here.

Internet report for Jan. 1-7, 2024

ThousandEyes reported 122 global network outage events across ISPs, cloud service provider networks, collaboration app networks and edge networks (including DNS, content delivery networks, and security as a service) during the week ofJan. 1-7. Over the prior three weeks, all outage categories continuously decreased for two weeks before increasing in the last week. Specific to the U.S., there were 58 outages. Here’s a breakdown by category:

ISP outages: Globally, the number of ISP outages was 77, an increase of 43% compared to the previous week, and in the U.S. they nearly doubled from 20 to 36.

Public cloud network outages: Globally, cloud provider network outages increased from 13 to 19 last week. In the U.S., they increased from 6 to 10.

Collaboration app network outages: Globally, collaboration app network outages increased from one to five outages. In the U.S., collaboration app network outages increased from zero to one. 

Two notable outages

On Jan. 4, Time Warner Cable, a U.S. based ISP, experienced a disruption that impacted a number of customers and partners across the U.S. The outage was first observed at around 10:45 AM EST and appeared to center on Time Warner Cable nodes located in New York, NY.  Five minutes into the outage, the number of nodes located in New York, NY, exhibiting outage conditions increased. The outage lasted 13 minutes and was cleared at around 11:00 AM EST. Click here for an interactive view.

On Jan. 4, Telecom Italia Sparkle, a Tier 1 provider headquartered in Rome, Italy, and part of the Italian-owned Telecom Italia, experienced an outage that impacted many of its downstream partners and customers in multiple regions, including the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. The outage lasted 28 minutes in total and was divided into two episodes over a 35-minute period. It was first observed around 4:00 AM EST. The first period of the outage, lasting around 24 minutes, appeared to be centered on Telecom Italia Sparkle nodes located in Miami, FL. Five minutes after appearing to clear, nodes located in Miami, FL, again exhibited outage conditions. The outage was cleared around 4:35 AM EST. Click here for an interactive view.

Additional details from ThousandEyes are available here.

Nvidia has partnered with hardware infrastructure vendor Vertiv to provide liquid cooling designs for future data centers designed to be AI factories. 

AI factories are specified data centers emphasizing AI applications as opposed to traditional line of business applications like databases and ERP. They make heavy use of GPUs in ultra-dense configurations, which generate a lot more heat than traditional CPUs.

Because of this, the move to liquid cooling has been accelerated by necessity, as air cooling is no longer viable in these dense rack configurations filled with GPUs. Air cooling is viable up to 30 kW per rack. After that it simply can’t keep up.

With their joint design, Vertiv and Nvidia are offering liquid cooling support for up to 132 kW per rack. The architecture aims to optimize deployment speed, performance, resiliency, cost, energy efficiency and scalability for current- and future-generation data centers.

The reference architecture is actually a hybrid liquid- and air-cooling infrastructure that simplifies and accelerates deployment of AI workloads in new and existing data centers and enables standardization across sites. Through the use of preconfigured modules and factory integration, Vertiv claims it can deliver AI critical infrastructure up to 50% faster than onsite builds.

“New data centers are built for accelerated computing and generative AI with architectures that are significantly more complex than those for general-purpose computing. With Vertiv’s world-class cooling and power technologies, Nvidia can realize our vision to reinvent computing and build a new industry of AI factories that produce digital intelligence to benefit every company and industry,” CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement.  

The two companies have been working together since March 2024, when Vertiv became a Solution Advisor: Consultant partner in the Nvidia Partner Network (NPN), providing wider access to Vertiv’s experience and full portfolio of power and cooling solutions.

Read more about liquid cooling

• Data center liquid cooling market heats up: Liquid cooling technologies for data centers are transitioning from niche options deployed in specific market segments to mainstream applicability, according to research firm Dell’Oro Group.
• Pros and cons of air, liquid and geothermal systems: Whether it’s to save money, reduce carbon emissions, comply with regulations or accommodate high-powered AI workloads, enterprises are looking to operate more energy-efficient data centers.
• Schneider Electric shares liquid cooling guidelines: As high-density data centers continue to add AI workloads, there’s growing interest in liquid cooling, thanks to its ability to transfer heat more efficiently than air cooling.
• Data centers warm up to liquid cooling: AI, machine learning, and high-performance computing are creating cooling challenges for data center owners and operators. As rack densities increase and temperatures rise, more data centers are finding ways to add liquid cooling to their facilities.
• Accelsius offers liquid cooling without a data center retrofit: Accelsius, a relative newcomer in the liquid cooling market, has launched its NeuCool dual-phase, direct-to-chip liquid cooling technology, which is designed to be deployed without having to do a massive retrofit of your data center.
• ZutaCore launches liquid cooling for advanced Nvidia chips: The HyperCool direct-to-chip system from ZutaCore is designed to cool up to 120kW of rack power without requiring a facilities modification.
• Is immersion cooling ready for mainstream? Liquid cooling started as a fringe technology but is becoming more common. Proponents hope the same holds true for immersion cooling.
• Supermicro has a new liquid-cooled server for AI: Supermicro’s new server uses a self-contained liquid cooling system, and vendors outside of the IT infrastructure market are showing interest in the technology.

cPacket Networks this week launched a new appliance designed to capture network traffic and enable network operations teams to achieve better efficiency by monitoring network reliability in real time while also looking backward to investigate prior incidents.

Aimed at high-performance environments, cPacket’s Packet Capture cStor 200S appliance combines compute, storage, and networking in a single, compact device and delivers metrics for network throughput, capacity, latency, and errors. It can capture and analyze packets at a concurrent line rate of 200 Gbps, which is more than double the speed of cPacket’s 100S model. The new appliance includes features like fast querying, packet replay, and timestamping to enable advanced network analysis and troubleshooting. It’s targeted at customers that require high-speed packet capture, such as financial services companies and their e-trading applications.  

Enterprises need a network and security observability product built on accurate packet data, says Ron Nevo, cPacket CTO.

“The cStor 200S is a game-changer for high-speed network monitoring and analytics. By delivering 200 Gbps of sustained capture to disk (CTD), along with integrated indexing and analysis at that same line rate, we’re providing our customers – especially those in financial services – an unparalleled level of visibility and troubleshooting capabilities,” Nevo says. “The ability to quickly query and retrieve specific packets, even from days or weeks ago, is a huge advantage when dealing with security incidents or performance issues in these ultra-fast networks.”

The 200S integrates packet indexing and analytics at the same 200 Gbps speed, unlike other products that separate packet capture and analytics, Nevo explains. This integrated approach saves on hardware and makes it easier for network engineers to correlate packets and analytics. Timestamping capabilities also make pinpointing problems and finding the cause easier for network operations teams, according to cPacket.

“It’s one thing to capture the packets, but then if you try to find them later, that can be pretty hard. Being able to index the packets accelerates the ability to find something that happened yesterday. If you want to correlate an event across two data centers, the time stamp will let you know when things happened and tell you they are related,” Nevo says.

High-performance environments require packet capture technology that can keep up, notes Sameh Boujelbene, vice president of ethernet switch data center market research at Dell’Oro Group.

“We anticipate that large enterprises will continue upgrading their data center networks from 100 Gbps to 400 Gbps in the coming years, while building additional infrastructure to support the growing demands of AI workloads. This creates an increasing need for packet capture technology that matches the speed, accuracy, and performance requirements of this high-performance environment,” Boujelbene said in a statement. “The cStor 200S helps address these changes in market requirements.”

Specific capabilities featured in the cStor 200S include:

• 200 Gbps concurrent capture-to-disk and analytics for observability and security monitoring in mission-critical enterprise networks.
• Solid state drives (SSD) are leveraged for their speed and reliability, ensuring that captured data is quickly and securely stored, including with self-encrypting drives.
• Line-rate indexing at 200 Gbps, enabling retrieval times of exactly the right packets to reduce mean-time-to-resolution.
• Scalability to adapt to growing enterprise needs, particularly as organizations transition to 100G and 400G networks.

The cStor 200S is installed around the firewalls in a customer environment, because the firewall throughput number provides a “good first approximation” of the traffic levels that need to be captured, cPacket says. Customer can also use the port speeds of their routers and switches as another data point to estimate the required number of cStor 200S devices. The cStor 200S is designed to upgrade or augment existing network traffic monitoring tools. cPacket’s Control Center, or cClear, provides a centralized dashboard interface for all cPacket devices deployed anywhere in a hybrid-cloud network, giving customers unified administration and management capabilities.

The cStor 200s is expected to be generally available in the fourth quarter of this year.

There’s been a lot of talk over the past few years about a shortage of skilled cybersecurity talent, but from where we sit at the NYC DOE Division of Information and Instructional Technology (DIIT), we see budding security pros all around us. As cybersecurity leaders of the DIIT, we work with 1,800 schools and approximately 1 million students across NYC to ensure secure internet access and offer innovative solutions in education technology.

As part of our efforts to empower educators and students to thrive in our digital age, we partner with technology vendors and government agencies to train and mentor students for careers in cybersecurity. In 2022, the NYC DOE formalized these efforts to support career-connected learning opportunities so that all students in metropolitan New York can reach long-term economic security and job satisfaction. It’s been our privilege to foster the next generation of cybersecurity professionals. Based on the progress we’ve made in such a short time, we can say with certainty that the future looks bright.

Paving the way for the next generation of cybersecurity pros
In 50 years, the classroom hasn’t changed much. In most school districts, the focus is strictly on academics, and students are rarely given the chance to gain the skills they need to enter the workplace. At NYC DOE, we do things differently. While students are still in high school, we expose them to many different career pathways—including cybersecurity—and provide opportunities for hands-on experiences.

There are four programs that comprise the NYC DOE’s career-connected learning initiative, each serving a specific segment of the student population:

• Career Readiness and Modern Youth Apprenticeship (CRMYA)
• New York City’s Grades 9-14 Early College and Career Schools (P-TECH Schools)
• FutureReadyNYC (FRNYC)
• CUNY Fellows

The Career Readiness and Modern Youth Apprenticeship (CRMYA) is a three-year internship program students can apply for in the eleventh grade. The DOE cybersecurity team hosted its first cohort of eight students, five assigned to the CISO team and three assigned to the CTO team. During this time, they work on cybersecurity initiatives such as network protection, endpoint protection, incident response, and data validation. Interns complete a curriculum for a minimum of three technical certifications in areas of their choice and build relationships with technology vendors like Zscaler. Upon graduating from the program, students receive assistance in job placement or higher education programs.

P-TECH schools are part of the NYC DOE and are supported by the Career and Technical Education (CTE) team and the CUNY Early College Initiative. The six-year high school program is designed for students who don’t have a clear path to college, often for financial reasons. CUNY works in conjunction with the NYC DOE to offer them free tuition for a two-year Associate degree once they are approved. So far, 100% of participants have been able to go to college. The grades 9–14 schools also work with industry partners to support students in exploring careers and attaining skills in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) industries.

CUNY Fellows is aimed at first- and second-year college students who have successfully completed their coursework. After they are screened through an interview and background check, they work up to 34 hours per week with our team on various assignments with specific completion timelines and have the opportunity to provide feedback on how they perceive their progress.

Technology partnerships prepare students for future work
The students are incredibly eager to learn and apply their knowledge. Early on in the apprenticeship program, we had a handful of high school students join us for a six-week session. We brainstormed what they could achieve during that time and introduced them to the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange.

When we saw that our apprentices were interested in learning more, we reached out to Brian Wong, a customer success manager at Zscaler, and asked him to help us define a curriculum for a Zscaler certification. At his suggestion, we enrolled our students in the Zscaler Academy Zero Trust Career Program. They earned certifications, developed practitioner-level skills in zero trust, and were given the opportunity to get advice and inspiration from cybersecurity professionals in Zscaler’s Career Development forum on Zenith Community—all at no cost. Brian even shared code that the students could use to practice their skills. Now, when interns come in for apprenticeship sessions with the NYC DOE security team, they learn how to work with various tools and sit in on calls with our vendors to troubleshoot and manage these products. Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) is one such example. Since we launched the program, we’ve had nine students earn a Zscaler certification that they can use in the workplace.

Student successes signal the strength of training programs

These programs help students obtain real-world experience in the form of internships. They also earn college credits while exploring areas of interest to which they might otherwise not be exposed. We have one student working with us who had a healthcare background but was pursuing an IT degree. We noticed her passion for learning and eagerness to work, so we gave her an opportunity to work on content filtering and she ran with it. Now she’s doing data loss prevention and is one of our best CUNY interns.

In her own words, Franchesca Fargas Rios describes her journey:

“Originally, I did not intend to go to college, but on a whim, I decided to enroll. Although I began my career in the medical field, my growing interest in technology and my aspiration to make a positive impact led me to pursue a career in technology. The CUNY program has played a crucial role in this transition, offering internships that provide real-world experience along with academic credits, which has allowed me to explore diverse areas. Despite my healthcare background, I chose to pursue an IT degree. My dedication and eagerness to learn were quickly recognized, leading to my involvement in projects related to content filtering and data loss prevention, areas where I have excelled as one of the top interns at CUNY.

Balancing motherhood, full-time studies, and a full-time job has indeed been challenging. The unwavering support and encouragement from my supervisor have been pivotal. His guidance has not only supported my career aspirations in IT but also equipped me with the necessary resources to succeed. I am eagerly anticipating graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems and Informatics. Furthermore, I am planning to pursue a Master’s in Cybersecurity and achieve several professional certifications. The hands-on training and real-life experiences provided by this program have been instrumental in defining my path in IT, a field I initially knew little about.”

Another avenue for students to build practical technology skills is through the Career and Technical Education program, which acts as a catch-all for students who are undecided about their career path or college education. We had six students join us as interns this past semester. One, in particular, had no plans to go to college due to financial constraints. We helped him navigate a scholarship as part of a two-year associates program at CUNY. We’re proud to say that all six students have gone on to pursue education beyond high school.

Ibrahim Sawadogo shares his success story:

“Before being accepted into an internship role at NYCPS, DIIT Office of the CISO, I was part of the COOP Tech Program, my goal was to attain industry certifications, such as Cisco CCNA, CompTIA Network+. My career aspiration was to just get into technology. I had no intention of attending college to get a degree. While there, I had conversations with my supervisor/mentor, who encouraged me to apply for community college. I was a bit skeptical, as I did not want to accumulate any student loan debts. My supervisor shared some vital information, which then led me to enroll at Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC).

I was accepted into B.M.C.C., after being enrolled in college classes that summer of 2023. I also applied to the CUNY internship program. I was fortunate to be offered a position at the NYCPS as an identity and access management analyst. During my time as an intern, I was also able to gain two industry certifications (CompTIA Security and  ISC2 Certified in Cyber Security).

This program has given me hope as a young adult African-American male living in the inner city of New York. I am very thankful for this opportunity. I am scheduled to graduate with an Associates Applied Science (A.A.S) degree in Computer Networking Technology at the end of the spring 2025 semester. I then plan to pursue my Bachelor of Technology degree at New York City College of Technology. The mentorship, hands-on technical experience, and soft skills were game-changers as I am now able to look forward to a promising career in information security.”

Personal and professional mentorship makes a lasting impact.
Everybody needs someone to believe in them. Through our commitment to diversity and inclusion, we create a sense of belonging and inspire students from all backgrounds—regardless of gender, race, or ethnicity—to carve out fulfilling careers as cybersecurity professionals. We also act as mentors to our students, equipping them with skills and support as they navigate life’s challenges. Ultimately, our goal is for students to understand that they too have a right to grow and thrive: in the technology sector and beyond.

Demond Waters—CISO at NYC DOE, a graduate of this school system, and co-author of this blog—recently had a full circle moment when a young man stopped him at a conference and explained the reason he got into technology. The young man recalled seeing Demond come into his classroom, dressed like a student in sneakers and casual attire, to fix a computer. Without even knowing it, Demond inspired the young man to pursue a career in technology.

We both know what it’s like to live and grow up in New York City. To be able to show our students that they can imagine a different future for themselves than what they might see day to day—that’s what motivates us to give back.

Learn more about how NYC DOE deployed Zscaler zero trust at a massive scale, securing over one million students and staff members combined. Read the case study.

About the Authors

Demond Waters

Demond Waters is a results-driven Chief Information Security Officer with 20 years of success in strategic cybersecurity and information technology management. As CISO for the New York City Department of Education, Demond oversees multi-million dollar projects while managing cutting-edge security infrastructure that effectively protects over 150,000 staff and 1.1 million students. Under his guidance, diverse security teams thrive in rapidly evolving environments using complex yet flexible technical architecture.

Anthony Dixon

Anthony Dixon is a cybersecurity leader with 20 years of experience in the information technology and information security space, with expertise in service desk, information security, information assurance, and vulnerability management system administration, messaging, and collaboration engineering. He is a project leader with proven experience directing all phases of complex projects while managing, motivating, and mentoring global team members.

Zero Trust architecture was created to solve the limitations of legacy security architectures. It’s the opposite of a firewall and VPN architecture, where once on the corporate network everyone and everything is trusted. A Zero Trust platform ensures applications and data are not visible to the public internet and users are only provided least privilege access, preventing lateral movement and protecting against ransomware attacks.

Recent critical vulnerabilities in VPNs and firewalls have exposed the risks associated with perimeter-based security measures. The traditional reliance on firewalls and VPNs for cybersecurity is proving inadequate in the face of mounting cyberthreats and changes to network designs due to the cloud. We need a complete overhaul of our cybersecurity architecture and a shift towards a Zero Trust model built for the highly mobile user-base and modern cloud-first enterprise.

In today’s digital age, cybersecurity is no longer an option but a necessity. Yet, many organizations still rely solely on traditional defenses like firewalls and VPNs, unaware that these measures are no longer sufficient against sophisticated cyber threats. We will explore the limitations of firewalls and VPNs, introduce the game-changing concept of the Zero Trust model, and provide alternative strategies that can significantly enhance your business’s overall security posture. We will also navigate the ever-evolving landscape of cybersecurity and discover how to protect your organization from the ever-growing arsenal of cyber threats.

Firewalls and VPNs create a dangerous illusion of security, presenting an attack surface that is reachable and breachable, meaning attackers can find and compromise the exact location where applications and private data reside. Traditional methods operate on the outdated implicit premise that everything within the network can be trusted, which has been proven false time and again by attackers’ ease of lateral movement. Security requires an adaptive model that understands the fluidity and dynamism of the modern digital landscape.

With a Zero Trust architecture, the internet is the primary transport medium and effectively becomes the new corporate network. Access is authorized based on business policies informed by identity and context. This shift is not just a technical necessity but also a regulatory and compliance imperative. Cybersecurity has become a boardroom priority with far-reaching implications for business continuity and reputation.

For those striving to fit existing infrastructure into a modern cloud-first stance, adopting a Zero Trust framework is crucial. It requires a new mindset that acknowledges the decentralized nature of our digital world and emphasizes continuous verification and adaptation for security.

A historical look at evolution of cybersecurity

The origins of cybersecurity can be traced back to the early days of computing, when mainframes were first being used to store and process sensitive data. As these systems expanded to connect users and devices, the network became more powerful, interconnected and valuable. The need to protect them from unauthorized access, modification, or destruction became increasingly important.

The 1970s and 1980s saw the rise of personal computers, which brought cybersecurity challenges to a wider audience. Concurrently, the internet began to take shape with the intent to allow different types of computers on different networks to communicate with each other. As more and more people began to use computers to store personal and financial information, the need for effective security measures became more pressing. This led to the development of early antivirus software and firewalls, which were designed to protect computers from malicious software and unauthorized access.

In the 1990s, the internet became widely available, opening up a new frontier for cybersecurity threats. The interconnectedness of the internet made it possible for cybercriminals to launch attacks from anywhere in the world, and the rise of e-commerce created new opportunities for fraud and identity theft. In response, businesses and governments began to invest more heavily in cybersecurity measures, such as intrusion detection systems, encryption, and security awareness training.

As we entered the 2000s, cyberattacks became more sophisticated and targeted. Cybercriminals began to use social engineering techniques to trick people into giving up their personal information, and they developed new malware that could evade traditional security measures. In response, businesses and governments began to take cybersecurity more seriously, and they implemented more comprehensive security strategies that included risk management, incident response, and continuous monitoring.

Zero Trust addresses the failures of firewalls and VPNs

Zero Trust has emerged in the last decade in stark contrast to the previous trend of bolting on security after the fact. With Zero Trust, the name of the game is architectural improvement, changing the landscape and the battlefield ahead of the need. Unlike traditional defenses that place unwavering trust in internal users and networks, Zero Trust adopts a more vigilant stance, assuming that all users, regardless of their location or affiliation, are potential threats. This philosophy demands rigorous and continuous authentication and authorization procedures before granting access to any resources or systems.

By embracing Zero Trust, organizations can effectively mitigate the risks posed by sophisticated cyber threats such as ransomware attacks and phishing scams. This robust framework goes beyond the limitations of firewalls and VPNs, providing a more comprehensive and adaptive security posture.

Zero Trust operates on the principle of “never trust, always verify.” It enforces strict access controls and authorization for each unique access request, requiring users to authenticate themselves continuously. This multi-layered approach includes measures like least function, logical segmentation of destination, authorization and scale. This is a step beyond the traditional controls of multi-factor authentication, strong password policies, encryption, and web application firewalls. By implementing these safeguards, organizations can significantly reduce the risk of unauthorized access and data compromise.

The inadequacies of firewalls and VPNs

In the dynamic cybersecurity landscape, traditional defenses like firewalls and VPNs are coming under increasing scrutiny. While they have served as essential tools in the past, the growing sophistication of cyber threats demands a more robust approach. Relying solely on these measures can lead to a false sense of security and leave organizations vulnerable to breaches.

Firewalls and VPNs were designed to protect networks by blocking unauthorized access and encrypting data in transit, respectively. However, cybercriminals have become adept at bypassing these defenses through advanced techniques like social engineering, zero-day exploits, and a breach of a VPN resulting in a breach everywhere.

Criminals target VPNs because they afford the same levels of trust and access as a legitimate user. Once a VPN is breached, so too is everything in the network that the legitimate user has access to. Additionally, the growing adoption of remote work and the proliferation of IoT devices have expanded the attack surface, making it increasingly difficult for traditional security measures to keep pace.

Moreover, managing, troubleshooting and maintaining firewalls and VPNs can be complex and resource-intensive, especially for small businesses with limited IT expertise. Keeping these systems up to date with the latest security patches and configurations requires constant vigilance. As a result, too much of the IT department’s energy often goes toward keeping the lights on instead of developing new and interesting services for the business.

For these reasons, organizations must move beyond firewalls and VPNs and adopt a more comprehensive cybersecurity strategy. This includes implementing a Zero Trust model, which assumes that all users, both internal and external, are potential threats, and require rigorous authentication and authorization before granting access to sensitive data and systems.

By adopting a modern cybersecurity strategy designed for the mobile enterprise and the cloud, you can significantly enhance your overall security posture, mitigating the risk of cyberattacks and safeguarding your sensitive information. Embracing a proactive approach to cybersecurity with Zero Trust enables you to stay ahead of the changing threat landscape, ensuring your business remains resilient against cyber threats.

Keep in mind, cybersecurity is an ongoing process, and staying informed about the latest threats and implementing appropriate security measures is crucial to protecting your organization’s assets and reputation. Consult with cybersecurity experts to tailor these strategies to your specific needs and ensure the highest level of protection for your business.

Choosing the right cybersecurity strategy

In the face of escalating cyber threats, selecting the appropriate cybersecurity strategy for your business is paramount. Companies need to meticulously evaluate several factors to ensure they adopt the most suitable strategy.

The benefits of the cloud are profound, but they are not without concerns over the resilience of these mission-critical services. Outages could be a result of a variety of factors, ranging from power cuts and software issues to natural disasters or nation-state attacks. Regardless of the cause, disrupting an organization’s operations is not an option and calls for stronger cloud resilience to manage blackouts, brownouts, or catastrophic failures.

Zscaler is a good example of a cloud security vendor that built strong resilience capabilities to ensure uninterrupted business continuity. The Zscaler platform is built on an advanced architecture and enhanced by operational excellence to offer high availability and serviceability to customers at all times.

Scalability is another critical element to consider. As organizations grow their use of cloud applications, the number of remote users also increases. Selecting a Zero Trust cloud security platform that dynamically scales on demand helps ensure organizations continue to operate at peak efficiency with non-stop operations.

Compliance with industry regulations and standards may also influence your cybersecurity strategy. Certain industries, such as healthcare and finance, have specific data protection requirements that must be met. Familiarize yourself with the relevant regulations and ensure your chosen strategy aligns with them.

It’s essential to weigh the pros and cons of different cybersecurity strategies before making a decision. Each approach offers advantages and drawbacks, so carefully evaluate how each strategy aligns with your business goals and risk profile. By considering all these factors, you can select a cybersecurity Zero Trust strategy that effectively safeguards your business against cyber threats and ensures its continued success in the digital age.

To learn more, visit our Zpedia page for a deep dive on Zero Trust.

Gartner is sharing its annual look at the hot technologies enterprise customers should be watching out for in the coming years. AI, security, energy-efficient computing, robotics, and virtual computing interactions are among the research firm’s top 10 strategic technology trends, which were unveiled at Gartner’s annual IT Symposium/XPO in Orlando.

1. Agentic AI

For starters, Gartner is expecting a proliferation of “agentic AI,” which refers to intelligent software entities that use AI techniques to complete tasks and achieve goals, according to Gene Alvarez, distinguished vice president analyst at Gartner.

By 2028, at least 15% of day-to-day work decisions will be made autonomously through agentic AI, up from 0% in 2024, Gartner predicts. Agentic AI will be incorporated into AI assistants and built into software, SaaS platforms, IoT devices and robotics. Many startups are already marketing themselves as AI-agent-building platforms, and hyperscalers are adding agentic AI to their AI assistants, Gartner stated.

Agentic AI offers the promise of a virtual workforce that can offload and augment human work, Alvarez stated. The goal-driven capabilities of this technology will deliver more adaptable software systems that can complete a wide variety of tasks, Alvarez stated, and agentic AI has the potential to realize CIOs’ desire to increase productivity across the organization.

“Intelligent agents in AI will change decision making and improve situational awareness in organizations through quicker data analysis and prediction intelligence. While you’re sleeping, agentic AI could look at five of your company’s systems, analyze far more data than you ever could and decide the necessary actions,” wrote Tom Coshow, senior director analyst with Gartner’s technical service providers division, in a Gartner report about intelligent agents in AI.

2. AI governance platforms

AI governance platforms are a part of Gartner’s evolving AI trust, risk and security management (TRiSM) framework that enables organizations to manage the legal, ethical and operational performance of their AI systems, Alvarez stated. These solutions can be used to create, manage and enforce policies for responsible AI use, explain how AI systems work, and provide transparency to build trust and accountability.

Among the benefits of AI governance platforms is the chance to avert AI-related ethical incidents. By 2028, organizations that implement comprehensive AI governance platforms will experience 40% fewer AI-related ethical incidents compared to those without such systems, Gartner predicted. 

AI governance platforms promote responsible AI by enabling organizations to manage and oversee the legal, ethical and operational performance of AI, using a combination of practices and technology tools that monitor robustness, transparency, fairness, accountability and risk compliance, Gartner has reported.

3. Disinformation security

Gartner’s third hot topic is also related to AI: disinformation security. It’s defined as an emerging category of technology that systematically discerns trust and aims to provide methodological systems for ensuring integrity, assessing authenticity, preventing impersonation and tracking the spread of harmful information, according to Gartner.

“The wide availability and advanced state of AI and machine learning tools being leveraged for nefarious purposes is expected to increase the number of disinformation incidents targeting enterprises. If this is left unchecked, disinformation can cause significant and lasting damage to any organization,” Alvarez stated. 

By 2028, Gartner predicts that 50% of enterprises will begin adopting products, services or features designed specifically to address disinformation security use cases, up from less than 5% today.

4. Post-quantum cryptography

Gartner predicts that by 2029, advances in quantum computing will make most conventional asymmetric cryptography unsafe to use. It’s highlighting the significance of post-quantum cryptography, which provides data protection that is resistant to quantum computing decryption risks. 

Asymmetric encryption is in almost all software, billions of devices worldwide, and most of the communications over the internet. “Harvest-now, decrypt-later” attacks may already exist, Gartner wrote in a recent report.

“To resist attacks from both classical and quantum computers, organizations must transition to post-quantum cryptography (PQC). But that’s hardly a simple switch. It will require more work than preparing for Y2K, and failure could have dangerous consequences. Further, many organizations haven’t yet planned or budgeted for this shift,” stated Mark Horvath, vice president analyst at Gartner.

Among the challenges of adopting post-quantum cryptography is the fact that there are not easy replacement options. “No drop-in alternatives exist for current cryptographic algorithms. This creates the need for discovery, categorization and reimplementation,” Horvath stated.

“To address these challenges and smooth the transition to new algorithms, start by developing policies on algorithm substitution, data retention and the mechanics of swapping or modifying your existing use of cryptography. A policy-based program will reduce confusion and arbitrary choices, and increase manageability.”

“As quantum computing developments have progressed over the last several years, it is expected there will be an end to several types of conventional cryptography that is widely used,” Alvarez stated. “It is not easy to switch cryptography methods, so organizations must have a longer lead time to ready themselves for robust protection of anything sensitive or confidential.”

5. Hybrid computing

Hybrid computing shows up on Gartner’s list. This form of computing – which Gartner defines as a system that combines compute, storage, and network mechanisms to solve complex computational problems – helps technologies such as AI perform beyond current technological limits.

New computing paradigms keep popping up, including CPUs, GPUs, edge computing, application-specific integrated circuits, neuromorphic and quantum systems, Alvarez stated. Hybrid computing will be used to create highly efficient, transformative, innovation environments that perform more effectively than conventional environments, he said.

6. Energy-efficient computing

Energy-efficient computing will continue to be a hot topic, according to Gartner. IT impacts sustainability in many ways, and in 2024, the leading consideration for most IT organizations is their carbon footprint, Alvarez stated.

Compute-intensive applications, such as AI training, simulation, optimization and media rendering, are likely to be the biggest contributors to organizations’ carbon footprint as they consume the most energy, Alvarez stated.

Energy-efficient or green computing includes incremental tactics such as adopting greener energy or switching to more efficient hardware, and long-term strategies enabled by novel technologies, Gartner reports.

Examples of green computing techniques common today include leveraging application architecture, code and algorithms that require less energy to run, adopting new, more efficient hardware and using greener power. In the future, more advanced techniques, including novel computing platforms that are still in the research phases today, will become available, Gartner stated.

It is expected that starting in the late 2020s, several new compute technologies, such as optical, neuromorphic and novel accelerators, will emerge for special purpose tasks, such as AI and optimization, which will use significantly less energy, according to Alvarez.

7. Ambient invisible intelligence

Ambient invisible intelligence refers to the widespread use of small, low-cost tags and sensors to track the location and status of various objects and environments, according to Gartner.

Through 2027, early examples of ambient invisible intelligence will focus on solving immediate problems, such as retail stock checking or perishable goods logistics, by enabling low-cost, real-time tracking and sensing of items to improve visibility and efficiency, according to Gartner.

8. Spatial computing

Spatial computing digitally enhances the physical world with technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality. The use of spatial computing will increase organizations’ effectiveness in the next five to seven years through streamlined workflows and enhanced collaboration. By 2033, Gartner predicts spatial computing will grow to $1.7 trillion, up from $110 billion in 2023.

9. Polyfunctional robots

These systems can do more than one task and are replacing task-specific robots that are custom designed to repeatedly perform a single task. Polyfunctional robots are designed to operate in a world with humans which will make for fast deployment and easy scalability. Gartner predicts that by 2030, 80% of humans will engage with smart robots on a daily basis, up from less than 10% today.

10. Neurological enhancement

This technology improves human cognitive abilities using technologies that read and decode brain activity. It reads a person’s brain by using unidirectional brain-machine interfaces or bidirectional brain-machine interfaces (BBMIs). Such technologies have huge potential in three main areas: human upskilling, next-generation marketing and performance. Neurological enhancement will enhance cognitive abilities, enable brands to know what consumers are thinking and feeling, and enhance human neural capabilities to optimize outcomes. By 2030, Gartner predicts 30% of knowledge workers will be enhanced by, and dependent on, technologies such as BBMIs to stay relevant with the rise of AI in the workplace, up from less than 1% in 2024.