In the modern world, change and chaos are ever present. In some cases, we see challenges on the horizon well before they arrive, and we can prepare. But other times, the shifts are unforeseen and disruptive. Charles Darwin said “it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” While he was talking about the ability of animals to adapt in order to survive environmental changes, his words ring true for people and businesses as well. Even if you have the strongest product offering and the smartest or most hardworking people, there is still no guarantee you will endure challenges. It is the businesses and people that are built resilient with the ability to adapt to changing environments that survive and often come out of adversity stronger than before.
Advancements in digital products and services serve as connecting points between companies and consumers, employers and staff, and families and friends around the world. It is crucial that this infrastructure remains elastic, flexible, and intelligent. The sudden changes we’ve all experienced in 2020 have brought into stark relief the importance of applications and networks to both economic and human resilience. The rapid, global shift to remote work, along with surges in online learning, gaming, and video streaming, is generating record-level internet traffic and congestion. BT Group reported that daytime traffic increased by as much as 60%, and AT&T said in a business update regarding its COVID-19 response that Netflix data traffic across its U.S. networks reached record levels the weekend of March 20-21 alone. This is significant considering that video streaming was already on the rise and predicted by Cisco to contribute up to 82% of total traffic by 2022. This crisis is pushing boundaries and testing network resilience, and yet the bar for user experience and application performance remains high.
Organizations must deliver consistent connectivity and performance to ensure systems and applications remain functional, and business moves forward, during this unprecedented time. Many organizations are taking a closer look at their approach for this and future crises that may arise. Resilience is at the core of NS1’s mission and customers depend upon our technology to make their applications and businesses resilient to unforeseen challenges of all kinds. NS1 is working with customers and partners to build and reinforce the infrastructure and applications that keep us connecting, innovating, information, educating and moving the world forward. We remain committed to relentless innovation and sharply focused on navigating the shift in modern architecture.
Modern application infrastructure is dynamic, distributed and increasingly complex. And at the center of it all, we find technologies that have existed for decades—DNS, DHCP and IP address management (DDI). It is at this intersection that NS1 has aggressively innovated to meet modern infrastructure demands. By creating solutions that are application-centric and data-driven, our solutions have become critical tools that bring automation, velocity, security, and resilience to modern application development, delivery, and access.
NS1 is helping companies persevere through the current crisis by powering traffic management for collaboration platforms, streaming services, media companies and more - giving them unprecedented control to route around problems while keeping costs in check and providing automation capabilities that help DevOps and NetOps teams be more efficient and reduce manual errors.
One area where the need for automation, scalability and flexibility is particularly evident is in the increased usage of virtual private networks (VPNs). The move to universal remote work puts enormous stress on systems that were originally meant to support 5 to 10 percent of a business’s workforce, yet now must provide remote access for millions of employees worldwide all at the same time. Managed DNS, when used to direct VPN users, improves the experience for remote employees by allowing network teams to easily configure powerful traffic shaping algorithms based on location, resource availability, number of existing sessions, and a dozen other variables. Based on these rules, NS1’s solution dynamically steers remote employees to the nearest, healthy VPN endpoints that have the most capacity. As a result, employees can seamlessly connect—and stay connected—a critical factor for business resilience.
We will continue to work together with our customers and partners to build resilient technology infrastructure upon which the world now relies. And as we build, it is important to also recognize and honor the ways businesses and communities all around the world have demonstrated resilience this year. This is why we’ve also launched an initiative to share stories of human and tech resilience called #builtresilient. These stories demonstrate the value of human and technological resilience to persevering through this challenging time, and serve as examples of how we can overcome adversity.
At NS1, we will continue to apply not just our products, but our expertise, our creativity, and our grit to keep people and businesses around the world connected and adapting in dynamic times. We are all in this together and the lessons we learn will lead us to a place where we are stronger and more resilient than ever before.