We're constantly being warned about the effect of the "consumerization of IT" on enterprises, but a trend in ET (enterprise technology) could have an equally important impact on your job. As enterprise technology--which includes functionality like mobility, monitoring and sensors--has moved into personal devices, it has set a foundation for new applications that will change how people work, writes Johna Till Johnson, president of Nemertes Research.

ET applications center on giving workers in the field new tools to do their jobs, Johnson writes in a post at NetworkWorld. While IT largely has been about giving knowledge workers tools for working at a desk, ET enables these tools for "deskless" employees, including doctors, teachers, insurance agents, cops and many more professionals, who make up about 60 percent of the workforce.

These emerging applications are also known for hogging a lot of bandwidth, in part because of the number of devices that use them. To avoid being blindsided by the proliferating high-bandwidth applications, IT departments should maintain a regularly updated network capacity plan and keep track of the increase of IT devices, including cameras and sensors.

Johnson also recommends establishing an application delivery optimization (ADO) framework before the ET application onslaught hits. The idea is to align your infrastructure to your application needs. ADO technologies manage network traffic in a variety of ways, including compressing, accelerating, caching and server load balancing.

For more:
- see Johna Till Johnson's post at NetworkWorld

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