A while ago someone working for an IT-focused media site approached me with a short list of high-level questions. Not sure when they’ll publish the answers, so here they are in case you might find them interesting:

What can enterprises do to ensure that their infrastructure is ready for next-gen networking technology implementations emerging in the next decade?

Next-generation networks will probably rely on existing architectures and forwarding mechanisms, while being significantly more uniform and heavily automated.

Make sure the gear you’re buying today supports extensive network automation using standard protocols like NETCONF or REST API.

David Gee is working on an extension to the current NETCONF webinar which will cover the vendor-specific gotchas. It turns out NETCONF implementations from some major vendors aren't exactly as stable as we'd need them to be.

What networking protocols do you see as growing in importance in 2015?

Distributing policy information from a central controller to network devices will be a crucial component of future networks. Whether we’ll use NETCONF, BGP (with extensions), OVSDB, OpFlex, or something completely different to achieve that is still an open question.

What role will cloud and virtualization play in the enterprise data center in the next few years?

Many enterprises already rely heavily on virtualization to streamline their data center operations. The laggards will eventually start feeling the pressure of being left behind and hopefully get their act together.

Meanwhile, numerous private or public cloud adoption projects stall because the CIOs treat cloud (or any other technology) like a silver bullet, thinking it will solve the hard problems, which can only be solved by thorough reengineering of existing application development, deployment and operations processes and practices, and tighter integration of various IT teams. The companies that manage to use the cloud services correctly will be the winners of this round of technology competition.