The world is changing dramatically. Let’s talk about the 8 skills that today’s enterprise network engineers need!

The day-to-day job responsibilities of enterprise network engineers have evolved from managing point-to-point transmission frames and packets to being a liaison between administrators responsible for network, server and storage infrastructure.

This changing role will require network engineers to have a broader skill set in order to align the network with business objectives.

Because network engineers sit at the core of the infrastructure, they need to have a thorough understanding of the applications and data within the network.

Technologies such as virtualization, containers, and hyper-convergence have led to silos in server and storage management, and the network is the core that binds these technologies together. Network engineers need to understand the integration of these technologies.

Many of the skills network engineers need today revolve around the applications themselves.

With technologies like automation and SDN, today’s networks are tailored to the critical applications running on them. As a result, engineers must be able to understand application priorities, traffic flows, and other policies to optimize data delivery.

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Gone are the days when network administrators only needed to understand layers one through four of the OSI stack.

Today, we have to understand everything from the stack all the way to the application layer.

Finally, security will play an increasingly important role in the day-to-day responsibilities of network engineers.

Security is no longer an afterthought, but the first step in any new infrastructure project.

Engineers determine the defense mechanisms at the perimeter and within the company's network to provide a unified security solution that extends from the network to the endpoint devices.

Let’s take a closer look at the skills mentioned above and see what “must-haves” you need to master as an enterprise network engineer.

Application Flow

Whether you need to configure advanced quality of service (QoS) or deploy SDN in the data center or on the WAN, a clear understanding of how the application works from a data flow perspective will be critical in 2017, as its interaction with clients, databases, and cloud services is important for network optimization. Therefore, a close relationship with application administrators will be a major priority for network engineers.

Cybersecurity

In the past, network engineers focused their security efforts on the edge of the network. Engineers had a good understanding of firewalls and intrusion prevention, but when it came to functions such as email, web, and mobile security, network engineers were often helpless. But with the development of unified threat management (UTM) technology, end-to-end unified security solutions can manage security issues from endpoints to the cloud, and network engineers have played a greater role in the architecture and support of end-to-end unified security solutions.

SD-WAN

In 2016, much of the hype around SDN revolved around WANs as enterprises looked to save OPEX (operating expenses). However, some enterprises that do not understand the limitations of SD-WAN solutions will find that SD-WAN cannot provide the throughput and low latency required for mission-critical applications. Therefore, network engineers will need to understand when SD-WAN solutions are applicable and when to stick with managed WAN services such as MPLS.

DNS

In the past, network engineers did not have enough understanding of DNS functions inside and outside of enterprise organizations, but more and more network security issues revolve around DNS, so engineers must pay attention to DNS. DNS is an integral part of many unified network security architectures and a key component of public and private clouds, which means that network engineers need to have a good understanding of how DNS works so that they can better troubleshoot network problems.

IoT

The IT development trend of the Internet of Things (IoT) will become a major pain point for network engineers. Network engineers not only need to adjust the scale of their wired and wireless networks to accommodate the access of thousands or tens of thousands of IoT sensors, but they are also responsible for the security protection of devices after they are connected to the enterprise network. When facing enterprise IoT deployments, network engineers must be prepared to provide guidance and formulate policies for IoT connections and data security.

Virtualizing network components and services

SDN is a hot topic in the networking industry right now, and it is expected to continue to dominate. Although SDN has made great progress in the data center and WAN, it is unlikely that the SDN architecture will be extended beyond these two market segments in the next year. Instead, many IT organizations have concluded that before an end-to-end SDN network is in place, network components and services must first be virtualized. Therefore, the skills to understand how to virtualize network services and functions will be in high demand.

Network Automation

For many years, network engineers have not been able to automate management to minimize redundant tasks. The reason is simple: the network is essentially a static architecture that is largely self-sufficient in the form of redundant protocols. In other words, network engineers were able to have a "set it and forget it" mentality. This is no longer the case. Handling traffic, pushing policies, and provisioning new resources in a dynamic network causes engineers to waste a lot of time on repetitive tasks, so engineers must learn network automation skills to reduce their workload.

Hyper-converged systems

Hyperconvergence is the integration of computing, data storage, and networking functions into a unified system. Network engineers need to understand the management tools used to deploy and operate hyperconverged systems and understand how hyperconverged systems work from one end of the technology stack to the other so that the system is optimized for the applications running on it.