Users want hybrid cloud networking to be simple

As American jazz great Duke Ellington once said, "Simplicity is a most complex form." And IT doesn't get much more complex than hybrid cloud networking.

I take pictures -- lots of pictures. To make them frame-worthy, I edit them in Lightroom and Photoshop, two Adobe Systems programs. In the old days, if I wanted to use them, I'd have to cough up more than a thousand dollars to buy and install the software on my desktop. Now the applications live in Adobe Creative Cloud, and my inexpensive monthly subscription makes editing simple and affordable.

All the networking Adobe has done to make my interactions with Lightroom and Photoshop seamless is invisible to me, but what goes on behind the scenes is anything but simple. Hybrid cloud networking -- or in Adobe's case, multicloud networking, as described in our cover story -- is complex. When it simply works, it's a beautiful thing.

Users prefer that complexity remain invisible. We like clicking an icon and having our work pop up. Have a look at The Subnet Q&A for more about how Adobe strives for simplicity in its hybrid cloud networking among all its services.

The world continues to move toward ensuring the user experience with the network is simple and engaging. In "IT pros seek better methods to manage application performance" we look beyond the need to integrate the cloud, to the onslaught of mobile devices accessing servers, which has IT managers struggling for the best way to add application performance management to overall network management.

Those mobile devices also present their own level of complexity. More and more employees rely on their smartphones to communicate -- whether that's calling, messaging or video conferencing. This puts pressure on unified communications vendors to make their UC applications as simple to use as a smartphone's native applications but with added security, features and reporting capabilities for the enterprise. In "Mobile unified communications market has growing pains" we look at what vendors are doing and who might win the market.