“These are actual network components that are currently deployed today in enterprise environments, and they are working,” Betacom's Michael Davies said.

Cisco was named a challenger; Skyhigh Security, Forcepoint and Lookout as "visionaries"; and Broadcom, iBoss and Cloudflare as "niche players."

"We're dealing with legacy Cisco enterprise customers. They're used to buying that hardware and everything upfront," Logicalis' Chris Calvert said.

“A lot of people had heard about our unique framework ... so now they can actually feel it, touch it,” Hughes' Rajeev Gopal said.

“I think we have an opportunity to grow the pie together,” Microsoft's Shawn Hakl said.

To fix network issues affecting real-time performance, you have to know what traffic is on the network and where it is traveling to and the underlying application requirements.

Sustainability used to be in IT leaders' top 5 concerns, but today "it's definitely within the top 3," IBM VP Tina Tarquinio said.

“It's a must have for any private network offering that anyone's providing out there today,” NTT's Shahid Ahmed said.

A year after being acquired by AMD for $1.9 billion, Pensando's co-founder details progress and the road ahead for DPU-based network innovation.

Enterprises are reviewing their network and security infrastructure now more than ever, Netskope's Gerry Plaza said.

“I am very happy to be the plumber of the world,” Tech Mahindra's Manish Vyas said.

Building hardware-centric network infrastructure is “mundane, costly, and high maintenance,” Netksope's Gerry Plaza said.

But while the metaverse might not be “real,” its physical infrastructure certainly will be.

Legacy equipment is being replaced with SD-WAN appliances and “causing a relook at the WAN overall,” Gartner's Danielle Young said.

Gartner's Nat Smith noted Valtix's technology connects into the plumbing of the public clouds to protect each individual workload.

Senior IT Product Manager Michael Wokusch said the Formula E team's network has gotten complicated as it's been moved “more and more into the cloud.”

Gartner's Andrew Lerner compared the relationship between 5G and secure access service edge to a new car on a new road.

Since exiting stealth the startup has gained traction with "technology partners that [it] thought might be competitors,” VP Matt Krieg said.

Analyst John Tolbert predicts a “bigger emphasis on data protection, especially at the endpoint, and then just broader endpoint security integration.”

The platform's management solution "treats public cloud Kubernetes as a first-class citizen," SUSE's Keith Basil said.

“We recognize the strengths of the cloud and where we add value and that’s where we are focused on," telecom and edge CTO Ishwar Parulkar said.

Despite the push, analyst firms and operators have tempered market expectations.

The vendor's millimeter-wave antenna supports end-user facing connectivity and can act as part of a wireless mesh backhaul service.

"Zero trust has gone from an academic theory, to a best practice, to simply how modern security is done,” Forcepoint VP Jim Fulton told SDxCentral.