Andrew Lerner

Andrew Lerner
Research Vice President
6+ years at Gartner
21 years IT Industry

Andrew Lerner is a Vice President in Gartner Research. He covers enterprise networking, including data center, campus and WAN with a focus on emerging technologies (SDN, SD-WAN, and Intent-based networking). Read Full Bio

Networking Hype 2019

by Andrew Lerner | July 12, 2019

The 2019 Networking Hype Cycle has just published, which covers the most hyped networking technologies in the market today. The premise of the hype cycle is that most technological innovations progress through a pattern of overenthusiasm (it solves world hunger!), then disillusionment (wait, no, it CAUSES world hunger!), followed by eventual productivity, although some technologies […]

Networking in the Public Cloud

by Andrew Lerner | May 14, 2019

We see quite a few network teams treating networking inside the public cloud (i.e., AWS, Azure, GCE) as “not my problem”. The scary thing is that IaaS networking capabilities are relatively easy for non-networking personnel to consume, making it easier to make and proliferate sub-optimal network decisions. This doesn’t always end well. That said, it […]

There’s no such thing as SDLAN (yet)

by Andrew Lerner | February 1, 2019

Note: This blog was inspired by a 1980s commercial for the Washington DC Metro, There’s no such thing of “supercar“. We are increasingly seeing network vendors market things such as SD-LAN, SD-Access, SD-Campus…etc. This sounds really great, who doesn’t want software-defined everything. That said, there is no official/unofficial definition, and it means a wide variety […]

2019 Network Resolution: Invest in Network Automation*

by Andrew Lerner | January 7, 2019

Recently, a networking leader at a mainstream enterprise asked me a very simple question: if you could only do one new thing in 2019 what would it be? For me, this is a very simple answer: invest in network automation. Why? I’ll sum it up in two words: Availability + Agility. Or, if you prefer, […]

Networking Retrospective

by Andrew Lerner | January 2, 2019

Around this time of year, many folks take a retrospective look at 2018 and/or make predictions for 2019 (or resolutions). One interesting thing about all these retrospectives is that frankly, networking doesn’t actually change that much in a single year. While this is not official Gartner position, my theory is that networking only changes about […]

Networking and DevOps

by Andrew Lerner | October 30, 2018

There’s a lot of information (and misinformation) out there about networking and devops (or some variation of Net + Dev + Ops + Sec, if you prefer). Virtualizing appliances, adding APIs and automating manual networking tasks are good – but alone do not mean you have DevOpsified all the network things. In fact, it is […]

Data Center Networking Magic Quadrant 2018

by Andrew Lerner | July 27, 2018

We published the Data Center Networking Magic Quadrant a few weeks back. This market covers commercial vendors that provide hardware and/or software solutions to deliver connectivity primarily within enterprise data centers. The vendors who met inclusion criteria this year were: Arista, Big Switch, Cisco, Cumulus, Dell EMC, Extreme, HPE, Huawei, Juniper, Lenovo, Mellanox, H3C, Pluribus […]

Just Say No to Phone Bloat

by Andrew Lerner | June 8, 2018

Note: This is a guest blog by Katja Ruud Enterprises often offer employees a large set of voice applications and services such as a fixed phone, a mobile phone, unified communication service, a workstream collaboration solution, a meeting solution and so on. We’ve all witnessed this when someone really wants to get ahold of you […]

Cool Networking Vendors – 2018 Edition

by Andrew Lerner | May 8, 2018

We just published our 2018 Cool Vendors in Enterprise Networking research. This year, my colleague Bill Menezes led the document (perhaps I wasn’t cool enough…) and these vendors solve networking challenges in new and innovative ways. In the document, we recommend investing in products for improving network agility outside of the hardware refresh cycle. In other words, […]

Missed Opportunities for Network Innovation

by Andrew Lerner | April 30, 2018

Network vendors love to talk about innovation. In fact, so much so, that innovation now means everything and nothing at the same time. As we’ve published: network vendors overhype even minor incremental feature enhancements as “innovative,” to create the perception that they’re delivering innovation into the market Today, much of the network innovation hype centers […]

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