Forecast 2014: Boost your mobile bandwidth

"Wireless connectivity and general bandwidth issues were a point of concern among students," Howard says. And that concern was warranted -- the university's bring-your-own-device policy had sparked a 250% increase in the number of devices attaching to the network in the previous 12 months.

Wireless access points, core switches, network pipes and Internet connections all had become choke points, according to Howard. The network simply had to be unclogged because the university used mobile access to attract students, faculty and staff, and because it had plans to shift key applications -- including its email, ERPERP and learning management systems -- to the cloud to save money and foster business continuity. Alles zu ERP auf CIO.de

The Armstrong team couldn't continue with stopgap measures such as adding new access points whenever the switches and pipes behind them were at capacity. "We had to stop trying to do the math to make the old network work and start at architectural ground zero on a new one. Unless we removed the bottlenecks, [the university's mission] was going to suffer," Howard says.

Howard's realization is not uncommon among IT executives who have watched the demands of mobile devices and cloud computing mercilessly hammer their wireless and wired networks.

In Computerworld's Forecast 2014 survey of 221 IT executives, more than half, 54%, of the respondents said that they anticipate allowing employees to use more consumer technologies at work. And perhaps as a direct result, 53% said that they anticipate needing to add bandwidth to keep pace with the burgeoning use of both mobile devices and cloud-based systems.