Zeus Kerravala
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Zeus Kerravala
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Why Cisco needs SD-WAN vendor Viptela
Cisco, the acquisition machine, is at it again. It’s been about three months since the company plunked down $3.7 billion for AppDynamics, so I’m sure all that cash was burning a hole in Chuck Robbins pockets and making another acquisition seem long overdue. Well, speculation about who Cisco might buy next ended yesterday when the company announced its intent to acquire SD-WAN vendor Viptela for $610 million. The price tag seems fairly modest for a company that was valued at $875 million about a year ago. Even at the lower price, Viptela investors should be satisfied with the return, given the total investment in the company was about $110 million. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Nyansa introduces private cloud option for its network analytics platform
Having a full understanding of end user experience has been theorized in IT circles for decades but has remained as elusive as the Holy Grail or the Fountain of Youth. Some people claim to have seen it, but no one really knows for sure.Last year, an innovative startup, Nyansa, came to market with a new approach to end-user management. Its Voyance product continuously collects data, analyzes it and correlates every end user transaction across the wired and wireless networks and provides insights and actionable recommendations that can be taken to improve application performance.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Why 2×2 Wave 2 access points make no sense
Everyone loves the latest and greatest technology. A new iPhone comes out, and people camp out at the stores to buy one. Microsoft releases a new version of Xbox, and they’re sold out for months.Sometimes, though, the newest thing doesn’t make sense because the incremental value of the innovation is limited. In technology, this doesn’t happen very often, but I believe there’s a current “latest and greatest” that provides limited value—and that’s the 2x2 Wave 2 access points (AP) that are now available from many of the mainstream Wi-Fi providers.Before I explain my opinion on this, it’s worth doing a quick refresh of Wave 1 versus Wave 2 because it’s important to understand the principals of Wave 2. Below are the benefits of 802.11ac Wave 2 versus Wave 1: To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Why 2×2 Wave 2 access points make no sense
Everyone loves the latest and greatest technology. A new iPhone comes out, and people camp out at the stores to buy one. Microsoft releases a new version of Xbox, and they’re sold out for months.Sometimes, though, the newest thing doesn’t make sense because the incremental value of the innovation is limited. In technology, this doesn’t happen very often, but I believe there’s a current “latest and greatest” that provides limited value—and that’s the 2x2 Wave 2 access points (AP) that are now available from many of the mainstream Wi-Fi providers.Before I explain my opinion on this, it’s worth doing a quick refresh of Wave 1 versus Wave 2 because it’s important to understand the principals of Wave 2. Below are the benefits of 802.11ac Wave 2 versus Wave 1: To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Ixia goes native to build its cloud visibility solution
Earlier this month Ixia announced an update to its CloudLens product where it could now provide visibility into public clouds. Ixia wasn’t the first packet broker vendors to roll out a solution that extends the visibility infrastructure to the cloud. That honor goes to Gigamon, which announced the general availability of its visibility platform for Amazon Web Services.Over the past few years, the packet broker space has heated up, as customers are feeling the pain of running distributed environments and have brought in more network management and security tools. Packet brokers effectively create a middleware layer that sits between the network and tools and makes it significantly easier to deploy best-of-breed tools. Now that IT departments are aggressively expanding to the cloud, it makes sense that the visibility tier would need to as well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Forget Heliocentrism—Embrace the cloud and Zeus-centrism
In the early 1600s, one of my favorite historical figures, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, championed the works of one Nicolaus Copernicus and postulated that the universe was heliocentric. The term was named after Helios, the Greek god of the sun, indicating that everything revolved around him.In the IT world, the cloud has become the center of the universe. And since Zeus is the Greek god of the sky, which includes thunder and cloud, it makes sense that CIOs should adopt a Zeus-centric faith.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Avaya’s post-bankruptcy plan should not impact customers, partners
On Good Friday 2017, the Easter Bunny dropped off Avaya’s Chapter 11 plan for reorganization at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of N.Y. The plan is aimed at significantly cutting Avaya’s pre-filing debt, which had become an anchor around an otherwise healthy and profitable company. The reduction of debt will strengthen the company’s balance sheet, putting the company in a position to be successful in the future. A healthy financial position leads to M&A opportunities, funding of R&D, hiring of new sales people or any other number of options. + Also on Network World: Avaya files Chapter 11 reorg plan, reduces debt by $4 billion | 4 possible outcomes for Avaya + The proposed plan includes the following terms:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Avaya’s post-bankruptcy plan should not impact customers, partners
On Good Friday 2017, the Easter Bunny dropped off Avaya’s Chapter 11 plan for reorganization at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of N.Y. The plan is aimed at significantly cutting Avaya’s pre-filing debt, which had become an anchor around an otherwise healthy and profitable company. The reduction of debt will strengthen the company’s balance sheet, putting the company in a position to be successful in the future. A healthy financial position leads to M&A opportunities, funding of R&D, hiring of new sales people or any other number of options. + Also on Network World: Avaya files Chapter 11 reorg plan, reduces debt by $4 billion | 4 possible outcomes for Avaya + The proposed plan includes the following terms:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Avaya’s post-bankruptcy plan should not impact customers, partners
On Good Friday 2017, the Easter Bunny dropped off Avaya’s Chapter 11 plan for reorganization at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of N.Y. The plan is aimed at significantly cutting Avaya’s pre-filing debt, which had become an anchor around an otherwise healthy and profitable company. The reduction of debt will strengthen the company’s balance sheet, putting the company in a position to be successful in the future. A healthy financial position leads to M&A opportunities, funding of R&D, hiring of new sales people or any other number of options. + Also on Network World: Avaya files Chapter 11 reorg plan, reduces debt by $4 billion | 4 possible outcomes for Avaya + The proposed plan includes the following terms:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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There’s never been a better time for Cisco Services
About a year ago, Cisco embarked on a new branding campaign, telling its customers there’s “Never Been A Better Time” to become a digital organization and create new experiences for employees and customers. However, the path to becoming digital may not be that obvious, as we are connecting more things to our network, costs are escalating, the skills gap is widening, and IT is becoming more dynamic and distributed. + Also on Network World: Cisco targets digital business transformation with new certifications + Put this all together, and CIOs face a difficult situation. Digital transformation requires businesses to use technology to move fast, but IT complexity is clearly on the rise. Technology leaders are now in a situation that seems to be untenable: Accelerate business transformation while trying to completely revamp the way IT is run within the organization. I’ve heard the analogy that it’s like changing the wings on a plane while it’s flying, but it’s more like changing the entire plane and the people flying it while flying. So, where can businesses turn for help?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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There’s never been a better time for Cisco Services
About a year ago, Cisco embarked on a new branding campaign, telling its customers there’s “Never Been A Better Time” to become a digital organization and create new experiences for employees and customers. However, the path to becoming digital may not be that obvious, as we are connecting more things to our network, costs are escalating, the skills gap is widening, and IT is becoming more dynamic and distributed. + Also on Network World: Cisco targets digital business transformation with new certifications + Put this all together, and CIOs face a difficult situation. Digital transformation requires businesses to use technology to move fast, but IT complexity is clearly on the rise. Technology leaders are now in a situation that seems to be untenable: Accelerate business transformation while trying to completely revamp the way IT is run within the organization. I’ve heard the analogy that it’s like changing the wings on a plane while it’s flying, but it’s more like changing the entire plane and the people flying it while flying. So, where can businesses turn for help?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Cisco Services aims to take the risk out of the jump to digital
About a year ago, Cisco embarked on a new branding campaign, telling its customers there’s “Never Been A Better Time” to become a digital organization and create new experiences for employees and customers. However, the path to becoming digital may not be that obvious, as we are connecting more things to our network, costs are escalating, the skills gap is widening, and IT is becoming more dynamic and distributed. + Also on Network World: Cisco targets digital business transformation with new certifications + Put this all together, and CIOs face a difficult situation. Digital transformation requires businesses to use technology to move fast, but IT complexity is clearly on the rise. Technology leaders are now in a situation that seems to be untenable: Accelerate business transformation while trying to completely revamp the way IT is run within the organization. I’ve heard the analogy that it’s like changing the wings on a plane while it’s flying, but it’s more like changing the entire plane and the people flying it while flying. So, where can businesses turn for help?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Mist simplifies mobile asset visibility with virtual BLE beacons
For decades, the enterprise Wi-Fi network served one purpose: to connect users devices to the company network. However, the rise of digital transformation has caused many organizations to leverage Wi-Fi to create new experiences.A good example of an early adopter of this concept is the Orlando Airport, which went fully wireless a couple years ago. However, as I pointed out in the article, creating a differentiated indoor mobile experience is difficult with Wi-Fi only because Wi-Fi triangulation is accurate to roughly 5 to 15 meters. That may be sufficient for a handful of use cases, but most indoor services need to be more accurate than this. Consider a nurse trying to locate a critical piece of medical equipment. An accuracy range of 10 meters could pose quite a challenge. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Silver Peak’s new SD-WAN makes the thin branch a reality
It seems that with technology, when we deploy something new, our first instincts are to make it look like the old thing. Then, at a later date, smart people figure out how the new thing can actually do something different.For example, the first Windows applications had a very DOS-like look and feel to them. Eventually the good folks at Microsoft created an ecosystem that gave us an entirely new way of working. I suppose this path creates the least amount of friction for people, as they can ease themselves out of the old way.RELATED: SD-WAN: What it is and why you will use it one day Another example is with software-defined networking (SDN) and SD-WAN. The initial wave of solutions was really about replacing MPLS with broadband to save money. Architecturally, everything stayed the same, but the circuits connecting the branch to the data center were augmented with or replaced by broadband, which brought the cost down and created a more efficient network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Silver Peak’s new SD-WAN makes the thin branch a reality
It seems that with technology, when we deploy something new, our first instincts are to make it look like the old thing. Then, at a later date, smart people figure out how the new thing can actually do something different.For example, the first Windows applications had a very DOS-like look and feel to them. Eventually the good folks at Microsoft created an ecosystem that gave us an entirely new way of working. I suppose this path creates the least amount of friction for people, as they can ease themselves out of the old way.RELATED: SD-WAN: What it is and why you will use it one day Another example is with software-defined networking (SDN) and SD-WAN. The initial wave of solutions was really about replacing MPLS with broadband to save money. Architecturally, everything stayed the same, but the circuits connecting the branch to the data center were augmented with or replaced by broadband, which brought the cost down and created a more efficient network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Ed Meyercord’s plan for Extreme Networks proves to be ‘better than most’
Any fan of the PGA Tour will never forget the “better than most” call by NBC’s Gary Koch. On March 24, 2001, Tiger Woods stepped up to execute one of the most difficult putts of his career. Halfway to the hole, Koch uttered the words “better than most” as it looked like his putt was going to be a good one. It wound up going in, and that become yet another notable moment in Tiger’s illustrious career where great execution was becoming the norm. In the highly tumultuous networking market, Extreme Networks’ CEO, Ed Meyercord, continues to make moves that are “better than most,” putting his company in a position to be a long-term share gainer in a market that badly needs more strong vendors. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Ed Meyercord’s plan for Extreme Networks proves to be ‘better than most’
Any fan of the PGA Tour will never forget the “better than most” call by NBC’s Gary Koch. On March 24, 2001, Tiger Woods stepped up to execute one of the most difficult putts of his career. Halfway to the hole, Koch uttered the words “better than most” as it looked like his putt was going to be a good one. It wound up going in, and that become yet another notable moment in Tiger’s illustrious career where great execution was becoming the norm. In the highly tumultuous networking market, Extreme Networks’ CEO, Ed Meyercord, continues to make moves that are “better than most,” putting his company in a position to be a long-term share gainer in a market that badly needs more strong vendors. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Ed Meyercord’s plan for Extreme Networks proves to be ‘better than most’
Any fan of the PGA Tour will never forget the “better than most” call by NBC’s Gary Koch. On March 24, 2001, Tiger Woods stepped up to execute one of the most difficult putts of his career. Halfway to the hole, Koch uttered the words “better than most” as it looked like his putt was going to be a good one. It wound up going in, and that become yet another notable moment in Tiger’s illustrious career where great execution was becoming the norm. In the highly tumultuous networking market, Extreme Networks’ CEO, Ed Meyercord, continues to make moves that are “better than most,” putting his company in a position to be a long-term share gainer in a market that badly needs more strong vendors. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Brocade Gen6 Fibre Channel prepares businesses for an all-flash world
Last year, Brocade introduced its 32 Gig Fibre Channel portfolio. Gen6, as Brocade calls it, is ideally suited to meet the demands of a digital world that is seeing an explosion of traffic from data center modernization, the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing.Earlier this week the company announced its new G610 switch. The product is designed to be an entry-level switch that enables businesses to start at eight ports and then expand to 24 ports through a software license. The ports can be configured to run at 16 Gbps today and then upgraded to 32 Gbps when the data demands require it. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Brocade Gen6 Fibre Channel prepares businesses for an all-flash world
Last year, Brocade introduced its 32 Gig Fibre Channel portfolio. Gen6, as Brocade calls it, is ideally suited to meet the demands of a digital world that is seeing an explosion of traffic from data center modernization, the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing.Earlier this week the company announced its new G610 switch. The product is designed to be an entry-level switch that enables businesses to start at eight ports and then expand to 24 ports through a software license. The ports can be configured to run at 16 Gbps today and then upgraded to 32 Gbps when the data demands require it. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here