PlexxiPulse—The Key to Hyperconverged Success

Earlier this week, my colleague Bob Noel wrote a blog post on converged networking. As industry buzz surrounding hyperconvergance gets louder and louder, it is important to take into account the network that underpins these hyperconverged systems of tomorrow. Here at Plexxi we know that the network has to be more dynamic, innovative and agile to deliver on the promise of hyperconverged infrastructure and we’re thrilled to be a part of the conversation and the solution. Take a look at Bob’s blog post to learn more about our converged networks and why the network is so important for successful converged deployments.

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Enjoy!

CBR: What does hyper-converged infrastructure mean for the future of enterprise application delivery?
By Gary Newe
Hyper-convergence is an extension of a converged infrastructure, where compute, server, storage, networking resources and software are pooled together on commodity hardware. They are usually systems from separate companies but designed to work very well together. The benefits of this include massively simplified management, which makes things faster, more agile and more efficient. It’s one of the foundations of virtualisation, but hyper-convergence allows for even Continue reading

PlexxiPulse—A Funding Frenzy

This week, we announced that we have raised a $35 million round of financing. The round was led by a new investor with participation from our existing investors (Lightspeed Venture Partners, Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners) bringing our total funding to $83 million. The capital raised will fuel the expansion of our sales, marketing, customer support, and research and development efforts. We’re so proud of what we’ve accomplished in this year and are eager to see what the rest of 2015 has in store for us. Take a look at this week’s blog post from our CEO Rich Napolitano on Plexxi’s continued momentum on the heels of our funding announcement.

Social media has been buzzing this week, see below! Have a great weekend.

The post PlexxiPulse—A Funding Frenzy appeared first on Plexxi.

PlexxiPulse—Reflections on VMworld

VMworld was buzzing last week. I was impressed by the focus on delivering solutions that help accelerate the deployment of workloads this year—a definite shift from years past. It was great to see demonstrations of solutions in action and the impact they have on their customers. There were a few things that made an impression on me at the show that I included in a blog post earlier this week. Were you at the show in San Francisco last week? What were your key takeaways?

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Enjoy!

Business 2 Community: The Future of Networking Will Be Written By the Leaders
By Jim Rapoza
One of my favorite bands of all time is The Clash, and a famous quote attributed to their late band leader Joe Strummer is that “the future is unwritten.” And in most cases that is very true. For example, few people in 2005 could have successfully predicted many of the trends and realities of today, whether in the everyday world or in the realm of technology. But while the future may be unwritten, sometimes we do have a pretty good Continue reading

5 Takeaways from a Week at #VMWorld

Another VMworld has come and gone. 23,000 people at this year’s VMWorld at the Moscone Center seemed to push the limits with standing room only at sessions and coffee in high demand, but the show was well run and the solution exchange was hopping.

I was glad to see less marketing rhetoric around private vs. public cloud, software vs. hardware, virtualized networks vs. physical networks and more focus on delivering solutions that help accelerate the deployment of workloads in ways that help customers.

Here’s a look at my 5 things that made an impression on me at this year’s show.

1. It’s a Hybrid World

A major focus (maybe the focus) of VMworld this year was what VMware calls the “Unified Hybrid Cloud.” It was good to see a strong shift from previous years where much focus was placed on defending private cloud versus public cloud. VMware is certainly taking an “inside out” strategy by focusing on their strength inside the data center and leveraging their vCloud Air public cloud services. Their ability to provide sophisticated tools for private data centers and extend that to a public resource-on-demand consumption model is certainly a strong value proposition for customers.

2. Continue reading

PlexxiPulse—Happy Labor Day!

Wishing you a safe and happy Labor Day from the entire team here at Plexxi. Enjoy the celebrations this weekend!

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Enjoy!

Enterprise Networking Planet: With SDN, Programmability is the Point
By Arthur Cole
Software Defined Networking (SDN) is the moniker that the enterprise has accepted for the new breed of virtual network architectures abstracted from underlying hardware. But since software involves code, what we are really talking about is programmable networking. That raises a number of questions regarding the ultimate goal of this investment: programmed how? And programmed to do what, exactly? For specialty chip developers like Xilinx, a key function will be workload acceleration. As the enterprise tries to satisfy the twin masters of increased data volumes and demand for real-time data services, the need to quickly navigate through an ever-shifting set of network resources will become paramount.

Data Center Knowledge: Latency, Bandwidth, Disaster Recovery: Selecting the Right Data Center
By Bill Kleyman
In selecting the right type of data center colocation, administrators must thoroughly plan out their deployment and strategies. This means involving more than just facilities teams in the planning Continue reading

PlexxiPulse—What are your VMworld Predictions?

If you caught our webinar on Thursday, you know that we believe the success of future networks will be a combination of hardware and software to form a dynamic, application aware, converged network fabric. We covered the evolution of the network as well as a few of our predictions for the future. If you missed it, don’t worry—there will be more to come. In the meantime, I will be at VMworld in San Francisco next week from August 30—September 3. I’m always open to chat about networking at large and how we’re disrupting the networking norm here at Plexxi. Let me know if you’ll be there! Do you have any predictions for VMworld this year?

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Enjoy!

No Jitter: Network Change: Evolutions and Revolutions
By Tom Noelle
Networking, and its transformation, is more than just technology. Broadband Internet came along during an unfortunate shift in the politics of networking. In the ’80s and ’90s we were moving from a global vision of communications as a regulated monopoly or even a government agency to one of a free market. The Internet exploded on the scene Continue reading

PlexxiPulse—Join Our Webinar Series

Thanks to hyperconvergence and virtualization, storage and compute have rapidly evolved over the last decade. Conversely, network architectures have remained virtually unchanged. Here at Plexxi, we believe it’s networking’s turn to innovate through consolidation and convergence. On August 27 from 2:00-3:30 p.m. EST, we’ll be hosting a webinar on how the network can finally keep pace with storage and compute. We’ll take thirty minutes to discuss application centric networking, convergence and how to optimize networks for east/west traffic. You can register here, we hope you can make it.

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Enjoy!

Tech.co: What Converged Infrastructure Means for Today’s Businesses
By Rick Delgado
Many organizations are currently undergoing a significant shift in how they operate, particular when it comes to IT departments. The idea is to slowly but surely move away from the traditional data center technologies that have been in use for years. With the traditional data center, operations have gotten quite complex and require expert IT personnel to keep up with the ever increasing workload. The complicated infrastructure and large teams simply weren’t compatible with business goals in many ways, which Continue reading

PlexxiPulse—CRN’s Top 100

This week, CRN named Rich Napolitano to their Top 100 list of the IT industry’s foremost channel leaders. The annual list recognizes the efforts of agile decision-makers who play an integral role in evolving the way the channel does business. CRN selects leaders that represent the pre-eminent innovators, influencers, disrupters and channel sales leaders in the IT channel today.

Our solutions enable success in the next era of IT as virtualization, hyperconvergence, Big Data and scale-out applications and with Rich’s guidance we are working with great partners to bring our solutions to the market. Congratulations to all of the leaders named to this year’s CRN® Top 100 list.

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Have a great weekend!

SearchITChannel: Is bimodal IT the future of the channel?
By John Moore
CHICAGO — In CIO circles, bimodal IT has been a conversation starter: How can an enterprise’s information leadership balance the necessity of keeping the lights on against the challenge of adopting emerging, business-changing technologies? That same discussion is now surfacing in the channel. Speakers at this week’s CompTIA ChannelCon 2015 here suggested the possibility of partners becoming bimodal and the Continue reading

PlexxiPulse—Partnering with Arrow

This week, we announced today an exclusive distribution agreement with one of the largest and most innovative distributors in the industry, Arrow Electronics. Under this agreement, Arrow’s Enterprise Computing Business will become the sole distributor of our next-generation networking products and solutions for scale-out applications, agile datacenters and distributed cloud environments. This agreement represents a joint vision that a new generation of Third Platform applications (IoT, Big Data, social, mobile and distributed apps) demand a new software-defined infrastructure to meet the demands for scale-out, virtualized computing. If you’re interested in learning more about our partnership with Arrow, take a look at the CRN Exclusive article on this announcement.

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Have a great weekend!

eWEEK: Enterprise Cloud Economy Booming, Driven by Big Data
By Nathan Eddy
The SteelBrick report analyzes how enterprise companies are selling to customers and also examines B2B selling trends compared to this time last year. The market for enterprise technology products is booming, with 72 percent of high-technology providers reporting growth in sales quote volumes, and 42 percent reporting accelerating sales cycles, according to a report from SteelBrick. The report analyzes Continue reading

PlexxiPulse—Disrupting The IT Channel

We’re honored that CRN has included Plexxi in this year’s 2015 Emerging Vendors List, an annual list that features up-and-coming technology vendors that have launched innovative new products that generate opportunities within the channel. Our team believes that the next generation of IT is upon us and we are honored to be recognized for our innovative solutions for the next generation of IT. To learn more about our predictions for what’s next in IT, take a look at this recent blog post by Bob Noel, Director of Solutions Marketing here at Plexxi.

We are continuing to partner with forward thinking channel partners to carve a new path in the market and to make our solutions widely accessible. Thank you to CRN for the distinction and congratulations to all of this year’s Emerging Vendors!

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Enjoy!

Forbes: Big Data Will Select Your Next Strategic Partner
By Christine Crandall
In an increasingly competitive but cost conscious world businesses are always looking for new ways to gain competitive advantages and revenue streams.  Businesses are likely to be more successful in achieving their goals if they Continue reading

PlexxiPulse—Switches for Next Generation Networks

The next era of IT is being forged by the evolution of virtualization, hyperconvergence, Big Data and scale-out applications. Here at Plexxi, we’re developing technology to ensure our customers are ready for that evolution. This week, we announced the launch of our new Switch 2 Series, which emphasizes applications over infrastructure. Switch 2 consolidates the network into a single tier, optimized for east/west application traffic, while eliminating the need for multiple switch types found in traditional leaf/spine architectures.

Our technology allows enterprises and government agencies to move beyond the static networks of the past to create the industry’s first converged, agile and dynamic offering for third platform networks. Utilization of our switches lowers CapEx and OpEx, reduces network complexity, improves security and increases productivity, all critical characteristics of networks needed to support unprecedented amounts of data. Our own Director of Solutions Marketing, Bob Noel, blogged about the launch and its importance to the industry and how it relates to Plexxi’s vision earlier this week. Check out just some of the coverage of our announcement and its impact on the industry below.

Have a great weekend!

CRN: CRN Exclusive: Plexxi CEO Talks New ‘Next Era Converged Network’ Switch, Major Revenue Continue reading

Plexxi Pulse – Bimodal IT: The future of network disruption?

Gartner refers to bimodal IT as “having two modes of IT, each designed to develop and deliver information- and technology-intensive services in its own way.”

If this week’s top articles are any indication, it’s certainly a topic that is at forefront everyone’s minds. We’ve especially been enjoying Kurt Marko’s series for Forbes. For some, bimodal is just another buzzword, but for others, it presents an entirely new way of approaching IT. It disrupts legacy IT, offering groundbreaking tactics for testing and rolling-out new technologies. No other area of IT needs this more than the network. As we’ve frequently discussed, storage and compute have evolved rapidly over the last decade, but networking has remained unchanged – despite huge shifts in the way we manage and move information. The articles below are certainly a good start to a lengthy discussion. Enjoy!

Forbes: Bimodal IT Doesn’t Mean Bipolar Organizations: The Path to IT Transformation

By Kurt Marko

Never underestimate a buzzword’s power to frame the discussion. As I recently discussed, the term bimodal IT has captured the imagination and polemical energy of technology commentators and like many IT discussions in the age of 140-character commentary, it often degenerates into polarized, all-or-nothing Continue reading

PlexxiPulse—Happy 4th of July!

Wishing you a safe and happy Fourth of July from the entire team here at Plexxi. Enjoy the celebrations this weekend!

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week.

Network Computing: Why Hardware Still Counts In Networking
By Ethan Banks
As a host of the networking podcast Packet Pushers, I receive lots of interesting e-mail. Listeners tell us how we’re doing, share their knowledge, and voice opinions. One opinion that’s come up lately I will describe as an aversion to hardware. In the minds of some, software is king; code is a networking cure-all that will take us into the future. Chris Wahl, a fellow writer and engineer, told me he’s also heard this anti-hardware sentiment. “Did the bad ASIC hurt you?” he joked, as we tried to understand the software bias.

Network World: Can Converged Infrastructure Help IT Get Its Mojo Back?
By Colm Keegan
In “Star Wars Episode V, The Empire Strikes Back,” Yoda implores an impetuous Luke Skywalker to “unlearn what you have learned.” IT administrators who wish to stay relevant in a shadow IT universe, may want to heed the words of the legendary Jedi Continue reading

PlexxiPulse—Our CEO on the next era of IT

The dynamics of IT are rapidly changing. Rich Napolitano joined Plexxi as CEO last November to help guide Plexxi into the next generation of IT. He is passionate about sharing his intentions to build next generation networks that support new forms of data and applications. This week, he identified the characteristics of third era networks in a piece for Enterprise Networking Planet and discussed how the network needs to evolve to keep pace with developments in storage and compute in a blog post. Be sure to give them a read to learn more about the third era of IT—Rich will continue to share his thoughts on the Plexxi blog in coming weeks. Stay tuned!

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week.

IT Business Edge: Five Trends Shaping the Future of IT
By Staff Writer
When we think about the future or even the present of IT, it’s easy to get caught up in the vendor, analyst and media new-technology buzzword frenzy. Words and phrases such as cloud, IoT (Internet of Things), AI (artificial intelligence), Big Data, bimodal IT, DevOps, wearables and the quantified self, the consumerization of IT, BYOD and Continue reading

PlexxiPulse—We’ve Been Busy!

PlexxiPulse—We’ve been busy in The District!

You may have seen that we announced our partnership with CloudGov Technologies last week, a leading IT provider servicing the government and commercial markets. We spent the week in Baltimore alongside our newest partner and PSSC Labs at the AFCEA Defensive Cyber Operations Symposium spreading the word on how third era solutions transform the agility and performance of federal networks. Next week, we’ll be in Washington, D.C. with CloudGov at the GEOINT 2015 Symposium. This is the first year that the Symposium is being held in the nation’s capital—we’re excited to share our vision with attendees and learn from the impressive list of conference speakers. Drop us a line on Twitter or at [email protected] if you’re in town and interested in chatting with the team or scheduling a live demo!

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Have a great weekend!

Forbes: Bimodal IT: A New Buzzword For Old Concepts Presents Teachable Moment
By Kurt Marko
IT analysts are like fashion designers, always searching for something new, even if that means recycling age-old concepts in new terminology. But like successful fashionistas, IT Continue reading

PlexxiPulse—Partnering with CloudGov Technologies

This week we announced our partnership with CloudGov Technologies, a third platform IT Solutions provider servicing the government and commercial markets. This partnership helps federal agencies address the increasing need for scalable, agile and distributed data center networks built for third platform computing workloads. As a result of this partnership, a large U.S. government agency recently deployed our solutions to automate the provisioning and deployment of more than 30,000 virtual desktops with minimal administration. The deployment significantly improves application user experience and performance by optimizing the flow of east-west traffic across its virtualized data center.

Interested in learning more? Drop us a line at [email protected] to schedule a demo or stop by booth #7071 at the AFCEA Defensive Cyber Operations Symposium from June 16-18 in Baltimore. We will be showcasing our third platform solution alongside CloudGov Technologies.

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Enjoy!

Fortune: 5 things that keep tech execs up at night
By Barb Darrow
Pity the poor soul at your company who is in charge of technology decisions. Whether that person is the CIO, the director of engineering, vice president of IT, or Continue reading

PlexxiPulse—Have you heard of Bimodal IT?

The networking space is buzzing about “Bimodal IT.” Simply defined, Bimodal IT is the segmentation of application deployments into cloud (public and/or private). Ben Kepes of Forbes included the concept in a recent deep dive on enterprise IT in the cloud. The network underpinning bimodal initiatives is critical and as Kepes pointed out in his article, tough to achieve if operating a legacy network. Our own Director of Solutions Marketing, Bob Noel, agrees with Kepes and highlights the importance of scalable and agile networks in response to the piece: “Those left to run (Bimodal deployments) on the legacy infrastructure is a fantastic idea that unfortunately has an Achilles heel inhibiting success for the approach…Until there is a fundamental shift in networking, companies will struggle to support Bimodal IT.” What are your thoughts on bimodal IT? Do you agree with Kepes and Bob?

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Enjoy!

BetaBoston: New Hampshire tries to reclaim tech vibe
By Staff Writer
MANCHESTER, N.H. — In one corner, a guy was hunched over his laptop, working on a pitch for a smartphone app that would allow golfers to Continue reading

PlexxiPulse—The Open Networking Summit

In two weeks, we’ll be heading to Santa Clara, CA for the Open Networking Summit hosted in partnership with the Open Networking Foundation. Plexxi co-founder and EVP of products and technology Dave Husak is participating in the “Hot Startups & Investing: Building Business with Open Source–VC perspective” panel on June 16 at 2:00 p.m. PT at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The Open Networking Summit draws networking’s best and brightest, and we’re excited to learn from this year’s impressive lineup of speakers. Heading to the event? Let us know on Twitter or send us a note at [email protected]. See you there!

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week.

TechTarget: Converged vs. hyper-converged landscape: What does it mean?
By Dave Raffo
Confused by all the talk about converged vs. hyper-converged infrastructure in the data center and what it means to storage? If so, you are not alone. Consultant Scott Lowe laid out pros and cons of approaches to convergence and how they differ this week during the Modern Infrastructure Summit in Chicago. Lowe, founder and managing consultant of The 1610 Group, told conference attendees that the rise of convergence Continue reading

PlexxiPulse—A Visit From Networking Legend Dr. Doug Comer

It has been an exciting week here at Plexxi! Dr. Doug Comer spent the day with us on Wednesday learning about our products and new network architecture. Dr. Comer is an internationally recognized networking guru, widely known for his series of groundbreaking textbooks on computer networks, the Internet, computer operating systems and computer architecture (including the popular ‘Internetworking with TCP/IP’). He designed and implemented X25NET and Cypress networks as well as the Xinu operating system. He is currently a professor of computer science at Purdue University where he teaches courses on operating systems and computer networks. It was a pleasure having him at the Plexxi headquarters—we hope he learned as much from us as we did from him! Take a look at a few photos from his visit.

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Have a great Memorial Day weekend!

InfoWorld: 3 ways the data lake is actually not helping with IT agility
By Yves de Montcheuil
Loosely speaking, a data lake is the big data version of an operational data store, plus a network storage appliance, plus data processing/query engines, all combined — typically in a Hadoop cluster Continue reading

PlexxiPulse—Scale-out Networking for Oracle

We were in Overland Park, KS this week at the Spring Oracle Summit hosted by the Central States OAUG (Oracle Application Users Group). We hosted a lecture on scale-out networking for Oracle applications. We’ll be at the next summit on May 27 in St. Louis, MO. Will you be in the area? Drop us a line on Twitter or at [email protected]. We’d love to see you.

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Have a great weekend!

CRN: 2015 Virtualization 50
By Joseph Kovar
While software-defined data centers are not yet available, there is considerable buzz building up about the possibility of virtualizing an ever-larger part of the data center as such technologies, including server and storage virtualization, software-defined networking and storage, and VDI and hyper-converged infrastructures, continue to come to market…Plexxi develops software-defined networking software that “renders” network configurations based on application requirements. That software sits on the company’s software-definable hardware platform. The company claims its hardware can be quickly defined and redefined by its software in response to the needs of a customer’s application.

Network Computing: SDN Introduces Choice To The Data Center
By Gilad Shainer
There Continue reading