Zeus Kerravala
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Zeus Kerravala
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Tempered Networks makes it HIP to connect the unconnectable
IP networks were originally designed to be fairly simple. There’s a source and a destination address, and the network devices use this information to perform some fancy calculations—and magically, things connect. But as the internet has grown and more endpoints have been connected, networking has become a black magic. Since it’s impossible to give every device its own unique IP address, the clever folks at networking companies came up with an assortment of workarounds, such as being able to NAT (network address translation) non-routable, private addresses. And as we’ve added more dynamic environments, such as private and public cloud, defining policy based on addresses or ranges has become unsustainable. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Tempered Networks makes it HIP to connect the unconnectable
IP networks were originally designed to be fairly simple. There’s a source and a destination address, and the network devices use this information to perform some fancy calculations—and magically, things connect. But as the internet has grown and more endpoints have been connected, networking has become a black magic. Since it’s impossible to give every device its own unique IP address, the clever folks at networking companies came up with an assortment of workarounds, such as being able to NAT (network address translation) non-routable, private addresses. And as we’ve added more dynamic environments, such as private and public cloud, defining policy based on addresses or ranges has become unsustainable. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Cisco rolls out Cisco Enterprise Agreement for software
Software is now dominating IT spending.My research shows that the combination of SaaS and on-premises software is now a $650 billion market that has seen a steady growth of 6 percent per annum over the past five years. Today, almost all areas of IT are sold at least partially as software, including applications, security, storage and network infrastructure. Software is agile, enables rapid innovation and is a key component of digital transformation.This is one reason why enterprise agreements (EAs) for software have become increasingly popular with corporate buyers. Enterprise agreements are software site licenses that are issued to a large company that brings consistency to pricing and allows for the widespread use of the application throughout the company. EAs have become a common option for almost every large software company today.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Cisco rolls out Cisco Enterprise Agreement for software
Software is now dominating IT spending.My research shows that the combination of SaaS and on-premises software is now a $650 billion market that has seen a steady growth of 6 percent per annum over the past five years. Today, almost all areas of IT are sold at least partially as software, including applications, security, storage and network infrastructure. Software is agile, enables rapid innovation and is a key component of digital transformation.This is one reason why enterprise agreements (EAs) for software have become increasingly popular with corporate buyers. Enterprise agreements are software site licenses that are issued to a large company that brings consistency to pricing and allows for the widespread use of the application throughout the company. EAs have become a common option for almost every large software company today.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Whose Zoomin who? Polycom is
Shortly after talking the helm as Polycom, CEO Mary McDowell discussed her strategy for the company moving forward. One of the focus areas for it is to broaden its technology partner ecosystem. The company has a great partnership with Microsoft and is the only vendor that has products that interoperate natively with Skype for Business/Office 365. As lucrative as this partnership has been to Polycom, McDowell recognizes that not everyone will be using Microsoft for their collaboration needs. + Also on Network World: Polycom brings a wide variety of video solutions to Microsoft Unified Communications + Also, Polycom will be directing more resources into endpoint innovation. The infrastructure business at Polycom has been in decline for years because customers are choosing to leverage the power and ubiquity of the cloud. Polycom has been a technology leader since its inception, but the transition of video from being on premises to the cloud has shrunk the companies addressable market. Hence the change in strategy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Whose Zoomin who? Polycom is
Shortly after talking the helm as Polycom, CEO Mary McDowell discussed her strategy for the company moving forward. One of the focus areas for it is to broaden its technology partner ecosystem. The company has a great partnership with Microsoft and is the only vendor that has products that interoperate natively with Skype for Business/Office 365. As lucrative as this partnership has been to Polycom, McDowell recognizes that not everyone will be using Microsoft for their collaboration needs. + Also on Network World: Polycom brings a wide variety of video solutions to Microsoft Unified Communications + Also, Polycom will be directing more resources into endpoint innovation. The infrastructure business at Polycom has been in decline for years because customers are choosing to leverage the power and ubiquity of the cloud. Polycom has been a technology leader since its inception, but the transition of video from being on premises to the cloud has shrunk the companies addressable market. Hence the change in strategy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Cisco to network engineers: Get comfortable with software. It’s here to stay
The shift to software-defined networks (SDN) was the catalyst to usher in a whole new way of running networks—and that’s through software. Some may argue that network engineers have been using software for decades, as every good router jockey had a laptop filled with scripts and templates that could be cut and pasted into the command line interface. This ad hoc model is highly error prone and not scalable, which is why human error still accounts for much of the downtime with respect to networks. Historically, Cisco hasn’t exactly helped its customers be more proficient with software. Oh sure, it had programs such as the Cisco Technology Developer Program (CTDP) that were targeted at developers, but what about the network engineer? The person who wants to do his job more efficiently? For that audience, Cisco didn’t have an answer. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Cisco to network engineers: Get comfortable with software. It’s here to stay
The shift to software-defined networks (SDN) was the catalyst to usher in a whole new way of running networks—and that’s through software. Some may argue that network engineers have been using software for decades, as every good router jockey had a laptop filled with scripts and templates that could be cut and pasted into the command line interface. This ad hoc model is highly error prone and not scalable, which is why human error still accounts for much of the downtime with respect to networks. Historically, Cisco hasn’t exactly helped its customers be more proficient with software. Oh sure, it had programs such as the Cisco Technology Developer Program (CTDP) that were targeted at developers, but what about the network engineer? The person who wants to do his job more efficiently? For that audience, Cisco didn’t have an answer. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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IT departments should automate operations now
A couple of weeks ago someone asked me to define the term digital transformation. I didn’t want to give a long technical answer, so instead I gave the one word answer of “speed.” In the digital era, market leaders will be defined by which organization can adapt to market trends the fastest. This means the whole company must move with speed—business leaders need to make decisions fast, employees need to adapt to new processes quickly, and the IT department must make changes to the infrastructure with speed.+ Also on Network World: Automation: Disrupt or be disrupted + However, IT moving faster does not mean trying to execute the same manual processes 10 percent faster, as that would just lead to more errors. Nor does it mean throwing more people at the problem by adding to the IT staff. IT in the digital era means a complete re-think of operations with automation at the heart of the strategy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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IT departments should automate operations now
A couple of weeks ago someone asked me to define the term digital transformation. I didn’t want to give a long technical answer, so instead I gave the one word answer of “speed.” In the digital era, market leaders will be defined by which organization can adapt to market trends the fastest. This means the whole company must move with speed—business leaders need to make decisions fast, employees need to adapt to new processes quickly, and the IT department must make changes to the infrastructure with speed.+ Also on Network World: Automation: Disrupt or be disrupted + However, IT moving faster does not mean trying to execute the same manual processes 10 percent faster, as that would just lead to more errors. Nor does it mean throwing more people at the problem by adding to the IT staff. IT in the digital era means a complete re-think of operations with automation at the heart of the strategy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Nvidia gives glimpse of the future at its GPU Technology Conference
Historically, GPUs have been used in graphics-heavy processes such as video games. It’s fair to say that to serious gamers, Nvidia-based graphics cards have become the de facto standard. However, as I pointed out previously, GPUs have become increasingly more important in applications such as artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR) and analytics.I was fortunate to attend Nvidia’s annual GPU Technology Conference last week, and the keynote from CEO Jensen Huang was perhaps the most innovative future-looking session I have seen in a long time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Dell-EMC updates HCI line to address changing market requirements
Last week Dell and EMC held its first joint customer event since the two tech giants merged. The not-so-originally named Dell-EMC World was a forum for the newly formed company to showcase how it can help its customers navigate the complex world of digital transformation.The final keynote of the event was by the always-entertaining and equally brilliant Chad Sakac, head of the Converged Platform group. He entertained the crowd by flying onto the stage dressed as Captain Canada, a superhero from the 1970s.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Dell-EMC updates HCI line to address changing market requirements
Last week Dell and EMC held its first joint customer event since the two tech giants merged. The not-so-originally named Dell-EMC World was a forum for the newly formed company to showcase how it can help its customers navigate the complex world of digital transformation.The final keynote of the event was by the always-entertaining and equally brilliant Chad Sakac, head of the Converged Platform group. He entertained the crowd by flying onto the stage dressed as Captain Canada, a superhero from the 1970s.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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State of the WAN: 50% of WAN traffic is in the cloud
This week, SD-WAN vendor Aryaka released its “2017 State of the WAN Report,” which summarizes a global study conducted by the vendor that looks at WAN trends across a number of verticals and across every region of the globe for 2016.The study was conducted by aggregating data from Aryaka’s customer base. The global SD-WAN vendor has analyzed connectivity to and from over 5,000 locations around the world across more than 550 enterprise organizations. The network data was rolled up and analyzed to see what’s happening on the enterprise WAN.RELATED: SD-WAN: What it is and why you will use it one day Aryaka also provided a comparison with last year’s data set, which provides insight into how things have changed over the past 12 months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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State of the WAN: 50% of WAN traffic is in the cloud
This week, SD-WAN vendor Aryaka released its “2017 State of the WAN Report,” which summarizes a global study conducted by the vendor that looks at WAN trends across a number of verticals and across every region of the globe for 2016.The study was conducted by aggregating data from Aryaka’s customer base. The global SD-WAN vendor has analyzed connectivity to and from over 5,000 locations around the world across more than 550 enterprise organizations. The network data was rolled up and analyzed to see what’s happening on the enterprise WAN.RELATED: SD-WAN: What it is and why you will use it one day Aryaka also provided a comparison with last year’s data set, which provides insight into how things have changed over the past 12 months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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The need to automate routine work has never been higher
Anyone who has been in the workforce for any significant length of time probably feels like their workload has grown tenfold, but they likely brush it off to getting old or maybe being burned out. The fact is, however, the extra workload is very real. This week, as part of its Knowledge17 event, ServiceNow released a study called “Today’s State of Work: At the Breaking Point” (pdf) that shows how bad the problem currently is. Before I get into the details of the survey, it’s important to understand the demographics. The report summarizes a survey of about 1,850 business leaders, including C-level executives, vice presidents, directors and managers in seven countries, to understand the workload of business leaders, the impact of automation and the opinions on the future of work. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Video analytics: Coming soon to a smart city near you
Earlier this week at its GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia announced a new video analytics platform, Metropolis, that promises to make cities safer and smarter and should eventually bring game-changing capabilities to other industries.The heart of Metropolis is deep learning enabled by Nvidia’s range of GPUs that provide the necessary horsepower for artificial intelligence to be performed on every video stream.+ Also on Network World: Smart city tech growing in the U.S. + The GPU Technology Conference is the right place to show off advancements in something like video analytics, as it has become the flagship event to showcase how GPUs can literally change the world by enabling AI to do some things smarter and faster than people.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Video analytics: Coming soon to a smart city near you
Earlier this week at its GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia announced a new video analytics platform, Metropolis, that promises to make cities safer and smarter and should eventually bring game-changing capabilities to other industries.The heart of Metropolis is deep learning enabled by Nvidia’s range of GPUs that provide the necessary horsepower for artificial intelligence to be performed on every video stream.+ Also on Network World: Smart city tech growing in the U.S. + The GPU Technology Conference is the right place to show off advancements in something like video analytics, as it has become the flagship event to showcase how GPUs can literally change the world by enabling AI to do some things smarter and faster than people.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Apstra bring intent-based networking to life
What do UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster and intent-based networks have in common? These are all things that people claim to have seen, but no one can really prove it and their existence remains largely a myth.While the good folks over at the X-Files will continue to try and prove the first two, start-up vendor Apstra appears to have licked the third, as its latest operating system release, AOS 1.2 is making vendor-agnostic, intent-based networking a reality. RELATED: SD-WAN: What it is and why you will use it one day You might be asking what exactly intent-based networking is? Think of it as a network where you tell it the “what,” and the “how” is determined by the system. A good example of this is a self-driving car where the driver puts in the destination address, and the car’s system figures out the details. The driver just gives it a command and then gets there. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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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