Zeus Kerravala
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Zeus Kerravala
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White boxes are now ready for prime time
White box switches have been around for years, but adoption has been limited to niche companies that have large engineering departments. The rise of software-defined networking (SDN) has brought them into the public eye, though, as a lower-cost alternative to traditional network hardware. In fact, some of the early messaging around SDN revolved around using white boxes as a complete replacement for all network hardware.Despite the promise that SDN brought, the use of white boxes has been limited for a couple of reasons. The first is that historically, any organization that wanted to leverage a white box switch needed to have a number of technical specialists that many enterprises do not have. This would include network programmers and engineers fluent in Linux. These skills are commonly found in companies such as Facebook, Google and Amazon, but not so much in your average enterprise.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Vonage’s cloudy strategy is now clear
Alan Masarek has been CEO of Vonage since November 2014. Since then, the company has undergone a transformation, building on its roots as a home phone replacement company to become a leading provider of cloud communications for business. Vonage jump-started its leadership position as a business communications provider through acquisitions and has been very active acquiring companies to complement the core consumer VoIP offering and early SMB offering the company had when Masarek assumed the role. Masarek’s vision is for Vonage to be the global leader in cloud communications by transforming the way people connect and businesses operate through integrated and contextual communications whenever and however people choose to communicate.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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8kpc provides a lower-cost alternative to hyper-convergence
Hyper-converged platforms have been red hot of late. Because of this, the number of solution providers has increased significantly. In addition to Simplivity and Nutanix, two of the best-known vendors today, Cisco, VCE, HP and others have recently jumped into the market. Another solution provider that got its start in India and is on the verge of entering the U.S. market is 8kpc. I recently had the opportunity to interview the company’s president and CEO, Ram Appalaraju, who you may recognize from his stints with Cisco (where he was a vice president) and Enterasys (where he was a vice president and CMO) as well as his advisory work with the ONS. Below are details of the interview: To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Brocade’s Gen 6 Fibre Channel meets the needs of a digital world
In the late 1800s, Mark Twain was rumored to have said, “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” If Mark Twain were a technology, he would be Fibre Channel.It seems every year some smart industry prognosticator predicts that Ethernet will obviate the need for Fibre Channel, and it will go the way of the dinosaur or the mainframe. But that hasn’t been the case at all. In fact, Fibre Channel is still around and very much alive. Why? Because it’s the best, most cost-effective technology for storage networks. And for most organizations, storage is everything. The Fibre Channel fabric connects business applications and users to the mission-critical data that drives the company. This is why almost every large organization that is dependent on data, such as financial services firms, healthcare institutions and retailers, depend on Fibre Channel.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Cisco’s Corporate Social Responsibility gets some long-deserved recognition
Cisco is known as many things: the market leader in networking, collaboration, security and other markets. The company is also widely regarded as a thought leader in both the enterprise and service provider segments. Investors consider Cisco to be strong, stable stock. Much of your opinion of Cisco depends on the lens through which you look at the company. Cisco should also be known as being a great citizen of the world because of all the good work its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) team does. Using the company’s massive resources to make the planet a better place was always a passion of former CEO John Chambers and that’s carried over to current CEO, Chuck Robbins. Its Networking Academy has educated millions of people across the globe, including many in underdeveloped nations, giving people an opportunity to get jobs and be successful.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Cisco flexes its security muscle at Cisco Live
This week in Las Vegas, Cisco is hosting 28,000 of its best customers at Cisco Live, it’s annual, global user event. It’s hot in Vegas in July, which is fitting, as Cisco’s security business has been red hot of late. This is in stark contrast to the company’s position in security just a few years ago when many Cisco watchers questioned if it was serious about security. Over the years, Cisco has mastered the art of using market transitions to capture share, and it appears it is well on its way to doing so in the security market. The market transition that’s changing security is digital transformation. Earlier this year, I wrote a post highlighting the new rules of security in the digital era.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Polycom accepts Siris Capital’s $2B offer, cancels Mitel merger
The technology industry is never short of intrigue and drama. There are always rumors of who might buy whom, which executive left to go where and what new product a certain vendor might come out with.The fate of Polycom has been one of the storylines industry watchers have been keeping an eye on. Earlier this year, Mitel announced it agreed to acquire Polycom for $1.96 billion. But alas, all things aren’t meant to be. In Hollywood, Bennifer broke up, and now Mitelocom will, too.On the eve of the deal being finalized, Siris Capital came in, upped the offer to a cool $2 billion and broke up the proposed joint company. Like all things in life, there are some definite pros and cons to this announcement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Want to understand your apps better? Put a ThousandEyes on them
Cisco Live, the world’s largest network event, kicks off next week in Las Vegas. Every year at the conference, Cisco and many of its technology partners announce new products or features that hopefully capture the attention of Cisco’s customers. ThousandEyes put some news out ahead of the event by announcing it uses Linux containers to run its network performance monitoring (NPM) software to track Cisco Integrated Services Routers (ISR) and Aggregation Service Routers (ASR).+ Also on Network World: Annual State of the Network survey results +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Want to understand your apps better? Put a ThousandEyes on them
Cisco Live, the world’s largest network event, kicks off next week in Las Vegas. Every year at the conference, Cisco and many of its technology partners announce new products or features that hopefully capture the attention of Cisco’s customers. ThousandEyes put some news out ahead of the event by announcing it uses Linux containers to run its network performance monitoring (NPM) software to track Cisco Integrated Services Routers (ISR) and Aggregation Service Routers (ASR).+ Also on Network World: Annual State of the Network survey results +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Chuck Robbins sets Cisco up to take off
It’s been about a year since Chuck Robbins took over as CEO of Cisco. Following in the footsteps of John Chambers certainly could not have been easy. Chambers was perhaps the most visible, thought-leading CEO in all of technology. Also, he had been at the post for about 20 years, something rare in business today, and had reached quasi celebrity status. When Robbins took the helm, many customers, analysts and investors asked me whether I thought Robbins would maintain the status quo or shake things up. I didn’t know Robbins all that well when he took the job. But Cisco had tremendous success during the Chambers tenure, so the natural assumption was Robbins wouldn’t do anything to disrupt what was already working. I thought he might make a few tweaks here and there, but I wasn’t expecting big changes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Juniper addresses both sides of the branch networking problem
The numerous struggles businesses must go through to address the network needs of a branch have been well documented on this site and many others. The importance of the branch can’t be understated either. The branch is where the majority of workers reside today—81 percent of employees, according to a recent ZK Research survey. For many businesses, such as retailers and banks, the branch is the business, so curing branch woes needs to be a top priority for business and IT leaders.+ Also on Network World: Annual State of the Network survey results +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Juniper addresses both sides of the branch networking problem
The numerous struggles businesses must go through to address the network needs of a branch have been well documented on this site and many others. The importance of the branch can’t be understated either. The branch is where the majority of workers reside today—81 percent of employees, according to a recent ZK Research survey. For many businesses, such as retailers and banks, the branch is the business, so curing branch woes needs to be a top priority for business and IT leaders.+ Also on Network World: Annual State of the Network survey results +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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5 steps for securing the IoT using Aruba ClearPass
Historically the Internet of Things (IoT) has been much more hype than substance. Sure, there have been a few verticals such as oil and gas and mining that have embraced the trend, but those vertical have been active in IoT since it was known as machine to machine (M2M).Now, however, we sit on the precipice of IoT exploding. I’ve seen projections that by 2025, anywhere from 50 billion to 200 billion new devices will be added to the network. Which is right? Doesn’t really matter. The main point is that we’re going to see a lot devices connected over the next 10 years, and businesses need to be ready. + Also on Network World: Experts to IoT makers: Bake in security +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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ZeroStack offers a private ‘cloud in a box’
If you’re in my age bracket, you might remember this clip of Yosemite Sam yelling at his camel to slow down. He kept yelling, “Whoa, Camel,” but the headstrong camel wouldn’t stop until Yosemite Sam jumped off and hit him on the head. (For you millennials, it used to be OK for kids to watch this stuff.)A similar trend is happening in IT today. The cloud, specifically public cloud has become all the rage. We’re moving everything to the cloud—storage, apps, compute cycles, communications tools. You name it, there’s a cloud service for it. But are we moving too fast? Should CIOs be yelling, “Whoa cloud, whoa!” And then hitting their IT architects in the head with something?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Tempered Networks simplifies network security
I don’t think anyone would disagree with the statement that IT security has become exponentially more complex over the past five years. It seems every month there’s a new startup that solves a specific security issue but addresses only that one issue.This leads to an increasing number of security vendors causing security solution sprawl. A recent ZK Research survey revealed that large enterprises have an average of 32 security vendors deployed, which is a ridiculously high number. It’s hard enough to build a strategy around two to three vendors, but 32?One startup trying to simplify security is Tempered Networks. I recently spoke with Marc Kaplan, vice president of security architecture for the company, about how Tempered Networks makes network security simpler. Below is our conversation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Tempered Networks simplifies network security
I don’t think anyone would disagree with the statement that IT security has become exponentially more complex over the past five years. It seems every month there’s a new startup that solves a specific security issue but addresses only that one issue.This leads to an increasing number of security vendors causing security solution sprawl. A recent ZK Research survey revealed that large enterprises have an average of 32 security vendors deployed, which is a ridiculously high number. It’s hard enough to build a strategy around two to three vendors, but 32?One startup trying to simplify security is Tempered Networks. I recently spoke with Marc Kaplan, vice president of security architecture for the company, about how Tempered Networks makes network security simpler. Below is our conversation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Apstra comes out of stealth, solves the multi-vendor SDN challenge
Earlier this month I wrote a post asking the question: “Who speaks for multi-vendor environments?” Since then, I’ve had a few vendors reach out to me about their solutions that could indeed meet the needs of a vendor-agnostic data center. One of the most interesting, Apstra, came out of stealth mode this week and has a solution that’s certainly up to the challenge that I laid out in my blog.Apstra’s solution automates the data center operations across the lifecycle of the network—from the design/build phase through deployment/operate. The Apstra Operating System (AOS) takes an integrated approach to managing the data center that starts with business intent and is fed into a closed loop system. The data center operator then selects a pre-configured, and a validated template applies any constraints to it, which creates a blueprint for deployment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Apstra comes out of stealth, solves the multi-vendor SDN challenge
Earlier this month I wrote a post asking the question: “Who speaks for multi-vendor environments?” Since then, I’ve had a few vendors reach out to me about their solutions that could indeed meet the needs of a vendor-agnostic data center. One of the most interesting, Apstra, came out of stealth mode this week and has a solution that’s certainly up to the challenge that I laid out in my blog.Apstra’s solution automates the data center operations across the lifecycle of the network—from the design/build phase through deployment/operate. The Apstra Operating System (AOS) takes an integrated approach to managing the data center that starts with business intent and is fed into a closed loop system. The data center operator then selects a pre-configured, and a validated template applies any constraints to it, which creates a blueprint for deployment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Cisco Tetration: The timing is right for Cisco to jump into analytics
Cisco has always been a master at picking the right adjacent markets to move into at the right time, and it often becomes one of the leaders in that space. Think of the impact the company has had in telephony, blade servers and security—to name just a few.This week at an event with a lot of pomp and circumstance that included CEO Chuck Robbins, Cisco announced it is moving into the analytics market. At first glance, one might ask what the heck Cisco is doing in analytics.The timing for Cisco is right, though. Many of the building blocks of the digital enterprise—technologies such as Internet of Things, cloud computing, mobility and security are network centric today. By harnessing network data, Cisco can provide data and insights that another vendor could not. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Cisco Tetration: The timing is right for Cisco to jump into analytics
Cisco has always been a master at picking the right adjacent markets to move into at the right time, and it often becomes one of the leaders in that space. Think of the impact the company has had in telephony, blade servers and security—to name just a few.This week at an event with a lot of pomp and circumstance that included CEO Chuck Robbins, Cisco announced it is moving into the analytics market. At first glance, one might ask what the heck Cisco is doing in analytics.The timing for Cisco is right, though. Many of the building blocks of the digital enterprise—technologies such as Internet of Things, cloud computing, mobility and security are network centric today. By harnessing network data, Cisco can provide data and insights that another vendor could not. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here