Zeus Kerravala
Author Archives: Zeus Kerravala
- Home → Author's archive:
Zeus Kerravala
0
Access management is critical to IoT success
Onboarding devices has always been kind of a pain, but IT has managed to muddle its way through the process.The bring your own device (BYOD) wave hit created some problems. Still, many organizations allowed employees to bring those devices onto the network by shifting the responsibility to the end user. What happens, though, when there are so many new devices that IT can’t keep up? Or when devices are brought in without IT’s knowledge? That’s the trend businesses are about to face as the Internet of Things (IoT) goes mainstream.[ Read also: Network World's Corporate Guide to Addressing IoT Security. ] The IoT era is here, and it’s about to make IT’s life a lot more difficult The IoT era has arrived, and I say this because more and more companies I talk to are connecting non-traditional IT devices, such as lighting systems and point-of-sale devices, to the internet without uttering the phrase “IoT.” It’s no longer this futuristic thing that we ponder and pontificate over.To read this article in full, please click here
0
When it comes to hyperconverged infrastructure, the hardware matters
At Nutanix's .NEXT user conference last week, the company certainly flexed its software muscles with a cornucopia of new products and a roadmap to becoming the next big enterprise platform vendor. To achieve this status, Nutanix has shifted to selling software and letting its customers run its stack on their preferred hardware platform.There is currently a wide range of hardware partners supporting Nutanix, including Lenovo, IBM, and HPE. However, the vendor that has done perhaps the best job at providing the widest range of options for Nutanix customers is Dell EMC.To read this article in full, please click here
0
When it comes to hyperconverged infrastructure, the hardware matters
At Nutanix's .NEXT user conference last week, the company certainly flexed its software muscles with a cornucopia of new products and a roadmap to becoming the next big enterprise platform vendor. To achieve this status, Nutanix has shifted to selling software and letting its customers run its stack on their preferred hardware platform.There is currently a wide range of hardware partners supporting Nutanix, including Lenovo, IBM, and HPE. However, the vendor that has done perhaps the best job at providing the widest range of options for Nutanix customers is Dell EMC.To read this article in full, please click here
0
Nutanix looks to turn its products into a platform — and attract CIOs
Every big vendor has had to start small and then grow into a major platform. Nutanix is no exception. And this week at its .NEXT user conference, the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) provider outlined a plan to move from being a niche vendor that makes VDI work better to becoming the next big enterprise platform vendor.In a recent interview, Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey talked about the building blocks of becoming a major enterprise vendor. Nutanix started off with an integrated hardware/software appliance to deliver its HCI solution. Pandey referred to this as their “iPhone,” meaning it was a fully integrated and turnkey product where Nutanix owns the entire experience.To read this article in full, please click here
0
Nutanix looks to turn its products into a platform — and attract CIOs
Every big vendor has had to start small and then grow into a major platform. Nutanix is no exception. And this week at its .NEXT user conference, the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) provider outlined a plan to move from being a niche vendor that makes VDI work better to becoming the next big enterprise platform vendor.In a recent interview, Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey talked about the building blocks of becoming a major enterprise vendor. Nutanix started off with an integrated hardware/software appliance to deliver its HCI solution. Pandey referred to this as their “iPhone,” meaning it was a fully integrated and turnkey product where Nutanix owns the entire experience.To read this article in full, please click here
0
Nutanix looks to turn its hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) products into a platform
Every big vendor has had to start small and then grow into a major platform. Nutanix is no exception. And this week at its .NEXT user conference, the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) provider outlined a plan to move from being a niche vendor that makes VDI work better to becoming the next big enterprise platform vendor.In a recent interview, Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey talked about the building blocks of becoming a major enterprise vendor. Nutanix started off with an integrated hardware/software appliance to deliver its HCI solution. Pandey referred to this as their “iPhone,” meaning it was a fully integrated and turnkey product where Nutanix owns the entire experience.To read this article in full, please click here
0
Nutanix looks to turn its hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) products into a platform
Every big vendor has had to start small and then grow into a major platform. Nutanix is no exception. And this week at its .NEXT user conference, the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) provider outlined a plan to move from being a niche vendor that makes VDI work better to becoming the next big enterprise platform vendor.In a recent interview, Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey talked about the building blocks of becoming a major enterprise vendor. Nutanix started off with an integrated hardware/software appliance to deliver its HCI solution. Pandey referred to this as their “iPhone,” meaning it was a fully integrated and turnkey product where Nutanix owns the entire experience.To read this article in full, please click here
0
Extreme Networks’ short-term growing pains are no cause for worry
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of time” is the opening to the famous Charles Dickens book, A Tale of Two Cities. It's also described Extreme’s financial performance over the past year.Earlier this year the company stock was trading a hair over $15 per share. Today, after it came up light on its fiscal third-quarter financial results, the stock plunged over 25 percent in after-hours trading and now stands at $8.40, a little over half of its 52-week high. This could change when the market opens, depending on investor sentiment.[ Check out our hands-on reviews: 5 top hardware-based Wi-Fi test tools and Mojo wireless intrusion prevention system. ] Extreme is now the largest enterprise network pure play In actuality, saying it’s the worst of times is a bit overly dramatic, as a few years ago, most industry experts thought Extreme Networks was dying a slow death. In 2015, Ed Meyercord took over as CEO and he and the company's chief marketing, development and product operations officer, Norman Rice, embarked on a plan to acquire underappreciated assets from companies where networking wasn’t the primary business. Rolling up these assets would help Extreme get its Continue reading
0
Extreme Networks’ short-term growing pains are no cause for worry
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of time” is the opening to the famous Charles Dickens book, A Tale of Two Cities. It's also described Extreme’s financial performance over the past year.Earlier this year the company stock was trading a hair over $15 per share. Today, after it came up light on its fiscal third-quarter financial results, the stock plunged over 25 percent in after-hours trading and now stands at $8.40, a little over half of its 52-week high. This could change when the market opens, depending on investor sentiment.[ Check out our hands-on reviews: 5 top hardware-based Wi-Fi test tools and Mojo wireless intrusion prevention system. ] Extreme is now the largest enterprise network pure play In actuality, saying it’s the worst of times is a bit overly dramatic, as a few years ago, most industry experts thought Extreme Networks was dying a slow death. In 2015, Ed Meyercord took over as CEO and he and the company's chief marketing, development and product operations officer, Norman Rice, embarked on a plan to acquire underappreciated assets from companies where networking wasn’t the primary business. Rolling up these assets would help Extreme get its Continue reading
0
Arista applies cloud principles to campus networks
Arista Networks has arguably been the most disruptive data center network vendor in the past 10 years. The company built a product specifically designed for the rise of software-defined networking (SDN) and made “spline” a household word, assuming you live in a house full of network engineers. If you don’t eat, live, and breathe networking and you’re not familiar with a spline, it’s a single-tier network optimized for the era of cloud computing.The rise of east-west traffic gave birth to the concept of a two-tier leaf-spine network, but Arista further simplified that down into a single tier. By collapsing the leaf and spine into a single tier, Arista is able to scale its network out rapidly simply by adding more switches to the spline — making it theoretically infinitely scalable. Arista took this model and applied it to data center interconnect, routing, and other use cases related to data centers.To read this article in full, please click here
0
Arista applies cloud principles to campus networks
Arista Networks has arguably been the most disruptive data center network vendor in the past 10 years. The company built a product specifically designed for the rise of software-defined networking (SDN) and made “spline” a household word, assuming you live in a house full of network engineers. If you don’t eat, live, and breathe networking and you’re not familiar with a spline, it’s a single-tier network optimized for the era of cloud computing.The rise of east-west traffic gave birth to the concept of a two-tier leaf-spine network, but Arista further simplified that down into a single tier. By collapsing the leaf and spine into a single tier, Arista is able to scale its network out rapidly simply by adding more switches to the spline — making it theoretically infinitely scalable. Arista took this model and applied it to data center interconnect, routing, and other use cases related to data centers.To read this article in full, please click here
0
VMware: Cloud-centric businesses need a cloud-centric network
It’s May, and that means all the April showers we had will soon bring spring flowers. April and May are also busy conference months, as many vendors host customer, partner, or analyst events. This week, it was Dell’s turn as the company held its first-ever Dell Technology World. Dell has obviously had other user events before, including Dell World and Dell-EMC World, but the naming of this one is indicative of how Dell is now one company and there’s better product and go-to-market integration between Dell, EMC and VMware.VMware introduces Virtual Cloud Network As expected, much of the news at the show revolved around Dell Technologies compute products. But the network got some love, as well, when VMware announced its Virtual Cloud Network, which is the coming together of many of its network assets, including NSX and VeloCloud. The Virtual Cloud Network can be thought as an agile network and security overlay that acts as a “fabric” for digital businesses that connect apps, data, and users to each other regardless of where they are located.To read this article in full, please click here
0
VMware: Cloud-centric businesses need a cloud-centric network
It’s May, and that means all the April showers we had will soon bring spring flowers. April and May are also busy conference months, as many vendors host customer, partner, or analyst events. This week, it was Dell’s turn as the company held its first-ever Dell Technologies World. Dell has obviously had other user events before, including Dell World and Dell-EMC World, but the naming of this one is indicative of how Dell is now one company and there’s better product and go-to-market integration between Dell, EMC and VMware.VMware introduces Virtual Cloud Network As expected, much of the news at the show revolved around Dell Technologies compute products. But the network got some love, as well, when VMware announced its Virtual Cloud Network, which is the coming together of many of its network assets, including NSX and VeloCloud. The Virtual Cloud Network can be thought as an agile network and security overlay that acts as a “fabric” for digital businesses that connect apps, data, and users to each other regardless of where they are located.To read this article in full, please click here
0
It’s time for network professionals to elevate their game
Enterprise networks certainly aren’t new. They’ve been around for decades and have historically been considered a tactical resource or even a commodity that most business leaders didn’t give a second thought to or really even understand.It’s my belief, though, that the network should be considered a strategic resource that can create competitive differentiation. In fact, for as long as I’ve been analyst, it’s been my thesis that compute changes have continually driven network evolution and have made it more and more important.The network is now a strategic business asset As the industry has gone from mainframes to minicomputers to client-server to the cloud era, a couple of things have happened. The first is that the cost of computing has continued to fall through the floor. When I started my career, just a few megabytes of storage could cost thousands of dollars. Today, I can buy terabytes of cloud-based storage for just a few dollars per month.To read this article in full, please click here
0
It’s time for network professionals to elevate their game
Enterprise networks certainly aren’t new. They’ve been around for decades and have historically been considered a tactical resource or even a commodity that most business leaders didn’t give a second thought to or really even understand.It’s my belief, though, that the network should be considered a strategic resource that can create competitive differentiation. In fact, for as long as I’ve been analyst, it’s been my thesis that compute changes have continually driven network evolution and have made it more and more important.The network is now a strategic business asset As the industry has gone from mainframes to minicomputers to client-server to the cloud era, a couple of things have happened. The first is that the cost of computing has continued to fall through the floor. When I started my career, just a few megabytes of storage could cost thousands of dollars. Today, I can buy terabytes of cloud-based storage for just a few dollars per month.To read this article in full, please click here
0
Businesses need more than one way to achieve multicloud
The term multicloud is one of the more overused terms in IT circles today. At its most basic level, any customer that uses more than one cloud service could be considered multicloud. But that’s not really multicloud, that’s just using multiple clouds. True multicloud should enable businesses to use some combination of private and public clouds, but operationally it would look like a single cloud domain. There’s not one well-defined path to multicloud. In fact, there shouldn’t be. Every business is different, which means everyone needs options. Some will migrate quickly, some slowly, some will forklift upgrade hardware, and others will sweat their assets. The problem with options is that they add to complexity, and that has become public enemy number one of network operations. Network professionals need to worry about managing the underlay, managing overlay, maintaining policies, automating processes, and other factors to make multi-cloud a reality.To read this article in full, please click here
0
Businesses need more than one way to achieve multicloud
The term multicloud is one of the more overused terms in IT circles today. At its most basic level, any customer that uses more than one cloud service could be considered multicloud. But that’s not really multicloud, that’s just using multiple clouds. True multicloud should enable businesses to use some combination of private and public clouds, but operationally it would look like a single cloud domain. There’s not one well-defined path to multicloud. In fact, there shouldn’t be. Every business is different, which means everyone needs options. Some will migrate quickly, some slowly, some will forklift upgrade hardware, and others will sweat their assets. The problem with options is that they add to complexity, and that has become public enemy number one of network operations. Network professionals need to worry about managing the underlay, managing overlay, maintaining policies, automating processes, and other factors to make multi-cloud a reality.To read this article in full, please click here
0
Why intent-based networking is important to the Internet of Things
Last week, Cisco made a number of product announcements that deliver the benefits of its intent-based networking (IBN) solution to Internet of Things (IoT) deployments. Network World's Michael Cooney did a great job summarizing all the product announcements, so I won’t rehash that information, but I did want to discuss the importance of IBN to IoT.The importance of IBN to IoT IBN is something that has been theorized for almost a decade, but solutions only became available recently. The reason why there has been a lag between vision and product is that network engineers didn’t really need IBN to run their networks until recently. Environments were closed, applications were on premises, and everything was under the tight control of the IT organization.To read this article in full, please click here
0
Why intent-based networking is important to the Internet of Things
Last week, Cisco made a number of product announcements that deliver the benefits of its intent-based networking (IBN) solution to Internet of Things (IoT) deployments. Network World's Michael Cooney did a great job summarizing all the product announcements, so I won’t rehash that information, but I did want to discuss the importance of IBN to IoT.The importance of IBN to IoT IBN is something that has been theorized for almost a decade, but solutions only became available recently. The reason why there has been a lag between vision and product is that network engineers didn’t really need IBN to run their networks until recently. Environments were closed, applications were on premises, and everything was under the tight control of the IT organization.To read this article in full, please click here
0
City & Guilds Group deploys SD-WAN to improve Office 365 performance
There are many reasons to deploy a software-defined WAN (SD-WAN), including saving a boatload of money, improving network agility, and increasing WAN resiliency. However, those all pale in comparison to the ROI that a business would see by making its employees more productive.One of the biggest drags on worker productivity is poor application response time. In 2016, ZK Research conducted a study that found on average, workers were 14 percent less productive than their optimal state because of poor application performance. (Note: I am an employee of ZK Research.) There’s nothing that frustrates a worker more than clicking on an icon and sitting around waiting for it to open or update, but that’s exactly what happens to global organizations that need to access resources over a long distance.To read this article in full, please click here