As Network World celebrates its 30th anniversary, we took a look back at the scene in 1986 ... and had a chuckle. NETWORK WORLD/STEPHEN SAUER
NETWORK WORLD TURNS 30: The networked world |9 ways technology will change within the next 10 years | The most momentous tech events of the past 30 years | 30 years of gadgets, computers and video games from my fabulous life | Network World celebrates 30 years | Thumbing through issue No.1 of Network World
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Thirty years ago today we published the first issue of Network World and, needless to say, a lot has happened since then.
To take you back, consider that 1986 was the year the space shuttle Challenger blew up, Chernobyl melted down, President Ronald Reagan was in office and the cold war was grinding down thanks to Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies pushing the Soviet Union toward glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring).”
The U.S. gross domestic product was $8 trillion ($16 trillion today), the national debt was $2 trillion (about $20 trillion today), and $7,500 could buy you a new Ford Mustang (about $28,000 today).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
What would happen if you switched the enterprise to Airplane Mode?The simple answer: Nothing. Literally. Virtually every corporate process would grind to a halt, which is a simple testament to how reliant the modern organization is on the complex, interwoven, interdependent systems that pervade every fiber of business and society today.From the key enabler of business agility and transformation to tactical new answers in cloud, mobile computing and analytics, intelligent connectivity has never been a more essential part of business, government and the consumer experience.“All of these new trends we talk about -- Internet of things, mobility, cloud computing, mesh computing -- are network-centric compute paradigms," says Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst with ZK Research.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Data centers are typically high-security locations and operators don't like you snooping around, but Google is giving users a look at one of its latest and most advanced data centers using virtual reality.The tour of Google's data center in The Dalles, Oregon, was published to coincide with the company's Google Compute Summit which starts Wednesday in San Francisco.Google is trying to entice more customers to its cloud services, to compete better with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, and showing off its advanced facilities might help with that goal.The tour is best viewed in a virtual reality headset, like Google Cardboard, but you can also see it on a plan old smartphone or desktop. On a phone you can look around by moving the handset. On a desktop, you use the mouse.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One of the things that has always been a bottleneck in electronics has been getting the data in and out of the chip. The silicon semiconductor, within itself, communicates faster than it does with the surrounding system.That may be about to change, though. A laser incorporated onto the semiconductor could be the answer to solving the slowdown, think scientists. And they now believe they know how to do it: Simply grow the laser straight onto the silicon.Faster-than-ever-before communications could be possible with the technique, think the scientists.In the same way that light, delivered by fiber optic, sends data faster than electrons do along a copper wire, the light via laser system would get the ones and zeroes out of the chip quicker and into the surrounding electronics faster. Wires could become obsolete.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cisco, which kicked off 2016 with news that the leader of its engineering troops would soon be leaving the company, has now undertaken a major reorganization of that same group and disclosed another high-profile departure.The company announced internally that the moves, designed to better align engineering with Cisco business priorities under new-ish CEO Chuck Robbins, include the exit of 18-year veteran and Service Provider leader Kelly Ahuja. Cisco did not say where Ahuja might be headed, but did say he will be replaced by Yvette Kanouff, who will lead an expanded Service Provider organization. Kanouff joined Cisco in 2014 from Cablevision and has been Cisco's SVP and GM, Cloud Solutions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Appthority Android AppKey features: Provides customers with comprehensive on-device monitoring and protection for employees and enterprises with the ability to know an app’s risk and compliance status before it ever gets installed on their device. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
SANTA CLARA -- SDN can’t be done on an island, according to Nuage Networks.If an enterprise is doing a software-defined datacenter, it must also do a software-defined WAN to ensure consistent policy across the IT infrastructure, said Sunil Khandekar, Nuage CEO and co-founder.“You can’t view SDDC and SD WAN as two separate puzzles,” Khandehar said during a presentation at the Open Networking Summit here. “If you do you’ve created islands of automation.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Pre-fabricated, shipping container-like stackable modules, containing data center gear are the future, according to Keystone NAP, a startup vendor, who’s recently obtained new funding.
The modular specialist has borrowed $15 million through finance adviser White Oak to complete a property acquisition, and “finance expansion,” the Philadelphia Enquirer says.
Modular data centers are one of the three top trends in data center land, according to Keystone NAP co-founder Shawn R. Carey, writing last year on the Advance Healthcare Network website . The other two fads being outsourcing, and hybrid cloud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The network NASA uses to deliver telemetry ground-based tracking, data and communications services to a wide range of current and future spacecraft needs a serious bump in security technology.That was the conclusion of the space agency’s Office of Inspector General which stated: “We found that NASA, [NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, which manages the network] failed to comply with fundamental elements of security risk management reflected in Federal and Agency policies. We believe that these deficiencies resulted from inadequate Agency oversight of the network and insufficient coordination between stakeholders. These deficiencies unnecessarily increase the network’s susceptibility to compromise.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One of the obstacles that have kept quantum computers on the distant horizon is the fact that quantum bits -- the building blocks with which they're made -- are prone to magnetic disturbances. Such "noise" can interfere with the work qubits do, but on Wednesday, scientists announced a new discovery that could help solve the problem.Specifically, by tapping the same principle that allows atomic clocks to stay accurate, researchers at Florida State University’s National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MagLab) have found a way to give qubits the equivalent of a pair of noise-canceling headphones.The approach relies on what are known as atomic clock transitions. Working with carefully designed tungsten oxide molecules that contained a single magnetic holmium ion, the MagLab team was able to keep a holmium qubit working coherently for 8.4 microseconds -– potentially long enough for it to perform useful computational tasks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Artificial intelligence (AI) may conjure up far-fetched ideas of robot assistants, or perhaps an all-seeing presence like HAL 9000, the sentient machine in the movie 2001. But the likelier truth is that AI will come in the form of software running in your data center.And it will be coming very soon: Research firm Gartner predicts that "smart machines" will have a widespread impact on business within the next four years.In general terms it's likely that AI will be able to help IT departments do their job - and help businesses be more productive – by ensuring that "processes get applied, stuff is accurate, errors are eliminated, and compliance is met," according to Dr Stuart Anderson, a research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Remember that one time the cable you grabbed from the box was exactly the right length for the run from patch panel to server shelf?What if every patch cable you picked up were just the right length?That's the goal of 1-year-old Austrian company PatchBox, which wants to eliminate tangles and speed up network moves, adds and changes with its system of retractable cables in rack-mountable cassettes. It's showing the product in the start-up hall at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany, this week.PatchBox sells kits of 24 cassettes that slot into a 1U module just under the patchboard, right where you would usually put your horizontal cable management system. Each shelf comes with four Patch Catches -- essentially cable posts that mount on the sides of the rack, around which you can route the cables on their way between patch boards.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It seems like we can buy almost anything as a service today. Servers, storage, applications and collaboration can all be purchased using an “as a service” model. Recently Sprint introduced both Workplace and Mobility as a service to add to the growing portfolio of consumption-based products. In our consumer lives the Amazon button turns consumer goods into a service. The one piece of technology that’s still difficult to buy as a service is the network.Earlier this month, I authored this post discussing how the network needs to evolve into this kind of model.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The conversion from free to paid registration and a spike in Open Compute Project Summit keynote attendance signaled that open hardware innovation is trending up. Summit attendees are companies like Facebook that buy land, build big data center buildings and fill them with commodity computing and networking hardware. Their mission is to build hyperscale, hyperefficient infrastructure that is flexible in handling workloads and agile in delivering new services in minutes.
Jason Taylor, OCP CEO, introduced Google’s Vice President of Infrastructure Urz Hölz as a surprise last OCP Summit keynote with Apple-like “wait there’s still more” showmanship. Hölz presented his team's open source hardware submissions, a new approach to powering the ocean of servers used in hyperscale web company data centers operated by Facebook and Google at a more power efficient 45V instead of 12V and a new rack design.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The writing is on the wall for large-scale, traditional power generation, according to an official energy-industry organization in a major developed nation.Decentralized energy, where power is sourced from rooftop photovoltaic solar panels, battery storage and other technology could supplant classic grid-based power stations in the UK by 2030, according to industry interviews conducted by the trade association Energy UK. Energy UK represents over 80 suppliers there, who serve 26 million customers.British electricity users will increasingly get their energy from small-scale electricity generation and storage, the association thinks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Blu-ray and DVD drives are being kicked out of PCs but finding a new life in data centers as storage that can retain data for up to 100 years.A massive new system from Sony called Everspan is a collection of optical drives that can store up to 181 petabytes of data. The system can expand to 55 feet in length and have hundreds of Blu-ray-like drives.The system will be used for long-term storage of data that isn't modified often, or information that businesses feel need to be retained for specific reasons. Everspan was announced and shown for the first time at the Open Compute Project (OCP) U.S. Summit 2016 this week, and will start shipping to customers in July.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It’s ecosystem partnership week. And data center stalwart Mellanox, SDN start-up Plexxi and Cisco partner vArmour have all delivered.Mellanox buddied up with Cumulus Networks to add Cumulus Linux NOS to its new Spectrum 10/25, 40/50, and 100 Gbps Ethernet switches. Mellanox itself has made multiple contributions of 10/25, 40/50, & 100G Ethernet switch and Open Compute Platform (OCP) adapter designs.Cumulus Linux has been chosen by several hardware and software vendors as a NOS option when opening up switches to support multiple NOSes. In addition to Cumulus Linux, the Mellanox Spectrum switches can now run OpenSwitch, Metaswitch IP Routing, and Mellanox MLNX-OS through the OCP Switch Abstraction Interface and Linux Switchdev.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Numerous telcos, like Verizon, CenturyLink and Tata, have publicly said they are evaluating the feasibility of selling off data center assets. This seems to have created a flurry of hasty conclusions that ‘the data center is dead’.We saw this assertion previously beginning in 2012 around talk of the demise of the data center due to the rise of cloud computing. But as we know now, the cloud simply changes where the applications are running. It all goes to a data center somewhere. And it is clear in 2016 that the need for strong data center operations is as critical as ever, perhaps even more so. The decision for any organization to sell its data center assets belongs to the Chief Financial Officer. This is when getting an asset ‘off the books’ becomes a catch-all for a variety of motivations, and involves depreciation cycles, cash flow, capital reserves, and assuring shareholders that an organization is only ‘carrying’ assets that are core to its business. Be assured that these specialists are not selling data centers because they are no longer valuable to their business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google has joined Facebook's Open Compute Project and proposed a new design for server racks that could help cloud data centers cut their energy bills.The OCP was started by Facebook six years ago as a way for end-user companies to get together and design their own data center equipment, free of the unneeded features that drive up costs for traditional vendor products.Other big cloud providers such as Microsoft jumped on board, but Google, which is known for operating some of the world's most advanced data centers, stayed away. On Wednesday, at the OCP Summit in Silicon Valley, it said it has now joined.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here