With homage to the iconic David Letterman Top Ten List segment from his former Late Show, Silver Peak is counting down the Top Ten Reasons to Think Outside the Router. Click for the #8, #9 and #10 reasons to retire traditional branch routers.To read this article in full, please click here
2019 just might be the Year of Linux — the year in which Linux is fully recognized as the powerhouse it has become. With Linux playing key roles in the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud technology, supercomputing and artificial intelligence (AI), and with a plethora of conferences and new releases on the horizon, Linux is poised to have a very exciting 2019. Let’s examine some of what we can expect to see.Linux behind the scenes
The fact is that most people today are using Linux without ever knowing it — whether on their phones, online when using Google, Facebook, Twitter, GPS devices, and maybe even in their cars, or when using cloud storage for personal or business use. While the presence of Linux on all of these systems may go largely unnoticed by consumers, the role that Linux plays in this market is a sign of how critical it has become.To read this article in full, please click here
Some kinds of data should be encoded onto an inaudible, near-ultrasound layer placed on top of normal, audible sounds — a process that could rapidly scale Internet of Things (IoT) adoption, says startup Trillbit.The company says that by doing that kind of overlay, any microphone and speaker is turned into a data-transfer device that then could be used for payments transfers, user authentication, and smart city applications such as digital locks.“There is no common universal protocol to connect Internet of Things,” Trillbit explains on its website. “Speakers [and microphones], which are already in place, and all around us” could perform connections.To read this article in full, please click here
Technology expense-management (TEM) is a service that is of ever-increasing importance to enterprise buyers because it touches on virtually all aspects of the technology lifecycle.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
Companies will invest more in data centers in the coming years, but it won’t necessarily be around compute. That's according to a new survey by AFCOM, the data center and IT management education company.This is AFCOM’s first study on the subject in two years, and it found that ownership, renovations, and building of new data centers were on the increase. It found 58 percent of survey respondents currently own between two and nine data centers and that on average, 5.3 data centers will be renovated per organization. That number increases to 7.8 data centers over the course of 12 months.Once again, we see the notion of people shutting down their data centers and moving everything to the cloud is evaporating.To read this article in full, please click here
Patrick LaPorteBlog Contributor Full bio
Over the last decade, mobile has fueled unprecedented innovation. The economy is booming, and productivity has reached new heights. But the reality is that technology we use every day – mobile devices and applications included – consume an organization’s finite resources. With technology fueling customer experience and employee productivity across offices, schools and stores, organizations are always looking for ways to conserve energy and reduce costs.To read this article in full, please click here
Software, software, and more software. That seems to be the mantra for Cisco in 2019 as the company pushes software-defined WANs, cloud partnerships, improved application programs, and its over-arching drive to sell more subscription-based software licenses.As the year closed on Cisco’s first quarter 2019 financials, the company was indeed touting its software growth, saying subscriptions were 57 percent of total software revenue, up five points year over year, and its application software businesses was up 18 percent to $1.42 billion. The company also said its security business, which is mostly software, rose 11 percent year over year to $651 million.To read this article in full, please click here
Companies are experiencing a growing problem of mass data fragmentation (MDF). Data is siloed and scattered all over the organization — on and off premises — and businesses are unable to use the data strategically.When data is fragmented, only a small portion of it is available to be analyzed. In my last post, I described MDF as a single trend, but it can occur in a number of ways. Below are the most common forms of MDF:
Fragmentation across IT silos: Secondary IT operations such as backups, file sharing/storage, provisioning for test/development and analytics are typically being done in completely separate silos that don’t share data or resources, with no central visibility or control. This results in overprovisioning/waste, as well as a challenge to meet service-level agreements (SLAs) or availability targets.
Fragmentation within a silo: There are even "silos within silos." Example: backup, where it is not uncommon to have four to five separate backup solutions from different vendors to handle different workloads such as virtual, physical, satabase, and cloud. On top of that, each solution needs associated target storage, dedupe appliances, media servers, etc., which propagate the silo problem.
Fragmentation due to copies: Continue reading
The sudo command is very handy when you need to run occasional commands with superuser power, but you can sometimes run into problems when it doesn’t do everything you expect it should. Say you want to add an important message at the end of some log file and you try something like this:$ echo "Important note" >> /var/log/somelog
-bash: /var/log/somelog: Permission denied
OK, it looks like you need to employ some extra privilege. In general, you can't write to a system log file with your user account. Let’s try that again with sudo.$ sudo !!
sudo echo "Important note" >> /var/log/somelog
-bash: /var/log/somelog: Permission denied
Hmm, that didn't work either. Let's try something a little different.To read this article in full, please click here
Delivering global SD-WAN is very different from delivering local networks. Local networks offer complete control to the end-to-end design, enabling low-latency and predictable connections. There might still be blackouts and brownouts but you’re in control and can troubleshoot accordingly with appropriate visibility.With global SD-WANs, though, managing the middle-mile/backbone performance and managing the last-mile are, well shall we say, more challenging. Most SD-WAN vendors don’t have control over these two segments, which affects application performance and service agility.In particular, an issue that SD-WAN appliance vendors often overlook is the management of the last-mile. With multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), the provider assumes the responsibility, but this is no longer the case with SD-WAN. Getting the last-mile right is challenging for many global SD-WANs.To read this article in full, please click here
It happens every year around this time – every IoT company on the planet, whether it’s a giant platform company, an old-school manufacturing player, or a teeny startup making Internet-enabled baby monitors issues its predictions about the market in the years to come, in the hope that IoT reporters looking for a quick story will write something with a headline like “Internet-enabled baby monitor market to reach $250 billion by 2040, according to cool company.”
More on IoT:
What is the IoT? How the internet of things works
What is edge computing and how it’s changing the network
Most powerful Internet of Things companies
10 Hot IoT startups to watch
The 6 ways to make money in IoT
What is digital twin technology? [and why it matters]
Blockchain, service-centric networking key to IoT success
Getting grounded in IoT networking and security
Building IoT-ready networks must become a priority
What is the Industrial IoT? [And why the stakes are so high]
Yet those predictions are, to put it kindly, all over the map. A McKinsey & Company estimate suggests that the economic impact of the IoT will reach $11 trillion by 2025. IDC estimates that total spending on IoT will Continue reading
Hyperconvergence has come a long way in a relatively short time, and enterprises are taking advantage of the new capabilities.Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) combines storage, computing and networking into a single system; hyperconverged platforms include a hypervisor for virtualized computing, software-defined storage, and virtualized networking.HCI platforms were initially aimed at virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), video storage, and other discrete workloads with predictable resource requirements. Over time, they have advanced to become suitable platforms for enterprise applications, databases, private clouds, and edge computing deployments.To read this article in full, please click here
At Gartner’s Symposium/ITExpo in Barcelona, Spain, earlier this month, the research firm shared a report on 10 strategic trends affecting the Internet of Things (IoT) from 2019 to 2023. In the report, titled Top Strategic IoT Trends and Technologies Through 2023, according to multiple published reports, the firm identified the following as the 10 most impactful IoT trends:To read this article in full, please click here
At Gartner’s Symposium/ITExpo in Barcelona, Spain, earlier this month, the research firm shared a report on 10 strategic trends affecting the Internet of Things (IoT) from 2019 to 2023. In the report, titled Top Strategic IoT Trends and Technologies Through 2023, according to multiple published reports, the firm identified the following as the 10 most impactful IoT trends:To read this article in full, please click here
Every now and then, the industry gets hit with a “huh?” acquisition, like Facebook buying virtual reality headset maker Oculus or chipmaker Broadcom acquiring mainframe software vendor CA.Last week’s news from Oracle was also up there, with the announcement it plans to acquire Talari Networks, a software-defined networking (SDN) specialist, by the end of the year.It would seem an odd pairing, but Oracle has a considerable communications software business of mostly brokers, controllers, and monitors. In announcing the deal, the company said Talari would complement Oracle’s Session Border Controller (SBC) and network management infrastructure by adding high availability, Quality-of-Experience (QoE) connectivity, and cloud application access across any IP network with the reliability and predictability of private networks.To read this article in full, please click here
Any backup experts worth their salt switched to disk as the primary target for backups many years ago. Tape still reigns in long-term archival, for the reasons laid out here. But tape is also quite problematic when it comes to day-to-day operational backup and recovery.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
Digital Transformation touches the network
Applications are moving to the cloud – a lot of them. IDC estimates that by 2020, 90% of enterprises will use multi-cloud, i.e. multiple public and private cloud services and platforms, to support their ever-expanding application requirements. Service providers have a unique opportunity to leverage a high-performance managed SD-WAN solution to deliver the best possible cloud connectivity and therefore the best “quality of experience” to enterprise users.A new breed of applications with different needs
Applications require a different quality of experience based on business priority, geography and security considerations, and consequently, they must be handled accordingly across the WAN. Some trusted business applications like Office 365, Skype and SAP can be sent directly to the internet with confidence, while recreational applications such as Facebook and Twitter might require higher security controls in order to meet enterprise security and/or compliance requirements. Simply put, the SD-WAN internet connectivity option must include the ability to differentiate traffic based on each application to ultimately enforce granular security policies.To read this article in full, please click here
Traditional passive heatsinks affixed to microprocessors for cooling don’t work well enough for today’s high-speed computations and data throughputs and should be junked, says a group of mechanical engineering researchers.A better option, they say, are "spirals or mazes that coolant can travel through" within tiny channels on the actual processor. That technique could massively improve efficiency, says Scott Schiffres, an assistant professor at Binghamton University in New York, in an article on the school's website. The school has developed this new method for cooling chips.To read this article in full, please click here
Today's threat landscape consists of skilled, organized and well-funded bad actors. They have many goals including exfiltrating sensitive data for political or economic motives. To combat these multiple threats, the cybersecurity market is required to expand at an even greater rate.The IT leaders must evolve their security framework if they want to stay ahead of the cyber threats. The evolution in security we are witnessing has a tilt towards the Zero-Trust model and the software-defined perimeter (SDP), also called a “Black Cloud”. The principle of its design is based on the need-to-know model.The Zero-Trust model says that anyone attempting to access a resource must be authenticated and be authorized first. Users cannot connect to anything since unauthorized resources are invisible, left in the dark. For additional protection, the Zero-Trust model can be combined with machine learning (ML) to discover the risky user behavior. Besides, it can be applied for conditional access.To read this article in full, please click here
Unauthorized interception of DNS traffic provides enough information to ascertain internet users’ thoughts, desires, hopes and dreams. Not only is there concern for privacy from nearby nosey neighbors, but governments and corporations could use that information to learn about individuals’ internet behavior and use it to profile them and their organization for political purposes or target them with ads. To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)