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
Red Hat has always been a software company. It still is, but with an OEM partner, it will now offer a plug-and-play software-defined storage (SDS) system called Red Hat Storage One.Red Hat Storage One is built on the company’s software-defined Gluster storage product, but it includes hardware from Supermicro, which will manufacture and sell the hardware. When you purchase a Storage One box from a Red Hat partner, support for both the hardware and software are rolled up into one package with “a single part number,” as Red Hat puts it.Support contracts are for one-, three-, or five-year periods, and they cover everything — hardware and software. The hardware vendor is the first line of defense, with Red Hat taking over for more serious issues.To read this article in full, please click here
Throughout my early years as a consultant, when asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) was the rage and multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) was still at the outset, I handled numerous roles as a network architect alongside various carriers. During that period, I experienced first-hand problems that the new technologies posed to them.The lack of true end-to-end automation made our daily tasks run into the night. Bespoke network designs due to the shortfall of appropriate documentation resulted in one that person knows all. The provisioning teams never fully understood the design. The copy-and-paste implementation approach is error-prone, leaving teams blindfolded when something went wrong.To read this article in full, please click here
If the recent WAN Summit in New York where I moderated a panel on last-mile access (more on that later) was any indication, the SD-WAN market is shifting towards a service-delivery model where sufficient network security and predictability are baked into the SD-WAN so the service can replace MPLS.In session and private conversations, topics related to secure SD-WAN services kept popping up. The challenges of today’s managed services. The impact of the cloud. The need for SLAs in SD-WAN services. How encryption complicates visibility and, by extension, enterprise security. These and other issues point to the change and challenges facing SD-WAN services.To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) in just the last week or so has taken over the top spot for year-to-date performance among the 30 equities comprising the Dow Jones industrial average, with its shares having risen nearly 20 percent in 2018. That’s a big deal. How did it happen? What pushed Cisco beyond its best-known-router reputation to being a top performer on the DOW?A little history
Cisco has been around for nearly as long as I've been working on Unix and Linux systems. Founded in December 1984 by two Stanford University computer scientists and clearly named after San Francisco, its logo clearly depicts the two towers of the Golden Gate Bridge and its line of products have kept it a major player in routers and switches. In fact, Cisco was on top of the tech world before the dot.com meltdown. Then it plunged with the rest of the tech sector.To read this article in full, please click here
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
Schneider Electric is the latest player to jump into the edge computing game for Internet of Things (IoT) devices with the announcement of its Edge Module for mobile and IoT applications. It follows the trend of processing IoT data where it is generated rather than sending it to a remote data center.Schneider Electric is a European giant that mostly specializes in energy management and power systems. So, it’s no surprise that the Edge Module comes with integrated power and cooling systems. That includes single- or three-phase power with a flexible power train in multiple ranges, N+1 standard cooling, and package cooling units mounted on the outside of the module to eliminate the need for external condensers or piping.To read this article in full, please click here
Abandoning a signal’s traditional binary ones and zeroes will improve throughput in fiber, a Dutch PhD researcher says. By increasing the number of bit states from the traditional two — the one and zero — to four or eight, adding more light colors, and changing clock rates for each wavelength, throughput will be significantly increased, he claims.“A higher number of levels implies more information per symbol, so four levels contain two bits of information, and eight levels contain three bits,” says Robbert van der Linden in an article on the Eindhoven University of Technology Department of Electrical Engineering website.To read this article in full, please click here
With budgets and resources becoming ever tighter, the health care industry, in common with many others, is undergoing a significant digital transformation. Advances in digital technology are proving to be a great benefit, enabling health care providers to do more with less.The ability to securely access a patient’s Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and their diagnostic test results in real time, from virtually any device, regardless of location, is now largely taken for granted. Not only does it improve a health care provider’s operational efficiency, but it can also allow for more accurate diagnoses and inform a patient’s ongoing treatment plan. Likewise, the introduction of e-prescriptions, and almost ubiquitous Wi-Fi connectivity throughout hospitals and doctors’ surgeries, have reduced the volume of administrative tasks, allowing frontline operatives to concentrate more on their primary task of delivering high-quality health care to their patients.To read this article in full, please click here
Cyxtera Technologies has launched the Cyxtera Extensible Data Center (CXD) platform, a software platform for data centers that offers customers rapid on-demand provisioning to a host of colocation and connectivity services.Through a combination of a network and services provisioning engine and an intra-data center software-defined network fabric, the CXD platform allows colocation customers to provision services on demand or via a web console.CXD brings cloud-like experience to colocation
CXD comes with two key features: the Unified Services Port and Network Exchange. The Unified Services Port enables access to multiple data center services over a single physical port, while the Network Exchange provides automated provisioning to select network service providers. The caveat is they must also be running CXD.To read this article in full, please click here
The Internet of Things (IoT) is an overused buzz phrase, but hype is finally giving way to some valuable IoT use cases. In 2017, 433.1 million smart home devices were shipped worldwide, according to IDC. Smart speakers are leading the way, and smart locks, fridges, thermostats, pet food dishes and more have become part of our daily, connected lives.What would I do without my smart egg tray?While there are plenty of smart “fill-in-the-blank” devices, the IoT still has some growing up to do. Battery life and standards still present significant challenges, and not all smart devices get along. The good news is, high-performance RF filters are providing faster data throughput, minimizing energy losses and extending battery life. Imagine a world where sensors need a charge only once in a decade?To read this article in full, please click here
Facing the reality that many enterprise data-center managers now work in a hybrid cloud environment, Juniper Networks is set to release Contrail Enterprise Multicloud, a software package designed to monitor and manage workloads and servers deployed across networking and cloud infrastructure from multiple vendors.Enterprises are moving to the cloud for operational efficiency and cost optimization, but at the moment most big companies are operating hybrid environments, which has added to the complexity of managing computing infrastructure.[ Check out What is hybrid cloud computing and learn what you need to know about multi-cloud. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ]
Juniper is competing with a variety of networking and multicloud orchestration tools from major data center players, including VMware's NSX, Cisco's ACI, and HPE's OneSphere. What's more, Juniper does not have as big a presence in the data center as some of its rivals, particularly Cisco.To read this article in full, please click here
5G is nearly here. The next generation of wireless connectivity promises superfast speeds, ultra-low latency and more network capacity than ever. 5G auctions have or are due to take place in the US, UK, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Australia and host of other countries.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
Among the vertical industries most impacted by technological change in the past three to five years is K-12 education. This is often overlooked, but the move to becoming digital is truly changing the game for school districts. Changes wrought by extensive device use, distance learning, and emerging technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality require that K-12 schools dramatically overhaul their approach to IT. In many ways, the IT need at schools has similar or greater demands for availability, reliability, and scalability to support new applications than what is seen in other industries. However, the rapid rate of change that has occurred in K-12 is exceptional. There are some important lessons that we can learn from the “high speed” that IT professionals and administrators are responding to.To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco’s Digital Network Architecture (DNA) promises to help companies in their digital transformation journey where new technologies can be used to accelerate business activities and processes to make them more competitive. It's also a big validation that network analytics is no longer a nice to have but a must have. Cisco DNA aims to provide a platform that companies can use as the foundation for digital transformation projects. The architecture's key tenants are virtualization, automation, analytics, a cloud-based service management layer, and open application programming interfaces (APIs). It’s a system that’s “designed for automation.” In other words, Cisco wants to make its products easier to deploy and manage. At the heart of that message is a move away from CLI. Sounds good so far.To read this article in full, please click here
Spreading bad routing information to your neighbors on the internet isn’t just bad manners, it could be bad for business.That, at least, is the message that the Internet Society (ISOC) wants to spread, as it calls on internet exchange points (IXPs) to help eliminate the most common threats to the internet’s routing system.[ Don’t miss customer reviews of top remote access tools and see the most powerful IoT companies . | Get daily insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ]
If they do so, then it’s good news for their members, the ISPs that interconnect there, and for those ISPs’ customers, who will benefit from more secure and robust internet access.To read this article in full, please click here
Businesses of all kinds are embarking on IoT initiatives. And no matter the business type or scale of project, stakeholders always have one burning question: “How soon until we start seeing some ROI?” For businesses that have a concrete plan in place for measuring ROI, the answer is typically within the first year. That’s because companies that take the time to make these plans have the clearest objectives, which make them easier to attain and in a faster amount of time. The ROI planning process is essentially the same for a company just starting out and for one that is having trouble finding profitability from IoT investments and needs to revisit their approach.To read this article in full, please click here
The Internet of Things (IoT) promises benefits for companies, including rich supplies of data that can help them more effectively serve their customers. There’s also a lot to be worried about.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
Here’s a handy list of tips that can help you avoid the most common mistakes that business IT pros make when bringing IoT devices onto enterprise networks.The Online Trust Alliance’s new list lays out 10 suggestions for using IoT tech in the enterprise without making the enterprise more vulnerable to security threats. The list centers on awareness and minimizing access to less-secure devices. Having a strong understanding of what devices are actually on the network, what they’re allowed to do, and how secure they are at the outset is key to a successful IoT security strategy.[ For more on IoT see tips for securing IoT on your network, our list of the most powerful internet of things companies and learn about the industrial internet of things. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ]To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco has unified its two, largely separate, collaboration packages – Spark and WebEx – into a single platform that supports a single set of features.The move makes sense because Cisco had been developing the somewhat similar packages separately, and there was some confusion about that in the market and sales channels. No more.[ Don’t miss customer reviews of top remote access tools and see the most powerful IoT companies . | Get daily insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ]
Webex Teams combines collaboration features in Cisco Spark and WebEx such as whiteboarding, persistent messaging, roster, meeting controls, content sharing and so on. To read this article in full, please click here