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Category Archives for "Networking"

Tough times strike Lenovo’s data center business

Lenovo has done a bang-up job in taking over IBM’s old PC business and turning it into a rousing success. Or at least as much of a success as can be had in an era of declining PC sales. Its luck with the server business? Not so much.Lenovo picked up IBM’s x86 server business in 2014 after some grumbling and consternation from the government. It seemed the government and military had quite an installed base of IBM servers and wasn’t keen on the Chinese taking ownership of them. But the deal went through after some assurances. Looks like that was the least of their problems. According to Gartner, in the first quarter of 2017, Lenovo sales fell 16 percent and its market share dropped to just 5.8 percent. Lenovo was fifth, behind HPE, Dell EMC, IBM (which is only selling Power-based RISC systems and mainframes) and Cisco. In fact, Lenovo had been ahead of Cisco in terms of units sold. When you fall behind Cisco in servers, a business Cisco didn’t even enter until a decade ago, you have a problem. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Are you and your network ready for change?

When I began this blog in October of last year, my goal was to help readers understand both the magnitude of the digital transformation currently underway and its implications for companies and IT professionals in every industry. In particular, I focused on the role of the network in enabling digital business and best practices for transforming the network from a cost center to a growth driver.This is a subject near and dear to my heart because the networking industry has been my home for many years, and it has seen a lot of change. Come this fall, it’s likely so see a bit more. Last November, my company, Brocade, announced that it is being acquired by Broadcom Ltd., and in the next few months, that transaction is expected to be completed. I’m a perfect example of the fact that you can never fully predict how things will change; you can only know things will change. So I want to wrap up this blog series with a look back at some of the most important things you need to consider today to make sure you’re ready for whatever changes digital transformation may send in your direction.To read this Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Are you and your network ready for change?

When I began this blog in October of last year, my goal was to help readers understand both the magnitude of the digital transformation currently underway and its implications for companies and IT professionals in every industry. In particular, I focused on the role of the network in enabling digital business and best practices for transforming the network from a cost center to a growth driver.This is a subject near and dear to my heart because the networking industry has been my home for many years, and it has seen a lot of change. Come this fall, it’s likely so see a bit more. Last November, my company, Brocade, announced that it is being acquired by Broadcom Ltd., and in the next few months, that transaction is expected to be completed. I’m a perfect example of the fact that you can never fully predict how things will change; you can only know things will change. So I want to wrap up this blog series with a look back at some of the most important things you need to consider today to make sure you’re ready for whatever changes digital transformation may send in your direction.To read this Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Are you and your network ready for change?

When I began this blog in October of last year, my goal was to help readers understand both the magnitude of the digital transformation currently underway and its implications for companies and IT professionals in every industry. In particular, I focused on the role of the network in enabling digital business and best practices for transforming the network from a cost center to a growth driver.This is a subject near and dear to my heart because the networking industry has been my home for many years, and it has seen a lot of change. Come this fall, it’s likely so see a bit more. Last November, my company, Brocade, announced that it is being acquired by Broadcom Ltd., and in the next few months, that transaction is expected to be completed. I’m a perfect example of the fact that you can never fully predict how things will change; you can only know things will change. So I want to wrap up this blog series with a look back at some of the most important things you need to consider today to make sure you’re ready for whatever changes digital transformation may send in your direction.To read this Continue reading

How the hospitality industry will profit from the IoT

Connecting the world changes everything. That’s what businesses and consumers are learning as they embrace the Internet of Things (IoT) for everything from household garage door openers to smart-city applications that solve traffic congestion and reduce crime.But IoT is more significant than just adding connectivity to existing products or services. In fact, it is about changing the way products and services deliver value. In the process, products are becoming services, and services are becoming more intelligent.+ Also on Network World: IoT devices or humans? The hospitality industry is not immune to this evolution, and, in fact, it is well positioned to benefit from IoT. That’s because the industry is poised to improve the customer experience while simultaneously reducing costs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Home Automation Setup with Apple #HomeKit

As many of you know, I’ve been diving into the home automation pond for awhile now. I’ve been asked to blog out my current home setup and this is an attempt to do that. There’s MUCH too much to be put into a single post, which is why I started a new blog for this subject over at www.homekitgeek.com as well as doing some video reviews of different HomeKit accessories. Work in process, but I’ll do the short version here.

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Apple HomeKit

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I chose to use the Apple homeKit framework as the base for my home automation journey for a few reason. The biggest one is that I already owned a couple of Apple TV (gen4) devices which fit the home automation hub role. These devices are a homeKit hub and are the always-on/always-present devices that are used to perform orchestration/automation actions when I’m home or away. These also tie directly into Apple’s iCloud which allows me remote access to my homeKit gear without having to VPN into my home network.

 

Home Setup Room-By-Room

There’s a lot to talk about here, but I thought I would just do a quick description of what’s going on room-by-room Continue reading

How to plan your migration to IPv6

With the depletion of IPv4 addresses, more organizations are encouraged to transition over to using IPv6 addresses. Many organizations are noticing the benefits of the built-in security features of IPv6. Also, enterprise IT managers are observing that their service providers are successfully using IPv6, and this encourages them to move forward with it.To continue to ignore IPv6 could cause any number of potential problems, including an inability to immediately migrate to IPv6 when there is no longer a choice, loss of internet connectivity, and not being able to compete with organizations whose systems are configured for IPv6.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to plan your migration to IPv6

With the depletion of IPv4 addresses, more organizations are encouraged to transition over to using IPv6 addresses. Many organizations are noticing the benefits of the built-in security features of IPv6. Also, enterprise IT managers are observing that their service providers are successfully using IPv6, and this encourages them to move forward with it.To continue to ignore IPv6 could cause any number of potential problems, including an inability to immediately migrate to IPv6 when there is no longer a choice, loss of internet connectivity, and not being able to compete with organizations whose systems are configured for IPv6.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

4 steps to planning a migration from IPv4 to IPv6

With the depletion of IPv4 addresses, more organizations are encouraged to transition over to using IPv6 addresses. Many organizations are noticing the benefits of the built-in security features of IPv6. Also, enterprise IT managers are observing that their service providers are successfully using IPv6, and this encourages them to move forward with it.To continue to ignore IPv6 could cause any number of potential problems, including an inability to immediately migrate to IPv6 when there is no longer a choice, loss of internet connectivity, and not being able to compete with organizations whose systems are configured for IPv6.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

4 steps to planning a migration from IPv4 to IPv6

With the depletion of IPv4 addresses, more organizations are encouraged to transition over to using IPv6 addresses. Many organizations are noticing the benefits of the built-in security features of IPv6. Also, enterprise IT managers are observing that their service providers are successfully using IPv6, and this encourages them to move forward with it.To continue to ignore IPv6 could cause any number of potential problems, including an inability to immediately migrate to IPv6 when there is no longer a choice, loss of internet connectivity, and not being able to compete with organizations whose systems are configured for IPv6.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

4 steps to planning a migration from IPv4 to IPv6

With the depletion of IPv4 addresses, more organizations are encouraged to transition over to using IPv6 addresses. Many organizations are noticing the benefits of the built-in security features of IPv6. Also, enterprise IT managers are observing that their service providers are successfully using IPv6, and this encourages them to move forward with it.To continue to ignore IPv6 could cause any number of potential problems, including an inability to immediately migrate to IPv6 when there is no longer a choice, loss of internet connectivity, and not being able to compete with organizations whose systems are configured for IPv6.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Are you an Intelligent fool ?

Most fundamental network design attribute should be simplicity.   When you have a simple network, you can have secure, flexible , scalable, understandable , in fact all important design requirements can be achieved.   But having simplicity is easy to say, hard to achieve.   On the other hand, some amount of complexity is required, as […]

The post Are you an Intelligent fool ? appeared first on Cisco Network Design and Architecture | CCDE Bootcamp | orhanergun.net.

IDG Contributor Network: The new branch office SD-WAN model

Wrapping up an SD-WAN workshop session with a client last week, I reflected on how rapidly the branch office WAN connectivity and management model is changing. Some great opportunities are emerging for enterprise IT teams that can materially impact how the network is designed, paid for and managed. Here are some thoughts:1. Public cloud is driving a lightweight edge security model Most people agree that SD-WAN can facilitate service chaining, and a selective backhaul model is interesting to many enterprises that want to concentrate next-generation firewall services in larger locations. But with the rapid growth of distributed content in public cloud applications (even from Microsoft and Salesforce, who long resisted this trend that Google pioneered) it’s increasingly counterproductive to backhaul browsing traffic long distances from the end users. It reduces performance, and adds significant load at hubs on the network — not ideal when this can represent 80 percent or more of the traffic.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The new branch office SD-WAN model

Wrapping up an SD-WAN workshop session with a client last week, I reflected on how rapidly the branch office WAN connectivity and management model is changing. Some great opportunities are emerging for enterprise IT teams that can materially impact how the network is designed, paid for and managed. Here are some thoughts:1. Public cloud is driving a lightweight edge security model Most people agree that SD-WAN can facilitate service chaining, and a selective backhaul model is interesting to many enterprises that want to concentrate next-generation firewall services in larger locations. But with the rapid growth of distributed content in public cloud applications (even from Microsoft and Salesforce, who long resisted this trend that Google pioneered) it’s increasingly counterproductive to backhaul browsing traffic long distances from the end users. It reduces performance, and adds significant load at hubs on the network — not ideal when this can represent 80 percent or more of the traffic.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here