ESG Lab Review: VMware NSX

“If your organization is interested in improving the agility, security, and economic efficiency of your networks, ESG Lab recommends taking a close look at VMware NSX.”

ESG Lab recently reached out to the VMware technical product marketing team about the network virtualization and security platform, VMware NSX.  The team at ESG had set a goal of examining the NSX platform to better understand how network administrators in organizations from SMBs to large enterprises leveraged NSX and used tools to aid in the operational aspects of network virtualization.  Many benefits come with modern software tools on better visibility, ease of troubleshooting, and OpEx-related savings related to faster time to resolution for mission critical workloads. ESG wanted to evaluate and consider existing tools as well as newer tools in the VMware portfolio to substantiate these potential benefits.

Application architectures are drastically changing and enterprise networking and IT teams are seeing a shift in the requirements, based on emerging cloud-based architectures.  Since modern business agility drives the network to support new architectures and newer consumption models, and the network is at the center of any IT infrastructure. ESG proposes that network security is top of mind for every organization’s Continue reading

25% off Withings Thermo Wireless Smart Thermometer – Deal Alert

With an exceedingly simple scan across the forehead, 16 infrared sensors take over 4,000 measurements to find the hottest point. It requires no contact with the skin, unlike traditional methods, making Thermo is the most sanitary way to take anyone’s temperature. Readings appear illuminated on the device, and if desired, will sync to your smartphone for tracking and much more. Its typical list price of $100 will be reduced 25% when you click the green "clip 25% off coupon" button on its Amazon product page. See the discounted Withings Thermo thermometer on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5G NR Specification Gets Fast-Tracked by 3GPP Standards Group

Verizon does an about-face on its support for the accelerated timeline.

Arista Creates Containerized, Open Version of EOS

cEOS supports Microsoft’s Software Open Networking in the Cloud program.

Wireless SD-WAN Provider Cradlepoint Raises $89M in Series C

Its wireless chops allow Cradlepoint to carve a unique niche among SD-WAN providers.

Review: Design flaw mars my support for Mac-centric mechanical keyboard

As longtime readers may already know, I’m a big fan of mechanical-style keyboards for computers. The haptic feedback I get on them, the “clickety-clackety” noise they make (the ability to annoy my cubicle neighbors is often worth the price of admission) and the accuracy make this a preferred peripheral for me.My current favorite keyboard is from Das Keyboard, and I’ve seen other manufacturers make mechanical keyboards, often designed for PC gamers, who often love the response, accuracy and general look and feel.With that in mind, I was sent the new Lofree mechanical Bluetooth keyboard, which is currently undergoing a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. The keyboard costs $74 with free shipping for U.S. customers, with retail pricing about $99 and coming later this year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Check Point Integrates vSEC Security into the Google Cloud Platform

vSEC can be integrated with VMware, Cisco, OpenStack, Nuage, AWS, and Azure environments.

IDG Contributor Network: How digital transformation disrupted the storage industry

In the previous blog we discussed the concept of Datanomics, the economics of data, and how it has radically evolved with the digital transformation of an enterprise. Value of data is dependent on frequency and speed of access needed to deliver business requirements. Digital enterprises operate with radically different Datanomics than conventional physical businesses. Here, digital information is the business.Yes, that means that there is exponentially more data to store and manage. But it also means a fundamental difference in how that data needs to be stored and managed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google’s Jamboard will cost $5,000 and ship to the US in May

Google is getting ready to put its smart whiteboard on sale. The company announced Thursday that the Jamboard, its big touchscreen that’s designed to serve as a digital collaboration space for business users, will be available in May. The board, which was first revealed last year, gives business users a large workspace to make notes, share content from the web, and more. It’s backed by a cloud service that can be accessed by users’ other devices so that people can collaborate on “Jams” without having to be in the room or touching the Jamboard. For example, one team in San Francisco could be using the Jamboard as a whiteboard, while another person is contributing using their iPad or Android tablet from New York, and a third team is looking on using a Mac or PC in London.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google goes after Slack with Hangouts overhaul

Google’s Hangouts work chat and videoconferencing service is undergoing some major changes to better serve businesses. The company announced Thursday that it’s going after the work group chat market as well as the group videoconferencing market even harder than before by splitting Hangouts’s functions in two.The company is diving deeper into workplace text conversations with Hangouts Chat, a service designed to provide teams a shared space to discuss work. It’s Google’s attack on Slack, HipChat, Microsoft Teams and other players in that growing market.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google Drive will let users stream files from the cloud

Google Drive users will be able to see all the files they have stored in the company’s cloud service on their desktop without downloading them, thanks to a new feature the company announced Thursday.The Drive File Stream offering will — as the name implies — show placeholder files on a user’s desktop, then download them only when a user needs to look at them. It’s similar to Dropbox’s Smart Sync feature, which recently entered beta .To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google’s new cloud service eases data preparation for machine learning

One of the challenges that data scientists face when running machine learning workloads is processing information before it’s ready for use. Google unveiled a new cloud service Thursday aimed at easing that pain. Google Cloud Dataprep will automatically detect data schemas, joins, and anomalies such as missing or duplicate values, without requiring coding. After that, it will help users build a set of rules for processing the information. Those rules are then built in Apache Streams format and can be imported into products like Google's Cloud Dataflow for processing information as it's imported into services like the BigQuery data warehouse service.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google announces three new cloud regions, contract discounts

Google’s cloud regions are going places. The company announced Thursday that it’s launching three new data centers in California, Canada, and the Netherlands, in addition to the company’s existing footprint of 14 announced and live regions around the world.Adding more regions will help Google compete with other public cloud platforms like Microsoft and Amazon. The Canada region is important for serving customers who need to comply with data sovereignty requirements inside that market.On top of that news, the company is also changing its cloud pricing to let customers get discounts of up to 57 percent off list price in exchange for committing to buying a particular volume of CPU cores and memory. Customers must commit to either a one-year or three-year contract with the cloud provider in order to get the discounts, however.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to make money from open source software

Talk about starting a business based on open source software and the conversation will inevitably shift to Red Hat. That's because the Linux vendor is a shining example of a company that's making money from an open source product. But how easy is it really to establish an open source startup that makes money? For every success story like Red Hat there are companies like Cyanogen that fail to thrive  and projects that are abandoned.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google gobbles up more big-name cloud customers

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google came late to the enterprise party in the cloud, but the company is making up for lost time. Developers and the enterprises, which Google will need to attract more business away from Amazon and Microsoft, are taking notice -- as was evidenced here by big crowds and a standing-room only audience at the company’s Google Cloud Next conference.At the kickoff keynote Diane Greene, senior vice president of Google Cloud, announced several new customers, including eBay, HSBC, Colgate-Palmolive and Verizon Communications.Google defines cloud in transformational termsTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Female execs front and center at Google Cloud conference

On International Women’s Day, during the opening keynote of Google Cloud’s NEXT user conference, former VMware CEO Diane Greene gave the primary keynote.When Google showcased its machine learning technology, renowned Stanford University computer scientist Fei Fei Li addressed the audience of 10,000 attendees and thousands more on the live-stream.And during a press conference after the keynote, eight of Google Cloud’s top executives sat on a stage to answer questions from press and analysts. Four of the eight are women, and three of which are listed on Google’s About Us Leadership page.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Four ways Google Cloud will bring Machine Learning & AI to the enterprise +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Docker and Cisco Launch Cisco Validated Designs for Cisco UCS and Flexpod Infrastructures on Docker Enterprise Edition

Last week, Cisco and Docker jointly announced a strategic alliance between our organizations. Based on customer feedback, one of the initial joint initiatives is the validation of Docker Enterprise Edition (which includes Docker Datacenter) against Cisco UCS and the Nexus infrastructures. We are excited to announce that Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs) for Cisco UCS and Flexpod on Docker Enterprise Edition (EE) are immediately available.

CVDs represent the gold standard reference architecture methodology for enterprise customers looking to deploy an end-to-end solution. The CVDs follow defined processes and covers not only provisioning and configuration of the solution, but also test and document the solutions against performance, scale and availability/failure – something that requires a lab setup with a significant amount of hardware that reflects actual production deployments. This enables our customers achieve faster, more reliable and predictable implementations.

The two new CVDs published for container management offers enterprises a well designed and an end-to-end lab tested configuration for Docker EE on Cisco UCS and Flexpod Datacenter. The collaborative engineering effort between Cisco, NetApp and Docker provides enterprises best of breed solutions for Docker Datacenter on Cisco Infrastructure and NetApp Enterprise Storage to run stateless or stateful containers.

The first CVD includes 2 configurations:

1. 4-node rack servers Bare Metal deployment, Continue reading

4 ways Google Cloud will bring AI, machine learning to the enterprise

Last November, when Google announced that machine learning research luminary Fei-Fei Li, Ph.D. would join Google’s Cloud Group Platform group, a lot was known about her academic work. But Google revealed little about why she was joining the company except she would lead machine learning for the Google Cloud business.After five months of suspense, yesterday Li revealed the focus of her new role during her keynote address at Google’s cloud developer conference, Cloud Next 2017. She will apply her experience to democratize machine learning to the enterprise. Her task: Study the problems that machine learning could solve in a wide variety of industries and enable enterprises to adopt machine learning.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco’s Jasper deal – one year, 18 million new IoT devices later, challenges remain

You’d be hard-pressed to write a better opening script than the one playing out for Cisco and its now year-old acquisition of Jasper. The $1.4 billion deal was to make Jasper technology the centerpiece of Cisco’s Internet of Things strategy and it has largely done that. Of course, challenges remain – improving security and product family integration among them but the companies are off to a good start.Cisco closed the deal on Jasper last March and since then Cisco says the number of companies using Jasper’s Control Center has grown to over 9,000 from 3,500 and the company continues to add 1.5 million devices a month. In addition, the number of service providers offering Control Center services has grown to 50 from 35. Control Center is the central component of Jasper that lets users automate connectivity as well as launch and manage all aspects of IoT services.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Pi Day is coming and I’m probably going to take a pie in the face

In terms of made up holidays, Pi Day is the one that irritates me the least (compared with Talk Like a Pirate Day or Star Wars Day). Maybe it’s because there’s the opportunity of eating some pie (baked pie or pizza), or maybe it’s because I’m a semi-math geek.Maybe it’s because the founder of Pi Day, Larry Shaw, shares my last name (but we’re not directly related). See the video at the top of the page for more information on the origins of the holiday.Whatever the reason, I’m OK with Pi Day. Which is why I agreed to participate in the Network World Pi Day Challenge, set to stream live on Network World’s Facebook and YouTube channel (2 p.m. EDT on March 14).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here