Magical Mechanics

If you’re a fan of this blog, you’ve probably read my last post about the new SD-WAN magic quadrant that’s been making the rounds and generating discussion. Some people are smiling that this report places Cisco in an area other than leadership in the SD-WAN space. Others are decrying the report as being unfair and contradictory. I wanted to take another look at it given some new information and some additional thoughts on the results.

Fair and Square

The first thing I wanted to do is make sure that I was completely transparent with the way the Gartner Magic Quadrant (MQ) works. I have a very good idea thanks to a conversation with Andrew Lerner (@Fast_Lerner), who is the Research VP of Networking at Gartner. Andrew was nice enough to clarify my understanding of the MQ and accompanying documentation. I’ll quote him here to make sure I don’t get anything wrong:

In an MQ, we assess the overall vendors’ behavior and offering in the market. Product, service/support sales, marketing, innovation, etc. if a vendor has multiple products in a market and sells them regularly to the enterprise, they are part of the MQ assessment. Viable products are not Continue reading

Announcing project DENT

We are excited to announce that Cumulus is joining project DENT!

Project DENT is a huge step for the industry, taking both open networking and Linux networking forward. DENT will help grow the community of open Linux networking vendors and partners, and Cumulus Networks is pleased to be part of this project that aligns with our core values and strengths. We strongly believe in mass innovation with open Linux software, platforms and the Linux community.

Linux ecosystem players have historically benefited from mass innovation. By bringing together vendors, distributors, system integrators and users, DENT enables distributed development and support for open Linux networking operating system for campus and remote networking. We believe this will enable networking hardware vendors to leverage the same benefits that all Linux hardware technologies do today: Open Linux firmware management, platform driver infrastructure, network interface management and Linux tools and ecosystem.

The Cumulus Linux connection

Cumulus Linux is based on the same foundational principles as project DENT with the goal of unifying Networking across distributed systems. This unification comes from its native Linux platform and networking API. Today’s technologies powering hybrid cloud and on-prem infrastructure are distributed systems technologies. Networking is fundamental to distributed systems. Uniformity Continue reading

Video: FRRouting Overview

In October 2019, Donald Sharp did a short webinar describing FRRouting, the hottest open-source routing suite.

As always, he started with an overview of what FRRouting is, and where you could use it.

Atlassian Forge Serves an AWS Lambda-Based Serverless Option

Cisco Paints 5G Strategy Around Optics, Packet Core

How to use the Linux uniq command

In Linux, the uniq command can help find out the individual users who are logged into a given server, but it’s not a straightforward process.Yes, using the command on its own yields a list of who’s logged in, but it can list individual users more than once depending on what they’re doing.There are ways to get around this by sorting the results of uniq so they deliver only once the names of all the users. This 2-Minute Linux Tip video by Network World’s Unix as a Second Language blogger Sandra Henry Stocker shows how to do just that. Click below. YT embed code: To read this article in full, please click here

Five Ways to Quickly Uncover Malicious Activity and Protect Your Kubernetes Workloads

Organizations are rapidly moving more and more mission-critical applications to Kubernetes (K8s) and the cloud to reduce costs, achieve faster deployment times, and improve operational efficiencies, but are struggling to achieve a strong security posture because of their inability to apply conventional security practices in the cloud environment. Commitment to cloud security grows, but security safeguards are not keeping up with the increased use of the various cloud platforms. Regardless of the cloud provider or service model, individual organizations are ultimately responsible for the security of their data.

According to a 2019 Ponemon Institute Global Cloud Data Security Study, 70 percent of respondents find it more complex to manage privacy and data protection regulations in a cloud environment than on-premises. Meanwhile, the percent of corporate data stored in the cloud environment has grown from an average of 30 percent in 2015 to an average of 48 percent in 2019. In the same study, 56 percent of respondents say the use of cloud resources increases compliance risk.

The downside associated with a security breach is severe for any organization, but especially so for companies in regulated environments like financial services, healthcare and telecommunications. Now there’s a new and highly effective way Continue reading

Top 20 highest-paying tech certifications

Certifications can add, on average, more than 7 percent to your base salary. But the question is which certifications offer the most bang for the buck. We examine that question from several angles and also identify the Top 20 certifications to focus on in the coming year.

Space-data-as-a-service gets going

Upcoming space commercialization will require hardened edge-computing environments in a small footprint with robust links back to Earth, says vendor OrbitsEdge, which recently announced that it had started collaborating with Hewlett Packard Enterprise on computing-in-orbit solutions.OrbitsEdge says it’s the first to provide a commercial data-center environment for installing in orbit, and will be using HPE’s Edgeline Converged Edge System in a hardened, satellite micro-data-center platform that it’s selling called SatFrame.To read this article in full, please click here

Space-data-as-a-service prepares to take off

Upcoming space commercialization will require hardened edge-computing environments in a small footprint with robust links back to Earth, says vendor OrbitsEdge, which recently announced that it had started collaborating with Hewlett Packard Enterprise on computing-in-orbit solutions.OrbitsEdge says it’s the first to provide a commercial data-center environment for installing in orbit, and will be using HPE’s Edgeline Converged Edge System in a hardened, satellite micro-data-center platform that it’s selling called SatFrame.To read this article in full, please click here

Space-data-as-a-service gets going

Upcoming space commercialization will require hardened edge-computing environments in a small footprint with robust links back to Earth, says vendor OrbitsEdge, which recently announced that it had started collaborating with Hewlett Packard Enterprise on computing-in-orbit solutions.OrbitsEdge says it’s the first to provide a commercial data-center environment for installing in orbit, and will be using HPE’s Edgeline Converged Edge System in a hardened, satellite micro-data-center platform that it’s selling called SatFrame.To read this article in full, please click here

Space-data-as-a-service prepares to take off

Upcoming space commercialization will require hardened edge-computing environments in a small footprint with robust links back to Earth, says vendor OrbitsEdge, which recently announced that it had started collaborating with Hewlett Packard Enterprise on computing-in-orbit solutions.OrbitsEdge says it’s the first to provide a commercial data-center environment for installing in orbit, and will be using HPE’s Edgeline Converged Edge System in a hardened, satellite micro-data-center platform that it’s selling called SatFrame.To read this article in full, please click here

Google, VMware Headline Linux Foundation’s ACT Program

SASE: Here’s Where Your Digital Business Network Starts

SolarWinds Sweeps Up VividCortex for $117.5M

Fortinet Snaps Up SOAR Provider CyberSponse

Nokia 5G Dynamic Spectrum Sharing Plans Gain Dynamics

Google’s New VMs Use Dynamic Resource Management to Slash Costs

Cisco targets hyperscalers with silicon, high-end routers

Cisco says it wants to change the future of the Internet and has rolled out the new silicon, hardware and software it says will move toward that goal.The centerpiece of Cisco’s strategy revolves around its custom Silicon One chip technology and new Cisco 8000 Series carrier-class routers built on that silicon, which the company says has been in development for more than five years, at a cost of over $1 billion. The 8000s feature a new operating system – IOS XR7 that runs the boxes and handles security.Network pros react to new Cisco certification curriculum The Cisco Silicon One Q100 optical-routing silicon brings up to 10Tbps of network bandwidth in its first iteration – with a future goal of 25Tbps – and support for large non-blocking distributed routers, deep buffering with rich QoS and programmable forwarding. To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco targets hyperscalers with silicon, high-end routers

Cisco says it wants to change the future of the Internet and has rolled out the new silicon, hardware and software it says will move toward that goal.The centerpiece of Cisco’s strategy revolves around its custom Silicon One chip technology and new Cisco 8000 Series carrier-class routers built on that silicon, which the company says has been in development for more than five years, at a cost of over $1 billion. The 8000s feature a new operating system – IOS XR7 that runs the boxes and handles security.Network pros react to new Cisco certification curriculum The Cisco Silicon One Q100 optical-routing silicon brings up to 10Tbps of network bandwidth in its first iteration – with a future goal of 25Tbps – and support for large non-blocking distributed routers, deep buffering with rich QoS and programmable forwarding. To read this article in full, please click here