PlexxiPulse—One Year In
It’s hard to believe that it has been a year since Rich Napolitano took the helm as CEO of Plexxi. Since last November, he’s implemented a new strategic vision, formed an exclusive channel distribution agreement with Arrow Electronics and raised a new round of funding. This week, in a profile published in eWeek, enterprise reporter Jeff Burt describes why Rich joined Plexxi and chronicles Plexxi’s successes under his leadership. Take a look. It’s definitely worth a read before you head out for the weekend. We’re excited to see what Rich’s second year at Plexxi has in store for us, our customers, partners and the industry!
Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Enjoy!
CIO Review: How to Create the Network of the Future (pg. 48-49)
By Rich Napolitano
IT is changing. The advent of Big Data, the Internet of Things and mobile has massively increased the amount of data we are creating, storing and moving – putting an increasing strain on the piece at the center of it all: the network. More data is a reality. It empowers users around the world with more information than they could ever Continue reading
PlexxiPulse—Don’t Let Scalability Spook You
Last week, our director of product marketing, Bob Noel, penned a blog post that identified the five new networking requirements being driven by IoT and Big Data. This week, we are shining the spotlight on one of the third era of IT requirements Bob highlighted – scalability. In today’s dynamic application environments, the ability to scale gracefully to be able to handle distributed applications is critical. The network must be scaled to match demand, but the challenge (and a pain point for many) is how. Traditional “scale up” techniques were about replacing outgrown processing and storage capacity with bigger boxes and migrating data onto the new platform. Now, as the environment grows, more physical devices will be connected to the network. Providers need to think beyond adding capacity through bigger pipes and consider how to support a rapidly growing number of storage and compute nodes. It can be spooky thing to consider, but at Plexxi we make scaling your network to meet Third Era demands a treat, not a trick.
Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Happy Halloween!
Enterprise Networking Planet: Better Networking Through the API
By Arthur Cole
Continue reading
Plexxi Named New Hampshire High Tech Council Product of the Year Finalist
We’re proud to announce that the Plexxi Switch 2 was named one of the top five finalists for “product of the year” by the New Hampshire High Tech Council. The Product of the Year award celebrates innovative products developed in the past year by New Hampshire-based technology companies and provides a platform for entrepreneurs and inventors to receive advice, promotion, and podium time in front of hundreds of tech leaders at the finalist event.
The winner will be announced at the High Tech Council’s awards event on November 12 at the Manchester Country Club in Bedford. We’ll be there presenting the Switch 2 live to the audience.
The launch of Plexxi Switch 2 Series was an incredible milestone for us and it’s with this groundbreaking technology that we’re poised to lead the next era of IT. In his article on the Switch 2 for Network World, Jim Duffy explains the technology well. Jim writes, “Plexxi’s Switch 2 Series consolidates the network fabric into a single tier for optimized east/west application traffic. It also eliminates the need for multiple switch types typically found in leaf/spine architectures.”
We are proud to be a technology company based in New Hampshire and Continue reading
PlexxiPulse—Defining the New Network
The network is changing; there is no doubt about it. Undergoing its own transformation to meet advancements in storage and compute, the network is becoming more important than ever as Big Data and IoT continue to evolve. Our own Bob Noel penned a blog post this week that identifies areas of improvement for the network to meet the requirements of tomorrow. Take a look and tell us your thoughts for the future of the network. Which of Bob’s requirements do you think is the most important?
Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Enjoy!
Enterprise Storage Forum: The New Era of Secondary Storage HyperConvergence
By Jim Whalen, Senior Analyst, Taneja Group
The rise of hyperconverged infrastructure platforms has driven tremendous change in the primary storage space, perhaps even greater than the move from direct attached to networked storage in decades past. Now, instead of discrete, physically managed components, primary storage is being commoditized, virtualized and clustered, with the goal of providing a highly available virtual platform to run applications on, abstracted away from the individual hardware components themselves. This has provided dramatic benefits to IT, allowing them to Continue reading
5 New Networking Requirements Driven By Internet of Things and Big Data
The Internet of Things is leading to an explosion in the data available to make faster and better-informed business decisions. The key to exploiting this data for business benefit is accessing it on demand and rapidly analyzing it to deliver value. This requires massive volumes of data be moved across the infrastructure, from distributed locations of rest, to locations of analysis. Many networks, however, are fragile, outdated and unprepared for that level of stress. This means it’s time for the network to undergo its own transformation to meet these data transport needs.
As data is created in greater amounts – and inevitably transferred between resources – the network must become increasingly powerful, flexible and agile in order to keep up with application demands.
Where can networks improve? What do they need that they don’t have now? We’ve outlined five different characteristics below.
Agility. Data and application agility is meaningless if the network cannot keep pace. And keeping pace means removing complexity, simplifying operations and embracing automation to provide a dynamic and responsive infrastructure
Scalability. In a dynamic data and application environment where data volumes are exploding, it’s about more than just scaling up. The challenge with scalability now is really Continue reading
PlexxiPulse—Forrester Tech Mixer Recap & A New PlexxiTube Video
Earlier this week our team was in Cambridge at the Forrester Tech Mixer. We had engaging conversations with Forrester analystsand emerging technology companies in the area. We always enjoy attending these events to hear about industry trends and innovative new technologies. It was a great time had by all!
We’ve also uploaded a new PlexxiTube video on Plexxi’s automated network. Take a look!
Below are a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Have a great weekend.
FierceEnterpriseCommunications: Plexxi CEO: The future of networking is photonic underlays
By Chris Talbot
As he approaches his first anniversary as CEO of next-generation networking vendor Plexxi, Rich Napolitano is talking about the future of networks, and they’re not going to be focused on software-defined networking technology. SDN will play a huge role, of course, but it’s an overlay technology. Plexxi is focused on redefining the underlay, and it’s using photonic technology to do it.
Network Computing: SDN’s Northbound Interface Evolves
By Dr. Jim Metzler
Software defined networking requires both northbound and southbound interfaces to facilitate communication between physical devices, the SDN software and applications running on the network. On the southbound side, standards such as OpenFlow define Continue reading
One year at Plexxi and the Future of Networking
It’s almost time to celebrate my one-year work anniversary with Plexxi, coming up next month. When I began here I set out with a grand vision set on building a simply better network. I’m grateful to the entire Plexxi team for their commitment and hard work to make many of our goals a reality. I believe that today we are better and stronger as a company. We have meaningful industry partnerships like our distribution agreement with Arrow, groundbreaking product developments and more financing to make our goals and growth plans a reality.
Last week I spoke with Chris Talbot, a writer at FierceEnterpriseCommunications and had the opportunity to reflect on my time with Plexxi so far. Chris and I discussed what led me to join Plexxi, why I believe in what we’re doing and why we’re pioneering a new path for networks that is going to lead the industry for years to come.
We are making great strides and I’m excited about the momentum we have going for us right now and what the future holds. You can find Chris’ article, “The Future of Networking is Photonic Underlays” here. Let me know what you think.
The post Continue reading
Industry Influencers: Application-aware Networking
Network Insight Blogger and industry guru, Matt Conran, featured Plexxi in his October 6 post Application-aware Networking-Plexxi Networks. He believes, “Mobility and dynamic bandwidth provisioning force us to rethink how we design networks.” We agree.
Conran defines application-aware networking as the idea that application visibility combined with network dynamism will create an environment where the network can react to the changing behavior of application mobility and bandwidth allocation requirements. With that in mind, he took a comprehensive look at what we’ve been doing to “reverse the traditional design process and let the application dictate what kind of network it wants.”
Conran states that, “Networks should be designed around conversions but when you design a network it is usually designed around reachability. A conversational view measures network resources in a different way, such as application SLA and end-to-end performance. The focus is not just uptime. We need a mechanism to describe applications in an abstract way and design the network around conversations. The Plexxi affinity model is about taking a high-level abstraction of what you want to do, let the controller influence the network and take care of the low-level details. Affinity is a policy language that dictates exactly how you want the network to Continue reading
PlexxiPulse—Forrester Tech Mixer
Next Tuesday, we’re heading down to Cambridge, MA to participate in the second annual Tech Mixer hosted by Forrester. The goal of the event is to bring together emerging technology companies in an informal, relaxed setting to make connections and have conversations about current trends in the industry. We’ll be attending alongside some innovative companies and are looking forward to learning more about their platforms and predictions for the future at the event. If you’re in the Boston area, we hope to see you there. Details are listed below!
Date: October 13, 2015
Time: 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.
Forrester Research HQ
60 Acorn Park Drive
Cambridge, MA 02140
Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Enjoy!
Forbes: Inside The Crystal Ball: Five Data Center Trends For 2020 And Beyond
By Michael Levy
Standing at more than one million square feet, the United States Intelligence Community’s Utah Data Center is one of the world’s largest infrastructures. Costing nearly $2 billion, the site boasts storage capacity of almost 12 exabytes. That’s impressive considering the first electronic programmable computer was turned on at the University of Pennsylvania less than 75 years ago. Continue reading
Beyond SDN, Now What?
When we started Plexxi almost 5 years ago, SDN was about to become a “thing.” The topic of advancing networking soon went from obscure to being coined with a name to the full fledge hay day of acquisition euphoria and main stream press. It’s fair to say we have followed the proverbial hype curve quite predictably, and some might say we are now well into the trough of disillusionment. Which leaves some asking, now what?
I’m probably not the only one that feels that we, as an industry, should have moved past the point of showing up at a conference with a “What is SDN” slide. That is, once we move beyond trying to define SDN, we see that perhaps that is the least important thing to do.
Instead of trying to define SDN, I like to try to understand why we’re even discussing it. To me, this entire journey we’ve been on has always been an indication of user discontent. By user, I don’t just mean network engineers and operators, but also the constituents that rely on the network (like the other IT stack components and their respective operators/owners), and ultimately the users that rely on the applications Continue reading
PlexxiPulse—VMUG Reflections
We like to attend conferences and events to stay current on trends, learn new things, make connections and to hear what’s happening in our industry. We were at the VMUG conference in Chicago last month and had some great conversations with networking and storage decision-makers and administrators. Our own director of product marketing, Bob Noel, was at the show and was impressed by the emphasis on the hyperconvergence and discussion around how the network needs to deliver agility that can keep pace with storage and compute. Bob wrote a blog post on his time at the event—take a look here. We’ll be at the Boston VMUG event on December 8, 2015. We hope to see you there.
Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Enjoy!
FierceEnterpriseCommunications: SDN promises operational ease, cost reduction
By Chris Talbot
If recent vendor claims are to be believed, software-defined networking is starting to take off in a big way in the enterprise. There are still years ahead of tweaking and improving those deployments, as well as security concerns to overcome. The reason is clear: SDN promises several benefits over the old way of designing networks. Continue reading
Takeaways from VMUG in Chicago
Last week, I had the opportunity to travel to Chicago to attend the VMware User Group conference. It was a great event where I had the opportunity to meet and speak with many server, storage and network team members. One point that struck me was that the importance of the network is becoming clearer to everyone with a stake in the data center — and we couldn’t be happier to be leading the way.
Here are a couple of my observations from Chicago’s installation of the show:
- Beyond applications: In the past, VMUG conferences have been heavily attended by application and server teams. This year, I found that many of the attendees were networking and storage decision-makers and administrators. To me, that signals how much storage is being virtualized and how important the network has become in virtualized environments. The success of these environments will soon depend on the network and the need for cooperation and interdependency of the applications, storage and networking teams is clear.
- Hyperconverged layers: There’s a continued emphasis on the hyperconvergence of storage and compute—and the network is getting into the mix. I had a lot of conversations on why a converged network is a Continue reading
PlexxiPulse—The Key to Hyperconverged Success
Earlier this week, my colleague Bob Noel wrote a blog post on converged networking. As industry buzz surrounding hyperconvergance gets louder and louder, it is important to take into account the network that underpins these hyperconverged systems of tomorrow. Here at Plexxi we know that the network has to be more dynamic, innovative and agile to deliver on the promise of hyperconverged infrastructure and we’re thrilled to be a part of the conversation and the solution. Take a look at Bob’s blog post to learn more about our converged networks and why the network is so important for successful converged deployments.
Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Enjoy!
CBR: What does hyper-converged infrastructure mean for the future of enterprise application delivery?
By Gary Newe
Hyper-convergence is an extension of a converged infrastructure, where compute, server, storage, networking resources and software are pooled together on commodity hardware. They are usually systems from separate companies but designed to work very well together. The benefits of this include massively simplified management, which makes things faster, more agile and more efficient. It’s one of the foundations of virtualisation, but hyper-convergence allows for even Continue reading
The Hyperconverged Reality of Tomorrow
For a while now we’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about hyperconverged systems and we’ve been following it closely. We think what’s missing from these conversations is how critical the network is to the sustained success of these systems.
In our quest to build a simply better network, our key focus is on how to truly hyperconverge the network. And we do it by combining the latest in Ethernet switching with optical multiplexing to create a high performance, resilient, low latency and scalable data center network fabric. Unlike traditional leaf/spine approaches, Plexxi Switches are deployed as a single tier, eliminating cost and complexity while vastly reducing operational overhead so the enterprise can build true fabric agility to support the dynamic workload needs of hyperconverged nodes.
At VMWorld, Mat Matthews pointed out in his 5 Key Takeaways blog that hyperconverged solution providers are zoning in on the simplification of the consumption process around infrastructure. The silos are gone. Providers are recognizing that customers want to get new workloads up and running quickly without having to deal with getting storage, compute and networking to work together.
This is good news all around. We are seeing the realization that the network has Continue reading
PlexxiPulse—A Funding Frenzy
This week, we announced that we have raised a $35 million round of financing. The round was led by a new investor with participation from our existing investors (Lightspeed Venture Partners, Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners) bringing our total funding to $83 million. The capital raised will fuel the expansion of our sales, marketing, customer support, and research and development efforts. We’re so proud of what we’ve accomplished in this year and are eager to see what the rest of 2015 has in store for us. Take a look at this week’s blog post from our CEO Rich Napolitano on Plexxi’s continued momentum on the heels of our funding announcement.
Social media has been buzzing this week, see below! Have a great weekend.
The post PlexxiPulse—A Funding Frenzy appeared first on Plexxi.
Momentum in Motion: $35 Million in Funding, Solid Partnerships, Customer Wins, Switching on New Technology
I can’t believe how fast 2015 is flying by. It seems like we were just making our networking predictions for the year. If you’ve been following the blog or keeping up with us on social media, you may have noticed we’ve been busy here in Nashua in terms of our growth and expansion as well as the products we’re delivering. We are rapidly evolving Plexxi to keep pace with today’s competitive technology landscape.
I’m excited about the prospects for the future. And the reason has to do with three key accomplishments in 2015 (so far): today’s big news —$35 million in funding to accelerate our growth plans and product development; our new strategic partnerships along with our customer growth in targeted vertical markets; and the introduction of our Switch 2 Series. We’re set to make 2015 our best year yet.
1. Financing to Accelerate our Growth. Today, we announced we raised $35 million to continue our rapid growth in the software-defined agile datacenter market. The infusion of capital will help fuel the rapid expansion of our sales, marketing, customer support, and research and development efforts to deliver on our vision of a software-defined architecture in datacenters and service provider networks. Continue reading
PlexxiPulse—Reflections on VMworld
VMworld was buzzing last week. I was impressed by the focus on delivering solutions that help accelerate the deployment of workloads this year—a definite shift from years past. It was great to see demonstrations of solutions in action and the impact they have on their customers. There were a few things that made an impression on me at the show that I included in a blog post earlier this week. Were you at the show in San Francisco last week? What were your key takeaways?
Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Enjoy!
Business 2 Community: The Future of Networking Will Be Written By the Leaders
By Jim Rapoza
One of my favorite bands of all time is The Clash, and a famous quote attributed to their late band leader Joe Strummer is that “the future is unwritten.” And in most cases that is very true. For example, few people in 2005 could have successfully predicted many of the trends and realities of today, whether in the everyday world or in the realm of technology. But while the future may be unwritten, sometimes we do have a pretty good Continue reading
5 Takeaways from a Week at #VMWorld
Another VMworld has come and gone. 23,000 people at this year’s VMWorld at the Moscone Center seemed to push the limits with standing room only at sessions and coffee in high demand, but the show was well run and the solution exchange was hopping.
I was glad to see less marketing rhetoric around private vs. public cloud, software vs. hardware, virtualized networks vs. physical networks and more focus on delivering solutions that help accelerate the deployment of workloads in ways that help customers.
Here’s a look at my 5 things that made an impression on me at this year’s show.
1. It’s a Hybrid World
A major focus (maybe the focus) of VMworld this year was what VMware calls the “Unified Hybrid Cloud.” It was good to see a strong shift from previous years where much focus was placed on defending private cloud versus public cloud. VMware is certainly taking an “inside out” strategy by focusing on their strength inside the data center and leveraging their vCloud Air public cloud services. Their ability to provide sophisticated tools for private data centers and extend that to a public resource-on-demand consumption model is certainly a strong value proposition for customers.
PlexxiPulse—Happy Labor Day!
Wishing you a safe and happy Labor Day from the entire team here at Plexxi. Enjoy the celebrations this weekend!
Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Enjoy!
Enterprise Networking Planet: With SDN, Programmability is the Point
By Arthur Cole
Software Defined Networking (SDN) is the moniker that the enterprise has accepted for the new breed of virtual network architectures abstracted from underlying hardware. But since software involves code, what we are really talking about is programmable networking. That raises a number of questions regarding the ultimate goal of this investment: programmed how? And programmed to do what, exactly? For specialty chip developers like Xilinx, a key function will be workload acceleration. As the enterprise tries to satisfy the twin masters of increased data volumes and demand for real-time data services, the need to quickly navigate through an ever-shifting set of network resources will become paramount.
Data Center Knowledge: Latency, Bandwidth, Disaster Recovery: Selecting the Right Data Center
By Bill Kleyman
In selecting the right type of data center colocation, administrators must thoroughly plan out their deployment and strategies. This means involving more than just facilities teams in the planning Continue reading
PlexxiPulse—What are your VMworld Predictions?
If you caught our webinar on Thursday, you know that we believe the success of future networks will be a combination of hardware and software to form a dynamic, application aware, converged network fabric. We covered the evolution of the network as well as a few of our predictions for the future. If you missed it, don’t worry—there will be more to come. In the meantime, I will be at VMworld in San Francisco next week from August 30—September 3. I’m always open to chat about networking at large and how we’re disrupting the networking norm here at Plexxi. Let me know if you’ll be there! Do you have any predictions for VMworld this year?
Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Enjoy!
No Jitter: Network Change: Evolutions and Revolutions
By Tom Noelle
Networking, and its transformation, is more than just technology. Broadband Internet came along during an unfortunate shift in the politics of networking. In the ’80s and ’90s we were moving from a global vision of communications as a regulated monopoly or even a government agency to one of a free market. The Internet exploded on the scene Continue reading