Somehow, AWS and cloud growth continues to accelerate

If the numbers weren’t so clear, I’m not sure I’d have believed it was possible. After all, an enormous business that earned $17.46 billion in 2017 and grew approximately 45 percent is bound to slow down, right? Simply maintaining that insane level of growth would be virtually impossible, right?But somehow, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is actually boosting its growth. After expanding by 42 percent in the third quarter of 2017, AWS increased that number to 45 percent in the fourth quarter … and then did it again, growing 49 percent in the first quarter of calendar 2018.To read this article in full, please click here

Network Break 182: BGP Hijacked For Cryptocurrency Heist; Juniper, Big Switch Unveil New Products

Businesses need more than one way to achieve multicloud

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

Businesses need more than one way to achieve multicloud

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

Future Thinking: Augusto Mathurin on Digital Divides

In 2017, the Internet Society unveiled the 2017 Global Internet Report: Paths to Our Digital Future. The interactive report identifies the drivers affecting tomorrow’s Internet and their impact on Media & Society, Digital Divides, and Personal Rights & Freedoms. In April 2018, we interviewed two stakeholders –Getachew Engida, Deputy Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and Augusto Mathurin, who created Virtuágora, an open source digital participation platform – to hear their different perspectives on the forces shaping the Internet.

Augusto Mathurin is a 25-year-old Argentinian who strongly believes in the need to enable all people to participate in decision-making which can impact them and their communities. With this in mind, Augusto developed an open source digital participation platform as part of a university project. The main goal of this platform, Virtuágora, was to create a common space in which citizens’ opinions and their representatives’ proposals could converge. The concept was derived from the Greek agora – the central square of ancient Grecian cities where citizens met to discuss their society. In 2017, Augusto was awarded the Internet Society’s 25 under 25 award for making an impact in his community and beyond.  (You can  Continue reading

Red Hat launches turnkey storage solution

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

Feeding The Insatiable Bandwidth Beast

Breaking into any part of the IT stack against incumbents with vast installed bases is not easy task. Cutting edge technology is table stakes, and targeting precise customers with specific needs is the only way to get a toehold. It also takes money. Lots of money. Innovium, the upstart Ethernet switch chip maker, has all three and is set to make some inroads among the hyperscalers and cloud builders.

We told you all about Innovium back in March last year, when the company, founded by former networking executives and engineers from Intel and Broadcom, dropped out of stealth and …

Feeding The Insatiable Bandwidth Beast was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Future Thinking: Getachew Engida on Digital Divides

In 2017, the Internet Society unveiled the 2017 Global Internet Report: Paths to Our Digital Future. The interactive report identifies the drivers affecting tomorrow’s Internet and their impact on Media & Society, Digital Divides, and Personal Rights & Freedoms. In April 2018, we interviewed two stakeholders – Getachew Engida, Deputy Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and Augusto Mathurin, who created Virtuágora, an open source digital participation platform – to hear their different perspectives on the forces shaping the Internet.

Getachew Engida is the Deputy Director-General of UNESCO. He has spent the past twenty years leading and managing international organizations and advancing the cause of poverty eradication, peace-building, and sustainable development. He has worked extensively on rural and agricultural development, water and climate challenges, education, science, technology and innovation, intercultural dialogue and cultural diversity, communication and information with emphasis on freedom of expression, and the free flow information on and offline. (You can read Augusto Mathurin’s interview here).

The Internet Society: You have, in the past, stressed the role that education has played in your own life and can play in others’ lives. Do you see technology helping to promote literacy and Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Why carriers aren’t ready for SD-WAN services

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

IDG Contributor Network: Why carriers aren’t ready for SD-WAN services

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

IDG Contributor Network: WAN Summit recap: challenges facing SD-WAN services

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

IDG Contributor Network: WAN Summit recap: challenges facing SD-WAN services

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

The Week in Internet News: A New Use for Blockchain

Blockchain takes on censorship: Students looking into sexual harassment accusations involving a professor at Peking University in China wrote a letter accusing the school of trying to silence one of them, but the letter was removed from social media outlets for “violating rules.” So some supporters distributed the letter using the Ethereum blockchain, reports Yahoo finance.

Why routing security matters: Hackers used a well-known weakness in Border Gateway Protocol routing to hijack Amazon Web Services’ DNS traffic for about two hours last Tuesday. Attackers were able to redirect an Ethereum wallet developer’s website to a phishing site and steal about $150,000 from MyEtherWallet.com users, ZDNet reports.

Hacking-for-hire site attacked: In this case, law enforcement agencies from 12 countries were the people who shut down hacking-for-hire site Webstresser.org. The site had 136,000 customers and its hackers launched more than 4 million DDoS attacks in recent years, according to Europol. GovTech.com has a story.

Inspecting the IoT: Researchers at Princeton University are launching IoT Inspector, an open-source tool designed to give Internet of Things users insight into the security of their devices. There’s even Raspberry Pi code for the project, says The Register.

Cryptocurrency for the suits: The Continue reading

Playing Dominoes In Data Science

The growing amounts of data that are being generated due to such trends as the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing have naturally beget the need for data scientists who can collect, analyze and, most importantly, interpret these massive stockpiles of complex information to help their companies more quickly and accurately make better business decisions to give them a competitive edge over competitors and to improve their operations and make them more efficient.

That in turn has created something of a land rush in what’s become a rapidly expanding data science platform market of more than a dozen vendors …

Playing Dominoes In Data Science was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

Docker Government Summit 2018

This year’s summit reflected what is top of mind for government organizations, namely IT modernization and what that means for infrastructure, applications, data and the workforce. As mentioned in the keynote address, the line between government IT and private sector IT is blurring now more than ever. From the priorities outlined in the White House IT Modernization Report to the discussions at the recent IT modernization summit, the themes focus on results of better customer service and better stewardship of tax dollars.

Better customer service translates into improving existing services, delivering new services and increasing transparency. To that end, government organizations are taking cues from industry to see how the latest technology and best practices can be applied and adapted to meet the added requirements of government.  The agenda featured speakers from government agencies, higher ed, system integrators and industry partners providing practical insight from their own transformation initiatives and deep dives into the modern technology stack.

Watch these featured videos from the event:

• General Session: Banjot Chanana, Docker Senior Director Enterprise Product
• Fireside Chat: Nick Sinai, Insight Ventures Partner and David Shive, GSA CIO
• Case Study: Arjuna Rivera, Lockheed Martin i2Labs Lead
• Case Study: Leo Garciga, JIDO CTO
• Cyber Continue reading

6 Reasons SSDs Will Take Over the Data Center

We Have to Learn How to Manage the Cattle

Not long after I published the blog post arguing against physical appliances, Oven wrote a very valid comment: "But then you'd have 20 individual systems to manage, add licenses to for additional features, updates etc."

Even though the blog post (and the comment) was written in 2013, not much has changed in the meantime.

NetChain: Scale-free sub-RTT coordination

NetChain: Scale-free sub-RTT coordination Jin et al., NSDI’18

NetChain won a best paper award at NSDI 2018 earlier this month. By thinking outside of the box (in this case, the box is the chassis containing the server), Jin et al. have demonstrated how to build a coordination service (think Apache ZooKeeper) with incredibly low latency and high throughput. We’re talking 9.7 microseconds for both reads and writes, with scalability on the order of tens of billions of operations per second. Similarly to KV-Direct that we looked at last year, NetChain achieves this stunning performance by moving the system implementation into the network. Whereas KV-Direct used programmable NICs though, NetChain takes advantage of programmable switches, and can be incrementally deployed in existing datacenters.

We expect a lightning fast coordination system like NetChain can open the door for designing a new generation of distributed systems beyond distributed transactions.

It’s really exciting to watch all of the performance leaps being made by moving compute and storage around (accelerators, taking advantage of storage pockets e.g. processing-in-memory, non-volatile memory, in-network processing, and so on). The sheer processing power we’ll have at our disposal as all of these become mainstream is staggering to Continue reading

How have network firewalls evolved?

Firewalls have become ubiquitous across the enterprise IT landscape because of their proven ability to stop bad traffic from entering corporate networks and protect a company’s most valuable assets. So how have firewalls evolved over the years and what are the latest trends in firewall security?

T-Mobile to Swallow Sprint and Form 5G Powerhouse

The combined company will be worth roughly $146 billion. T-Mobile CEO John Legere will lead the new firm and Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure will serve on the board.