The Lippis Report

The spring business cycle in our industry brought HP and Microsoft closer together, Avaya’s launch of Aura, Cisco’s go-to-market strategy for its unified computing system (UCS), Brocade’s 8000 FCoE switch launch, 3Com/H3C’s new 12500 data center core switch and re-emergence into the enterprise market, Voltaire’s entry into the ethernet data center market and much more. With the stocks of many networking companies trading higher than before the crash of 2008, it’s becoming clear that the efficiency gains of IT will play a major role in the fall economic up turn. With that in mind I review the major spring launches and provide my assessment.

The major spring event that is now shaping the industry was Cisco’s UCS or unified computing system announcement that has placed Cisco into the computing industry and ushered in the unified fabric market. Clearly HP and IBM were not and are still not happy with Cisco entering into their space and have started to respond. IBM has become closer to Brocade and Juniper while HP has increased its relationship with Microsoft to bolster its unified communications and collaboration offerings. I offer pros and cons to the most important spring announcements.

HP & Microsoft Team Up on UC and Collaboration:

My take with a HP TSG focus:

+ Huge announcement with HP entering into the UC & Collaboration space with MSFT; instant credibility gained

+ Excellent ProCurve pull through sales opportunity

+ HP, IBM and Cisco now compete at Datacenter and UC + Collaboration markets eliminating a major HP hole.

+ Excellent demo(s) with HP + MSFT being able to credibly focus on communications enablement of business processes

- No UC & Collaboration specific features/attributes associated with proCurve products during the announcement

- Questions of scale need to be addressed as OSC R2 is still immature from a number of end-points and multi-site reliability points of view

- HP is hostage to MSFT UC & Collaboration initiatives, i.e., HP does not control development and MSFT is fighting huge, multiple battles

Avaya’s Aura

Avaya launched Aura, which is a device that uses SIP to connect multiple vendors’ phones, PBXs, IP telephony and applications into a streamlined enterprise communications system. My assessment is:

+ Great use of SIP as a way to connect disparate communication systems into one SIP cloud

+ Simplifies mixed vendor communication environments and an excellent way to provide Nortel customers with a migration path toward Avaya

+ Cost reduction thanks to significant WAN, mobile and bridge cost elimination plus centralized communication management yielding operational dividend.

+ Great application integration environment enabling facebook, google, et al., screen pops throughout an organization

+ Mobile and office phone integration

++ Reduces short term facilities cost and provides long term application integration/business productivity advantage

+/- Integration into LiveMeeting, SameTime, Adobe Connect Professional and Avaya Web Conferencing, but needs stronger collaboration & social networking offering

- Requires IT staff to be proficient in SIP & application integration

- Multi-vendor management is sparse

- Needs better UC client support

3Com/H3C Re-Enters The Enterprise Market

3Com under its H3C global brand and new executive management, which includes Ron Sege, President & COO, Alan Kessler, President Tipping Point, Eric A. Benhamou, Chairman, among others, are rebuilding its distribution and partner channels to move its full portfolio of switching, routing, UC, security and mobility solutions to the enterprise market. H3C sees a behavior change in enterprise IT spending that values green, cost efficiency and high performance networking and seeks to be a major supplier to this market. My assessment is:

+ $1.3B of review with operations around the globe

+ Experienced executive management who knows how to execute

+ Full portfolio of switching, routing, UC, mobility and security products for enterprise and data center solutions

+ Low cost basis thanks to Huawei JV

+ New high-end core switch 12500 for data center with 6.6 Tbs of backplane bandwidth, 512 10 GB port density, non-blocking architecture that was designed to support FCoE, 40 and 100 Gbs

+ Brand new approach to network management H3C Intelligent Management Center with a single point of access to configure and manage the entire portfolio of products

+/- Industry needs to fully vent, discuss and evaluate the new 3Com/H3C to discover its value proposition and measure how well it resonates with the new enterprise market realities

- Needs to build credibility and trust in the enterprise market

- Needs to communicate execution plan and roll out customer testimonials

Voltaire Announces the Vantage 8500 Switch

Voltaire announced a high-end ethernet switch called the Vantage 8500 available in the 2nd half of 2009 that touts 288 non-blocking 10 GB Ethernet ports and 11.5Tbs backplane bandwidth. Key features are Layer 2, CEE, FCoE, Virtualized I/O port, low latency of less than a microsecond and low power of less than 10 W per port. My assessment is:

+ High-end switch from a company that understands high performance with its engineering roots buried in infiniBand

+High density 1 and 10 GB Ethernet with key data center logical features such as CEE and its Voltaire scale out capability, which allows two tiers versus three tiers data center constructs to be deployed

+ Touts $1.2K per 10G port, unique design features that deliver linear scale of performance as the number of ports increase

+ Has been focused in high-end data center market addressing need for high-end core layer 2 switching

+/- Unclear how Vantage’s logical features would connect with existing network vendors, storage and CNA equipment

- A relatively unknown company with $62M of revenues

- Above product claims need independent testing and customer testimonials

Brocade 8000 FCoE Switch

Brocade launched its 8000 ToR (Top of Rack) switch with integrated Fiber Channel switch and 8 ports of FCoE support plus 24 10G Ethernet ports. This is an important announcement as it offers a unified fabric solution from Brocade, albeit a limited approach. My assessment is:

+ Impressed with packaging, FC & Ethernet switching plus 2 CNA adaptors

+ Consistent FC and switch management

+ Non-blocking switch fabric; however this needs to be independently confirmed

+/- 8 GB FC a hedge until 10 GB FC

- Brocade manufactured CNAs and no support for 3rd party CNA adaptors

- FC ports on 8000 means still two cable runs to EoR ethernet switch and FC switch

- Lack of a scalable solution

Cisco’s Non-Stop Innovation

In addition to the above Cisco has been introducing innovations non-stop during the downturn as it prepares its customers for the up turn. For example, it put its channel muscle behind UCS with a major go-to-market strategy at its Partners conference here in Boston last week, launched WebEx Node for ASR 1000 that won Interop Best of Show, launched EnergyWise to reduce IT and non-IT electrical consumption, launched Cisco Unified Communications System Release 7.1 bolstering its video services, offered new phones and UC features, and launched Global Correlation for the ISR and ASA and the Nexus 1K soft switch for virtualized data center environments. Cisco has been relentless in their product expansion aimed at making the Network the next business platform. Close to Cisco and a UCS enabler is VMware’s vSphere 4.0, which promises to usher in large-scale virtualization by providing features previously lacking to virtualize most corporate data center applications.

The crash of 2008 has left its mark not only on the financial systems but also on corporate and personal behavior. It’s becoming clear that corporate behavior will continue to be frugal well after the up turn; in short IT justifications will be rooted in cost avoidance, reduction and productivity improvements. The above IT supplier announcements all focus on new and cost effective methods to either design data centers or deliver collaboration. These two IT projects in particular are high priority on lists of projects from IT leaders as they both offer cost reduction and productivity improvement, which many are planning to exploit as they get ready for the fall economic up turn.