The Lippis Report Analyses
A new issue of the Lippis Report is published approximately every two weeks. These reports contain not only links to the latest podcasts and industry white papers, case studies, and webinars, but also industry analysis from Nick Lippis, a world-reknowned authority on corporate computer networking, with over 15 years experience. Below you’ll find links to those analyses which are free to read and provide the opportunity for discussion as well.
Cisco is fundamentally changing the way it approaches network access by prioritizing research and development to deliver a common user experience independent upon wired, wireless or remote access. In addition, to simplify network operations and reduce opex, Cisco is unifying its product management suites plus centralizing policy definition for network access. Its approach is to deliver a unified access or holistic solution to IT business leaders that span both wired, wireless and remote network access with a common security and management framework. Cisco calls this new approach Cisco Unified Access.
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While IT business leaders have been busy virtualizing servers into ever more dense data centers, virtual desktop infrastructure or VDI options and deployments continue to expand and gain market share during the current business cycle. According to ABI Research, the worldwide market for hosted virtual desktops is forecast to grow from about $500 million in 2009 to a cumulative total of nearly $5 billion in 2016.
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There are only a few 2004 vintage network start-ups that managed through the difficult 2008-2010 economic drought, which killed off many. These firms are survivors rooted in nutrient soil made up of strong management that tightly weaves business and technical architecture to serve an unmet, yet growing, market need. One of those markets is wireless infrastructure, and the one company that stands out in this space is Ruckus Wireless. Ruckus was founded by Bill Kish, CTO, and Victor Shtrom, CWO, and is managed by Selina Lo, its President and CEO. Ruckus Wireless has been firing on all cylinders. It’s the fastest growing Wi-Fi supplier on the planet in today’s enterprise wireless LAN (WLAN) market and owns the largest market share in the carrier Wi-Fi space. According to Garner, from 4Q10 to 4Q11, Ruckus Wireless, a late entrant into the WLAN market, was the fastest growing supplier of managed enterprise WLAN access points in terms of both unit shipments and revenue – growing 289% and 181%, respectively. And for the second year, in the carrier Wi-Fi space, Ruckus was identified as the 2011 market leader with a 26.7 % share of Wi-Fi mesh node shipments, according to Dell’Oro. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we explore the service provide trends that are driving Ruckus’ current and future success in the wake of its expected IPO.
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On March 30th I met with Dave Husak, the Founder and CEO of Massachusetts Software-Defined Networking (SDN) start-up Plexxi, along with two other employees. For those who don’t know Dave, he’s intense and driven. Out of this two-hour meeting, Dave provided the inspiration to describe SDN as the third epoch of computer networking. In a nutshell, the first epoch was IBM mainframes and SNA, the second is client-server computing and LAN/WANs, with the third being mobile plus cloud computing and SDN. After attending the second Open Network Summit (ONS) last week to sold-out crowds, the main question I walk away with is this: is SDN the third epoch or a new set of features added to layer 2/3 networking? In other words is SDN a new disruptive market or a high-end networking technology like InfiniBand? In this Lippis Report Research Note, I share the top ten observations at ONS and answer the above question.
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Virtualized server deployment has been propelled en masse, thanks to increased data center efficiency by delivering the same or greater application workload with a reduced number of servers. While this is good news, many IT business leaders are now realizing huge consequences to highly virtualized data centers. Their challenges are rooted in application management plus layer four through seven services, such as WAN optimization, application delivery controllers and security, especially in environments that include multiple hypervisors and a wide variety of workload types and shifting virtual machines. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we provide a model to manage the rapid changes taking place in data center strategies for managing applications plus layer four through seven services via a “virtualization stack” to calm complexity and enable cloud level scale.
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Network virtualization design or the ability to divide a physical network into multiple logical networks, each with unique attributes, has grown in popularity. IT business leaders have searched for ways to segment their network, providing different and isolated characteristics for different user groups. Network virtualization is very popular in healthcare, education, travel and other industries, but has been too expensive and complex for the broader market to implement, until now. Network virtualization can be implemented via VRF- (or virtual routing forwarding) lite, MPLS, and now with Cisco’s new Easy Virtual Network, all of which, by the way, are far easier to manage and much lower cost than building overlay networks. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we explore network virtualization approaches in campus networking for segmentation or isolation of groups and its simplification properties.
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SecureX is the network security framework that Cisco launched last year. The company has now deepened SecureX to bolster its ability to provide SecOps greater visibility of applications and network traffic, and control of network security resources to mitigate exploits faster and more effectively by providing context- aware security information brought on by Bring Your Own Device or BYOD plus cloud computing applications and services. Cisco achieves this through its new ASA-CX Context-Aware Security capabilities, expanded support for Security Group Tagging or SGT within TrustSec enabled devices, and the addition of device profiling functionality in the IOS of its routers, switches and wireless access points. All of this security technology works with its Identity Services Engine or ISE—Cisco’s identity and access control policy platform.
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There are multiple definitions of Software-Defined Networking or SDN. But this is common in a new breakout space for the computer networking industry that’s evolving fast. The most common SDN definition is based upon splitting the data plane or the forwarding hardware of an Ethernet switch from its control plane or the logic that controls how packets flow from ingress to egress. But this definition alone is too limited and needs to be expanded. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we offer the industry a broader SDN definition and view.
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The Unified Communications market has twisted and turned over the past eighteen months, thanks to mobile and cloud computing plus the huge uptick in web plus video collaboration. This market has recovered from the 2009/2010 downturn with a gusto as providers expand UC to include collaboration and mobile platforms while targeting the red hot Small- to Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) market that consist of some seven million employees. With only a third of SMEs having a communication strategy plus less than a quarter with a deployed UC solution, the SME market is huge and wide open. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we take a look at Avaya’s and Siemens’ new UC offering for the SME market from a traditional voice vendor perspective and explore non-traditional SME offerings from Apple, Google, Facebook, Cisco, Microsoft, et al.
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Computer networking vendors have been increasing the speed and port density of their Ethernet switches while reducing power draw and price per port. But while Ethernet switching hardware marches on linearly, thanks to 10, 40 and 100GbE, networking software is taking a different historical path as the pace of compute and network technology evolution has diverged, with networking lagging. Highly virtualized server deployment has broken traditional networking approaches on multiple levels, for example. In response, the industry is now developing a “virtualized infrastructure” or “stack” to add network flexibility. To close the technology gap, Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is promoted as the new “organizing principle” to deliver network software and service value. While it will be, likely, years before SDN’s organizing principles take hold, I propose that these two industry activities are inexplicably linked and phased; here’s why…
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During the middle of 2012, a few firms will introduce core switches for campus networking. Many of these products will be based upon merchant silicon such as HP Networking’s A10500 Series Enterprise Core Switch. While these products will boast performance advantage, they will find it difficult to win share against established firms such as Cisco’s Catalyst 6500, thanks to its investment in network services. In this Lippis Report Research Note 184, we explore the importance of network services and their role in campus network design.
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In this Lippis Report Research Note 183, we provide our very popular annual top 10 2012 industry predictions that were provided by Andre Kindness, senior analyst at Forrester Research, Nick Lippis, CEO of Lippis Enterprises, and Zeus Kerravala, principal at ZK Research. We take a look into the year ahead and provide our view as to what will come to pass. This Research Note is based upon the “2012 Networking Industry Predictions” Lippis Report podcast.
The following are our top 10 2012 Networking Industry Predictions.
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The Fall 2011 Open Industry Network Performance and Power Test Report is now available. Since our Spring 2011 test, we added four products from three vendors to the 11 products from eight vendors already tested. We now have data on 15 data center switching products from nine vendors in the new report to be released after Thanksgiving. Our cloud networking test of 10 and 40GbE is now the industry benchmark for cloud networking. In fact, only those companies that are sure of their product(s) enter the test at Ixia’s iSimCity. We found that 40GbE is hard, and thus you have to give credit to the vendors that go through the testing—in this test, those vendors are Extreme Networks, Brocade and Alcatel-Lucent. These firms have high performance data center switching product that is Enterprise and Cloud service provider ready. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we share our the top 10 findings from this round of testing. Lippis Report subscribers can download the 125-page report here, free of charge.
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During the weeks of October 10 and October 31, 2011, at Ixia’s iSimCity, the Lippis Report conducted its third industry test of cloud networking data center switches operating at 10 and 40GbE. In just six short months, the industry has moved forward by breaking all previous records of data center switch speed, power consumption, port density and bandwidth. We added four products from three vendors to the eleven products from eight vendors already tested. We now have data on fifteen data center switching products from nine vendors in the new report to be released after Thanksgiving. During May 2011 Interop, we had eleven vendors provide verbal commitment to participate in this Fall industry test (remember it is free for vendors to submit products to test). As the deadline for signed agreements came, this field of eleven dropped to three because their products were simply not ready. 40GbE is hard, and thus you have to give credit to the vendors that go through the testing—in this test, those vendors are Extreme Networks, Brocade and Alcatel-Lucent. These firms have high performance data center switching product that is Enterprise and Cloud service provider ready. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we share our insights gained from testing all these products and provide the topic cloud networking industry trends taking shape now.
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