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.
Any IT business leader knows that the single most important technology driving data center design change is server virtualization to the point that a virtual machine (VM) is now the data center building block. As server virtualization marches on until nearly every physical server has been virtualized, networking in a virtualized environment is being forced to fundamentally change too. By networking, I mean not only layer 2 and 3 forwarding but network services too, such as application controllers, WAN optimizes, firewalls, etc., which are fundamental for mission critical application performance, cost reduction and high application availability especially where service level agreements are required.
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In an effort to offer a multi-vendor SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) solution, Cisco is placing its SIEM product, CS-MARS, in end-of-life and in its place, offering the industry its first SIEM ecosystem. Cisco acquired MARS six years ago in December 2004. MARS provided traditional event management and security monitoring along with limited forensic capabilities and compliance reporting. But the market demanded a broader cross-vendor SIEM solution rather than a SIEM focused primarily on Cisco products. In response Cisco has launched a SIEM ecosystem to support deep event monitoring, forensics and compliance reporting across a heterogeneous enterprise network. IT has also expanded the role of its Cisco Security Manager or CSM to support policy management and troubleshooting across a wider range of Cisco products. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we examine the new distribution of security responsibilities that now stretch across Cisco CSM and its new SIEM ecosystem with an eye toward stronger defense of IT assets.
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Ethernet networking is now the single most important data center technology to assure the new IT economic model of centralized application delivery. Yes that’s right—Ethernet as the data center fabric is the stability point in data center design that will dictate if a data center or cloud facility can scale to support huge application and storage traffic loads. And if you think that Ethernet switch performance is not important then you would be as right as the engineers who designed the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we explain why network performance of data center Ethernet switching products matter more now than ever.
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For as long as I have been following Avaya—and it’s been a decade since it was spun out of Lucent back in October of 2000—it has undergone three fundamental transitions. First, Don Peterson, Avaya’s first CEO, managed to fix Avaya’s balance sheet after Lucent saddled it with heavy debt. He also pointed the way toward IP telephony in his six years at the helm. Then came Louis D’Ambrosio, with high energy and confidence, to point Avaya in the direction of unified communications, and a software and services business model, while bringing the company private in 2007 through TPG Capital and Silver Lake Partners. In 2008, Charlie Giancarlo became chairman, while Kevin Kennedy took the helm, ushering in a new wave of innovation and nimbleness while re-engineering sales and channels plus absorbing the Nortel enterprise business. Yes, what a long, strange trip it’s been, but Avaya is now the most innovative in its history and well positioned for the post-recession business cycle. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we examine Avaya’s prospects and challenges.
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Little-known Voltaire is a powerhouse in High Performance Computing (HPC) networking with a full line of InfiniBand switches and performance software. It has been in this market since 1997 and has amassed big system partnerships to distribute its products such as HP, IBM, Oracle, NEC, et al. But seeing the multibillion-dollar market for 10Gb and higher Ethernet switching as the new high performance data center fabric has motivated Voltaire to enter this mainstream market. Note the InfiniBand market is slightly north of $200m annually. Its motivation has materialized in the introduction of two top-of-rack switches and one core switch plus Unified Fabric Manager software for physical and virtual infrastructure management and Voltaire Messaging Accelerator (VMA) software which reduces application latency increases application performance. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we profile Voltaire and layout its strengths and challenges.
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A Comprehensive Approach to Corporate and Government Energy Cost Savings and Carbon Reduction
Being green is increasingly being forced upon IT business leaders from their management, government regulations and societal pressures. Ask a recent college grad what is the number one societal contribution they would like to make with their career and the answer is “make the world greener.” The workforce is changing worldwide with a sense of personal and corporate social responsibility to reduce carbon emissions, and choose sustainable materials and processes to power our lives and deliver products and services. And being green is no longer a luxury that IT leaders can choose as governments, boards of directors and presidential directives issue mandates forcing energy efficiency upon IT executives.
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One significant trend that has emerged during the current business/economic cycle is that IT projects that reduce cost are winners. This savings trend is as strong as I have experienced in my twenty-five years within the IT industry. In particular, it’s propelling data center consolidation, server virtualization and mobile computing projects. As enterprises consolidate data centers and miniaturize them with virtualization, cloud-computing providers are busy offering a new lower cost IT delivery economic model. In short, a new tier of computing has emerged were endpoint devices are mobile and applications are delivered via corporate data centers and cloud computing facilities. This new model of computing that also increases convenience and productivity is lacking in one important area; network security for both mobile endpoints and the ability of data center security appliances to keep up with application demand.
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Major IT Delivery Transitions IT Business Leaders Are Managing
Application owners and developers have been deploying and writing applications as if networks had no boundaries or were borderless. By “application owners” I mean IT departments chartered with IT application delivery and management. By “application developers” I mean in-house corporate software developers, independent software vendors (or ISVs) and software companies. There has always been a disconnect between applications and network architects where developers write applications to run over a network as long as there is connectivity. In addition, service-oriented architecture (SOA) based applications call for greater application componentization, which increases messaging between application components, resulting in the network having a direct impact on application performance. In essence, application owners, developers and application standard bodies assume that networks are borderless as the industry is organized around the OSI model where knowledge and skills at one layer, e.g., the network is not necessarily taken into account at another layer, i.e., the application. Therefore, the normal state of affairs is that network designers have been tasked to optimize applications to improve user experience especially when the application was not written to run over a particular kind of network. This status quo does not scale and needs to be re-thought.
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Networking is entering a new phase or era. During the 1990s, new networking markets opened up, creating multi-billion dollar opportunities for the vendor community and corporate cost savings for IT business leaders. First, it was shared LANs and routing, then switched LANs, then Frame Relay to speed up WANs, then SNA over IP, then remote access via dial-up and VPN, then MPLS, then IP telephony, then Wireless LANs etc… and now, it’s video and cloud networking. You get the picture. But what we didn’t realize as we build these networks is that they are silos with disparate management systems and unique access methods resulting in operational cost overlap and, most importantly, user frustration as they transition application use from desktop, to mobile end point, to remote endpoint. In short, we built boundaries around applications in the form of networks and it is the dismantling of these borders that vendors are now starting to deliver and differentiate upon. It’s not just Cisco that communicates borderless networks, but HP Networking, Juniper, Brocade, Extreme, Avaya, Force10 and others too. Why is the industry entering a new age of borderless networking and what’s in it for IT business leaders, is explained in this Lippis Report Research Note.
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It hasn’t been since the mid 1990s that the networking industry was focused on multi-protocol integration or convergence. But the industry is gearing up for a major innovation and competitive cycle fueled by the multi-billion dollar addressable market for data center network fabrics. Over the last eighteen months, every major Ethernet infrastructure provider has been talking about two and three tier network fabrics for high-end data centers.
Companies such as Cisco, Arista Networks, HP/3Com, Force10, Voltaire, Extreme, Brocade, Juniper et al have announced network fabrics for data centers with five thousand and more servers with and without storage enablement. Juniper talks of a one-tier fabric through their Project Stratus work with IBM to be available some time in the future. Brocade recently introduced its Brocade One, which is a converged data center fabric. Extreme Networks launched its DirectAttachTM that eliminates virtual plus blade switch layers. HP has FlexFabric, a virtualized fabric for the data center. Cisco launched its FabricPath Switching System or FSS for the Nexus 7000 that enables massive scale of a two-tier fabric.
In this Lippis Report Research Note, we review the architectural attributes of two tier network fabrics.
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Networking has become “rigid”. Yes I know it’s almost absurd to attribute inflexibility or rigidity to networking. Look what TCP/IP has done for us. There are nearly 2 billion people connected to the internet and according to the Internet World Stats internet user growth rate increased by 380% between 2000-2009. With 2 billion people and growing online, accessing a plethora of applications via a wide range of end-points there is no doubt that the internet and TCP/IP has been a much bigger success than anyone would have imagined back in the early ’90s. But there’s always a give and take between computing and networking where one drives and changes the other. Right now we are in a compute innovation cycle that’s driving a fundamental change in networking which screams out the need for more flexibility.
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In Lippis Report 151: A Two or Three Tier High-End Data Center Ethernet Fabric Architecture? we detailed the new two tier data center Ethernet fabric that is becoming conventional wisdom amongst business leaders of high end data centers and cloud computing service providers. The networking industry is headed for a major innovation and competitive cycle fueled by a multi-billion dollar addressable market for data center network fabrics. Over the last eighteen months, every major Ethernet infrastructure provider has announced or taken a position on two tier network fabrics for high-end data centers. Companies such as Cisco, Arista Networks, Force10, Voltaire, HP/3Com, Juniper, Extreme, Brocade, BLADE Network Technology, et al have announced network fabrics for data centers with two thousand and more servers that either support storage enablement or not. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we review why it is Ethernet that will be the network fabric of high performance computing or HPC and cloud computing deployments.
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In the Lippis Report Research Note 150, we discussed the new industry group called Unified Communications Interoperability Forum or UNIF and compared it to other industry consortium charted to deliver interoperable solutions. While interoperability is sorely needed in the UC industry, it looks like Microsoft killed its changes of broad industry success before it started. What I hear from both UCIF members and non-members is that UCIF is controlled by Microsoft, and thus, lacks a large cross section of industry players as well as major UC providers. With its current structure, UCIF will make limited headway on its charter. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we review UCIF and its’ opportunities.
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It hasn’t been since the mid 1990s that the networking industry was focused on multi-protocol integration or convergence. The industry is gearing up for a major innovation and competitive cycle fueled by the multi-billion dollar addressable market for data center network fabrics. Over the last eighteen months, every major Ethernet infrastructure provider has been talking about two and three tier network fabrics for high-end data centers. Companies such as Cisco, Arista Networks, HP/3Com, Force10, Voltaire, Extreme, Brocade, Juniper et al have announced network fabrics for data centers with five thousand and more servers with and without storage enablement. Juniper talks of a one-tier fabric through their Project Stratus work with IBM to be available some time in the future. Brocade recently introduced its’ Brocade One, which is a converged data center fabric. Cisco just launched its’ FabricPath Switching System or FSS for the Nexus 7000 that enables massive scale of a two-tier fabric. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we review the architectural attributes of two and three tier network fabrics and review FSS and its accompanying F-Series 10GbE module.
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