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Ruckus Wireless is an innovation machine having pioneered technologies such as SmartMeshing, BeamFlex, SmartCast and now ChannelFly. These innovations have differentiated Ruckus in the enterprise and service provider markets with outstanding results. Ruckus is also involved in the IEEE and WiFi Alliance where new Wi-Fi standards such as gigabit WiFi or 802.11ac, and 7 Gbps 802.11ad are being developed. Bill Kish, Ruckus’s CTO, is my guest as we talk about Ruckus’s unique architecture to product differentiation and development. Bill shares his view of the next three years in the wireless technologies. It’s a must listen for network architects in the enterprise and service provider markets.

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Ruckus Wireless has been firing on all cylinders. It’s the fastest growing Wi-Fi supplier on the planet in the enterprise wireless market and owns the largest market share in the carrier Wi-Fi space. Ruckus, an Enterprise supplier latecomer, achieved the highest year-over-year revenue growth of all WLAN suppliers worldwide, growing over 134 %, according to Gartner’s Enterprise WLAN Equipment Market Share4Q11 report. For the second year, in the Service Provider 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. Very few firms can serve both service provide and enterprise market well; Ruckus is one of those firms. Selina Lo, CEO of Ruckus Wireless, joins me to talk about its business strategy and recent growth. Since recording this podcast, Ruckus announced its IPO plans; this could be one of the last times that you will hear Selina Lo talk for 20 minutes on its business strategy until after the IPO. Enjoy…it’s a great listen.

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Lippis Enterprises and Ixia are very excited to announce a new test suite for active-active cloud networks at the modern iSimCity plus a more flexible testing schedule. The active-active test is in addition to 10GbE & 40GbE data center switch performance and power consumption test. Vendors may choose one or both tests to submit products. The fall testing schedule will span over three months providing greater flexibility and lab access for vendors to submit products.

The industry is offering multiple active-active protocol options such as Brocade’s VCS Fabric, Cisco’s FabricPath, Juniper’s Qfabric, TRILL or Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links, SPBM or Shortest Path Bridging MAC mode, ECMP or Equal-Cost Multi-Path and MLAG or Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation Protocol. We plan to test them all. This video explains the new Active-Active Ethernet Fabric test and flexible schedule.

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In one of the most candid discussions with Jayshree Ullal, Arista Network’s CEO, she voices her view of Software-Defined Networking as not a market but a set of features. Jayshree views OpenFlow as but one in many APIs becoming available to program layer 2/3 networks. If you’re looking for SDN hype, then no need to listen to this podcast. But if you want a realistic view of this important industry trend, then listen up.

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There are still many manual steps, such as phone calls and emails between IT teams, throughout the life cycle of a virtual machine impeding timely and efficient VM deployment and, ultimately, the expanded deployment of virtual environments and associated benefits. To deliver on the promise of cloud computing’s on demand application availability, tasks need to be automated. Infoblox has launched its Automation Tasks Board tools in the model of a Software-Defined Network to enable IT department members to initiate with the click of a single button multi-step, often-repeated and time-consuming network tasks while providing cross team visibility and auditability. If you want to build a real cloud computing facility, then you need to listen to this podcast.

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The edge network has to be more intelligent to support Bring Your Own Device or BYOD as well as existing wired desktops. But many SecOps groups would rather deny mobile access than allow it due to security threats, thanks to lack of visibility or device, user and location information mobile devices offer upon network access. To mitigate this concern, Extreme Networks launched its Intelligent Mobile Edge Network initiative including Ridgeline 3.1 to provide SecOps context-aware identity information and application visibility for mobile and fixed endpoints entering the network. In addition a new line of edge switches called the Summit x440 works closely with WiFi equipment to increase 802.11n performance and scalability. Huy Nguyen, Sr. Director of Product management at Extreme, joins me as we discuss the fundamental changes in edge networking thanks to BYOD and Extreme’s approach to securing mobile devices so corporations can gain the productivity gains of user device freedom.

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Virtualizing a physical network into multiple logical networks each with unique attributes has grown in popularity. This network design is popular in healthcare, education, travel and other industries. Network virtualization was available only to the largest of enterprises and service providers, thanks to its cost and complexity of MPLS and VRF-Lite. But a new approach called Easy Virtual Network from Cisco changes all of that by reducing cost and eliminating configuration and management complexity opening network virtualization to a much larger segment of the enterprise market. In this Lippis Report podcast, I talk with Sehjung Hah about Cisco’s Easy Virtual Network.

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The term “fabric” has nearly as many definitions and permutations as “cloud,” so in this Lippis Report podcast Vikram Mehta, Vice President IBM System Networking joins me to discuss the top 10 attributes that a data center network fabric should possess. With the back half of 2012 kicking-off aggressive data center fabric deployments listening to this podcast is a must to help you with your planning.

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Prashant Gandhi, Cisco Systems

In this Lippis Report podcast I talk with Prashant, Sr. Director of Server Access Virtualization Product Marketing at Cisco Systems about the new challenges of managing applications and layer 4-7 services in modern data center environments that consist of multiple hypervisors, a wide variety of workloads types and mobile/dynamic virtual machines.

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Modern corporate networks are under increasing pressure to support a wider variety of applications thanks to mobile and cloud computing, desktop virtualization plus video traffic having skyrocketed. Not only are bandwidth rates increasing from 1 to 10 to 40 GbE, but most importantly network services are needed to manage and support a different application portfolio mix and network access methods. Network services such as firewalls, WLANs, network diagnostics and monitoring plus application performance acceleration are needed to deliver a consistently excellent user experience. Cisco recently announced an upgrade to its popular Catalyst 6k with the availability of the Supervisor 2T that included re-vamped high performance service modules to deliver these network services. Goyal, product line manager at Cisco Systems joins me to discuss which network services need to be available in modern networks.

Download “A Comprehensive Testing of Cisco Systems Catalyst 6500 Sup2T” report here.

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Renato Recio, IBM Fellow & System Networking CTO

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WAN bandwidth, or the lack thereof, is the single largest contributor to poor application performance in branch offices resulting in reduced productivity and the inability of IT to implement their entire strategy. This is especially acute as applications are increasingly centralized in data centers and video traffic starts to dominate flows all of which put more pressure on the WAN. A new approach to wide area networking takes advantage of virtualization concepts. WAN virtualization promises to reduce WAN cost and increase performance. If your WAN utilizes T1 MPLS links at $300/month or higher and ADSL between $10-$15/ month, then you can benefit significantly from WAN virtualization as it offers 3 to 4 times the bandwidth at lower cost and in the process eliminates WAN design constraints limiting IT business leaders. Keith Morris of Talari Networks joins me to discuss WAN Virtualization. I have first-hand knowledge of how good this solution works; if you fit the above profile, then listen up.

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Andre Kindness, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, joins Zeus Kerravala, principal at ZK Research, and I for our annual predictions podcast. We discuss Cisco, IBM Network Systems, Huawei, Juniper, Extreme, Arista, Nicira, Big Switch, Verizon, AT&T, HP Networking, Citrix, F5, Riverbed, Brocade, Broadcom, Meru, Aerohive, Ruckus, Meraki, Infoblox, Palo Alto Networks, Polycom, Embrane, et al, and what 2012 will bring for them and you. Enjoy, Nick

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Having a plan to transition to IPv6 has moved way up in the priority list of IT projects for IT leaders as 2011 was officially the year we ran out of IPv4 unallocated addresses and not having IPv6 could cut-off corporations and applications from accessing the internet. In addition employees en masse are “BYOD” or bring your own device meaning smartphone and tables to work increasing the number of devices on the network significantly. These devices and their applications are driving support of both IPv4 and IPv6 as many mobile devices are now set for IPv6 as the default. As dual stack IP v4/v6 is the best practice, the real challenge lies within the domain name service or DNS. Infloblox has developed a range of solutions to automate the transition to IPv6 by supporting both addressing schemes. Tom Coffeen, Chief IPv6 Evangelist at Infoblox talks about solutions to automate the transition to IPv6. It’s one of our best IPv6 discussions.

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The Inflobox plug-in module for VMware’s vCenter Orchestrator promises to bridge network and virtual IT team silos by enabling automated assignment of IP addresses to VMs. The Infloblox plug-in enables IP addresses to be automatically assigned to virtual machines in less than a minute and then constantly monitored and managed, which simplifies troubleshooting, accelerates time to value and offers greater flexibility for the virtual team. Steve Garrison, VP Marketing for Infoblox and I discuss the problems of networking in virtualized environments and how Infoblox’s vCenter plug-in solves them.

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While the Lippis Report test were being conducted of the Brocade VDX™ 6730-32, Gautam Roy, Product Marketing Manager at Brocade joined me to discuss the firm’s latest product investment. We talk cloud network architecture, data center fabric and convergence with a focus on how the VDX™ 6730-32 Data Center Switch contributes and delivers on Brocade’s Ethernet fabric strategy.

Download “Fall 2011 Open Industry Network Performance And Power Test Report” here.

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During the Lippis Report test of the Cisco Systems Catalyst 6500 at Ixia’s iSimCity we perform an upgrade from Supervisor Engine 720 to 2T. What IT business leaders are looking for are incremental network upgrades with minimal disruption. Therefore, we swap out Sup720 for Sup2T and bring up existing service modules and line cards. Remember that line cards represent the largest investment in switching equipment, so we’ll demonstrate that older line cards interoperate at high performance when the new Sup2T replaces the Sup720. We find that the upgrade process is easy and smooth with compatibility of line cards, configuration code, service modules, transceivers and chassis.

Download “A Comprehensive Testing of Cisco Systems Catalyst 6500 Sup2T” report here.

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IT business leaders are seeking data center fabrics that scale to support increasing density of physical and virtual servers at cloud spec. In October of this year, Cisco delivered a monster data center fabric announcement aimed at increasing scale, security and new data center services. A few highlights are the second-generation Nexus 7000 capabilities, a new Nexus 7009 platform, plus FabricPath capabilities on the Nexus 5500 and expanded Nexus 1GbE and 40GbE form factors of the Nexus 3000. Shashi Kiran, Director of Market Management for Data Center/Virtualization and Enterprise Switching at Cisco Systems joins me to talk about what IT business leaders will gain from this new announcement from a business outcome and data center fabric design perspective.

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You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Cisco’s next generation NetFlow provides deep application visibility, detailed measurement plus increased control and security for IT departments that are struggling to get ahead of an Enterprise application portfolio that is undergoing a massive transition thanks to mobile and cloud computing. Samuel Pasquier, product manager for Cisco Systems, and Adam Powers, chief technology officer for Lancope discuss best practices for securing and gaining visibility to applications that are flowing over enterprise networks with the next generation of NetFlow.

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Andre Kindness, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research and Zeus Kerravala, principal at ZK Research join me to discuss the shift-taking place in data center networking. Data Center networking is at an inflection point thanks to industry transitions driving new economics, technologies and IT delivery via mobile and cloud computing. These market transitions happen only once every decade or so and we detail its dynamics in this industry analyst round table. We discuss virtualization, merchant silicon, software defined networking, the rise of best of breed products, what network designs are working and which aren’t. We end with how IT business leaders can navigate an industry is transition.

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Power over Ethernet or PoE has evolved from delivering 7 Watts/port to support IP phones to now 60 Watts/port to power a wide range of devices that span WLAN access points, surveillance video cameras, video conferencing end points, IP turrets for financial trading, and now, thin client desktop devices to support virtualized desktops. The current high PoE standard is IEEE 802.3at that details 30 Watts/port, so Cisco’s Universal PoE or UPOE solution at 60W is a pre-standard offering. The key point about UPOE is that it provides a new range of design options in both power distribution, but more importantly, how virtualized desktops and other electronics are powered. Pradeep Parmar, Senior Marketing Manager, Borderless Networks, at Cisco Systems, joins me to talk about the fundamental change PoE is taking, thanks to Cisco’s UPOE solution.

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The problems of network configuration changes required when virtualization operations managers need to move a VM between subnets are well documented. There are virtual networking options to solve this problem such as building very large flat networks, tunneling between subnets, and now a standard approach called VXLAN. VXLAN is a special encapsulation mechanism that runs between virtual switches and enables VMs to be deployed and moved on or between any server within the network. VXLAN requires no changes to the underlying IP addressing architecture and should require no major changes to installed infrastructure in the data center. Ken Duda Founder and Vice President, Software Engineering at Arista Networks joins me to discuss VXLAN, the first major protocol of virtual networking.

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On Tuesday Auguest 16th a week before HP’s news of potentially exiting the PC business, Zeus Kerravala, Senior VP of Research at the Yankee Group and Andre Kindness Senior Analyst at Forrester Research joined me in a round table discussion to reflect on HP Networking. We assess HP Networking’s progress since it announced the acquisition of 3Com back in Nov of 2009 and its prospects for the future. In a word our mutual assessment is disappointment with major short and long-term threats from Huawei. But there is hope for the future if HP can create a bold new vision for the industry and execute it. If you are going to listen to one podcast this year about HP, this should be it.

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Avaya has expanded its cloud networking product portfolio with the Virtual Services Platform or VSP 7000, a 10GbE Top of Rack (ToR) Switch and its new Virtualization Provisioning Service or VPS management software.
The VSP 7000 boasts a multi-Terabit Fabric capable of horizontally stacking many 7000s, offering a new approach to server connections. The VPS virtualization management application provides visibility and automated control of virtualized infrastructure. VPS is designed to provide NetOps and SysOps shared visibility of physical, logical and now virtual IT assets. Dan DeBacker, Director of Data Solutions Architecture at Avaya, discusses the new VSP 7000 plus VPS and the new data center design options they afford.

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In Cisco’s Data Center Fabric, it has delivered a set of features and innovations that solve some of the most difficult networking challenges found in virtualized infrastructure. IP address and VM mobility plus adapter and VM Fabric EXtenders (FEX) offer increased support for virtualized data center infrastructure, offering designers flexibility to move virtualized assets independent of location. These innovations are proposed by Cisco that promises virtualization aware networking, lower cost and increased performance. Omar Sultan, Senior Manager, Data Center Architecture at Cisco Systems, and I discuss Cisco’s new data center virtualization tools.

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Two years after Cisco launched its Unified Computing System it has 5,400 customers, holds the #3 market share ranking for x86 blade servers WW, behind only HP and IBM, according to IDG and recently broke numerous world computing performance benchmark records. While UCS has leaped frog competitors with performance plus memory and I/O capacity the most important aspect of UCS is the business value it drives. I explore this topic with Todd Brannon, Senior Manager for UCS marketing at Cisco Systems about the vision and strategy of Cisco’s Fabric Compute and the value its customers are gaining from its use. Todd brings great customer examples to this podcast, which is a must for any IT leader evaluating a data center fabric.

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Cisco’s Nexus Operating System that runs on the Nexus switches and evolved from Cisco’s MDS SAN-OS is a fundamental building block of its Data Center Fabric. Berna Devrim, Senior Manager of Data Center and Virtualization Marketing at Cisco Systems, discusses the next generation of Nexus OS designed to address the biggest data center issues. These issues are virtualization scale and mobility, cloud spec scale, LAN and SAN convergence plus operational efficiency. This is one of the best audio podcast we’ve produced, so sit back listen, learn and enjoy.

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In November of 2010 Avaya launched its Virtual Enterprise Network Architecture or VENA, which describes its computer networking investment strategy and technology direction. VENA was designed for virtualized data center infrastructure but has been expanded to include campus and branch office networking. Dan DeBacker, Director of Data Solutions Architecture at Avaya discusses the unique attributes VENA possesses to meet today’s enterprise networking needs and the business outcomes its customers are gaining by its deployment.

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Cisco has expanded it relationship with Fax over IP partner Sagemcom by integrating its XMediusFAX into Cisco’s Unity Connection and Cisco Unified Communication Manager (CUCM ) in its 8.0 update. Further, at Cisco Live in Las Vegas, the two announced interoperability testing with Cisco UCS Express (SRE-V). John Nikolopoulos, Marketing and Product Management Director at Sagemcom, discusses Sagemcom’s deepening relationship with Cisco and what it means to IT business leaders who manage branch office networks and communications.

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In the quest to build a data center network that is flat, fast and fault tolerant, the networking industry has served up a new two-tier architecture made up of Top-of-Rack or ToR server connecting switches and highly dense Core switches. Core switches connect ToR devices. The key question is how best to provide switch connectivity to deliver a lossless, high performance, low latency fabric that supports virtualization mobility. The answer is found in Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation Group or MC-LAG, Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links or TRILL and/or Shortest Path Bridging (SPB). Dhritiman Dasgupta, Director of Product Marketing for Fabric and Switching Technologies at Juniper Networks, discusses its QFabric approach and why TRILL’s hair pinning method to inter-VLAN routing is a poor approach. It’s a fascinating discussion that you have to listen to. You can also download a white paper on this topic here.

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Eric Murray, Senior Network Engineer at Kindred Healthcare, and Ashish Shah, Senior Product Manager, Data Center Switching Technology Group at Cisco Systems, discuss the value gain of data center convergence or a single Ethernet fabric to support IP datagram and storage traffic. In this podcast, Eric Murray shares his experience of deploying a converged data center while Ashish explains Cisco’s end-to-end Data Center LAN/SAN consolidation strategy. This is a fascinating discussion of data center network design with cost and benefit trade-offs. In short, Kindred Healthcare has saved many millions of dollars in capital spend plus operational cost, thanks to a reduction in the number of management points.

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Cisco is the only large vertical IT supplier with compute, storage and deep networking capabilities making its data center offering unique. It’s Unified Network Services or UNS, Unified Computing System or UCS, Unified Fabric and policy based management make up the Cisco Data Center Fabric. In this Lippis Report podcast I talk with Shashi Kiran; Director of Market Management for Data Center/Virtualization at Cisco Systems about the vision and strategy of Cisco’s Data Center Fabric and the value its customers are gaining from its use.

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Force10 introduced a disruptive set of products to address the new cloud networking market driven by massive virtualization and cloud spec scale data centers. First its new Z9000 Distributed Core System promises to be 1/10th the footprint, at 1/5th the price and 1/20th the power consumption of other core switches. The Z9000 is 32x40GbE or 128x10GbE platform where multiple Z9000s are connected via an open distributed core supporting up to 24,000 10GbE server links. In addition, Force10 introduced a next generation ToR switch, the S7000 that supports 40x10GbE, 12×2/4/8G FC plus 4x40GbE combining networking, storage and Open Cloud Applications. Arpit Joshipura, Chief Marketing Officer at Force10 Networks, discusses Force10’s Open Cloud Networking products and strategy, and the new design options they afford to IT architects.

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To create a seamless collaboration environment for mobile and remote workers, Avaya has fully embraced mobile computing by integrating Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Symbian mobile endpoints plus Windows and Mac computing into its Aura core infrastructure. In this podcast Avaya’s VP of Unified Communications Product Marketing, Nancy Maluso, discusses Avaya’s UC mobile collaboration strategy and how IT business leaders can put this technology to work in their corporation.

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Camp Dress McKee or CDM is a consulting, engineering, construction and operations firm delivering exceptional service to public and private clients worldwide. CDM’s traditional areas of expertise include water and the environment. In this podcast, I talk with Peter Palmisano, CIO, CDM, about how CDM is using HD videoconferencing to speed business processes and reduce operational cost.

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The UC market is rapidly moving toward a cloud service for the small to medium business (SMB) market, thanks to Siemens Enterprise Communications and others offering powerful communications and office productivity software delivered as a service. Cloud services offer the SMB market with some of the same IT services that large enterprises enjoy, but without the complexity and cost. For example, Siemens has been working with Google to offer its OpenScape Cloud Service that integrates features into Google applications, like click to call/conference, etc. In this Lippis Report podcast, I talk with Paul McMillan, Director UC Technical Vision & Strategy at Siemens Enterprise Communications, about the SMB market and how its OpenScape Cloud Services is offering new, innovative solutions that allows these firms to be more competitive and agile.

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Arista Networks is at the forefront of public and private data center cloud networking, having most of its customers building extremely demanding infrastructure. As such it is working with early adopters and sees the problems that most other networking firms do not. This places Arista in a position to offer solutions first to market. In this Lippis Report video podcast, I talk with Jayshree Ullal, President and CEO of Arista Networks, as we discuss its virtualization strategy.

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As IT operations become more complex, it steals productivity. Unchecked complexity slows down new applications from being deployed or virtualized, elongates troubleshooting, stresses operational staff, creates compliance vulnerabilities and shrinks IT operational budgets. All IT departments seek to manage this complexity inflation before it impacts business processes. One of the largest drivers of complexity inflation is the growing rate of “IP addresses and network change management requirements.” The fact is that IT business leaders must deploy dynamic IT solutions to enable their businesses to support flexible business processes to address market dynamics. Without automated tools to facilities change management, complexity inflation simply eats up IT operations. In this Lippis Report podcast, I talk with Steve Garrison, Vice President, Marketing for Infoblox, about solutions to tame complexity inflation with automated IP address management and network change management.

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Adding new applications in a data center has become highly complex thanks to routing paths set-up to provide connectivity/reach of Layer 4-7 network services and their associated configuration and policy set-up for specific applications. Then, once the application is operational it’s hard to virtualize it and move it via v-motion while keeping set-up and policies intact especially routing paths. This is a difficult problem riddled with complexity and associated cross-administrative operational cost limiting the number of applications that can be virtualized. A fundamental new approach to networking is needed to solve this and Cisco has been thinking about it for some time now. In this Lippis Report podcast I talk with Gary Kinghorn Product Marketing Manager Data Center Solutions Marketing at Cisco Systems as we discuss Cisco’s Unified Network Services strategy.

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Andy Bechtolsheim, Founder, Chief Development Officer and Chairman of Arista Networks, joins me to discuss how the public and private data center cloud network market is emerging and the new type of networking it’s requiring.

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Move a Virtual Machine (VM) from one physical server to another, and network port profile, VLANs, security settings, etc., have to be reconfigured. Many networking companies haven’t taken the critical step of giving complete visibility and control of the VM lifecycle from an infrastructure perspective. But with XNV, Extreme Networks is bringing this functionality and visibility to network administrators, tracking VMs and applying policy as they move throughout the network. Shehzad Merchant, Senior Director for Strategy at Extreme Networks, joins me for a discussion about Extreme’s approach to network automation and visibility of virtualized infrastructure through its XNV software module.

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IT business leaders are faced with a great economic shift, while at the same time are afforded the opportunity of a shift in IT delivery models. Business leaders must balance maintaining their current infrastructure, while exploring these IT delivery innovations. Most importantly, IT business leaders need to use their IT budget, approximately 4% of corporate spend, to significantly enhance and reduce the other 96% of corporate spend. But it’s not just an economic calculus that is diving post great recession IT spending. IT leaders need to engineer their delivery to be flexible to support current business growth, ongoing change, and long-term business goals. Robert Taylor, VP of HP Enterprise Services joins me to discuss what he has learned from HP’s global 2000 customers as they emerge from the economic downturn and prepare for a new business cycle with IT.

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Move a Virtual Machine (VM) from one physical server to another, and network port profiles, VLANs, security settings, etc., have to be manually reconfigured, adding cost, delay, security issues and rigidity to what should be an adaptive infrastructure. BLADE Network Technologies’ data center 1/10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet blade and top-of-rack switches incorporate what its calls VMready with Virtual Vision that enables data centers to deploy VM-aware networks that automate network change management as VMs come online and move between physical servers within or across data centers. Vikram Mehta, CEO of BLADE Network Technologies (BLADE), joins me to talk about BLADE’s data center network virtualization strategy, plus the company’s pending acquisition by IBM. It’s a great talk, and we hit lots of industry nerves in this thought-provoking podcast.

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Gigabit Ethernet networking has expanded to desktop connections in campus networking and to dense server connectivity in data centers. In short gigabit Ethernet has become mainstream with multiple use cases driving its growth. But a new generation of gigabit Ethernet switches is needed to satisfy market demands with attributes such as PoE-Plus, stacking, data center cooling, power efficiency and more. It’s these attributes and more that Extreme is delivering with its new Summit X460 Gigabit Ethernet switch. I talk with Darius Goodall, Senior Manager Product Marketing at Extreme Networks about the Summit X460 and the new network designs it enables.

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Avaya has developed a unique approach to branch office networking with the introduction of its Advanced Gateway 2330. Previous to Avaya’s acquisition of Nortel’s Enterprise Solutions business, its branch office solution was focused on communications, but now it has computer-networking capabilities that is manifesting into a powerful branch office portfolio offering. I talk with Michael Fitzgerald, Portfolio Leader of the Unified Branch at Avaya, about Avaya’s investment in branch office networking with particular focus on network designs its approach affords.

Enjoy, Nick

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With energy efficiency and sustainability mandates being issued by government officials and corporation boards, IT vendors have focused engineering resources to deliver products with increased feature sets that consume less energy. But one company in particular has taken its core competency and found a way to not only make its own business more energy efficient but everything it touches too. That company is Cisco Systems. Laura Finkelstein, Senior Director of Switching Marketing at Cisco Systems, is my guest as we discuss Cisco’s Borderless Green service and the value it delivers to both IT business and government leaders.

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Before HP purchased 3Com it would seldom engage in discussion about the future of networking. It was product focused. But now in an exclusive interview with Mr. Saar Gillai, Vice President of Advanced Technology Group & CTO of HP Networking, HP opens up and talks freely about industry trends it’s watching and most importantly influencing. These trends are guiding HP investment in networking with hopes of market share gain, thought leadership and increased industry influence. It’s a fascinating interview into the mind of HP Networking.

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Contact center technology is being virtualized at the agent desktop and server levels offering favorable economics, agent flexibility and a centralized data center deployment design. For Siemens Enterprise Communications, a leader in the Contact Center market, its OpenScape Contact Center V8 software runs on top of a VMware hypervisor. In addition to efficient server deployment V8 adds powerful agent features such as a Web-based agent, supervisor and management desktops making it easier to deploy home-based or remote agents virtually at multiple locations. George Despinic, Global Contact Center Marketing Manager for Siemens Enterprise Communications is my guest as we discuss the company’s OpenScape Contact Center V8 that puts contact center functionality in a virtualized data center offering new design and economic options for contact center deployments.

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I interview Marius Haas, Senior Vice President and World Wide General Manager of the HP Networking Business. I asked him

• How HP will compete in the highly competitive networking market,
• What is its salient value proposition,
• Why is HP so focused on networking now, and
• Why should IT business leaders consider HP Networking.
His responses had a ring of market truth to them. As such, any IT business leader worth his/her salt needs to listen to this podcast.

Enjoy, Nick

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I interview Vikram Mehta, President and CEO of BLADE Network Technologies or BLADE. BLADE has been offering top-of-rack and blade switches since 2006, boast nearly 9 million ports installed and are now the number 2 provider of 10GbE switches. With all this success, I ask Vikram what BLADE is being asked to offer from IT Business leaders as they build out their data center Ethernet fabric. You don’t want to miss his responses. Listen now.

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Massively scalable data centers have unique requirements such as low latency, high performance, non-stop operation, simplicity of design, workload mobility and storage transport support. To address these requirements Cisco launched FabricPath, which is a scalable multi-link and multipath technology allowing 2 to 48 Nexus 7000s to be configured in a large, non-blocking Ethernet switch fabric. This fabric, called a FabricPath Switching System or FSS, eliminates oversubscription and creates a two-tier fabric. In addition to FabricPath, Cisco launched its’ F-Series 10GbE module for the Nexus 7000, which offers 32 ports of auto-sensing 1/10GbE targeted at server access, aggregation and FCoE implementations solutions. Craig Griffin, Senior Director of Product Management for Cisco’s Nexus 7000 discusses new Ethernet innovations for the age of massively scalable data centers.

A white paper on the topic is available here:

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Unified communications is becoming an integration point for traditional dial tone, FAX, video and messaging as it adds increased access and functionality to these important forms of communications. Sagemcom is by far the industry leader in IP FAX, having successfully integrated FAX capability into Cisco, Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent and Microsoft’s UC platforms.  Its’ XmediusFAX has proven to reduced cost, increase access and security of FAX communications.  In this Lippis Report podcast, I talk with Bob Wood, Executive Director at Sagemcom, about how FAX communications can be integrated into the UC platform of your choice and the business outcomes it delivers.

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The Unified Communications (UC) market is changing significantly in terms of how solutions are deployed, services are packaged and systems procured. Siemens addressed all of these areas in one fell swoop with the recently released OpenScape UC Server 2010. Siemens announced new licensing options for endpoints and integrated UC endpoint services in packaged solutions including social media plug-ins such as Twitter. Kathy Heilmann, Director, Large Enterprise Voice and UC Solutions Marketing at Siemens Enterprise Communications joined me to talk about the new rules of UC procurement and its value to IT business leaders.

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Networking has become “rigid”. Yes, I know it’s almost absurd to attribute inflexibility or rigidity to networking, but we are in a compute innovation cycle that’s driving a fundamental change in networking, which screams out the need for more flexibility and configuration automation. The well understood problem is that when a virtualized machine is moved from one physical machine to another, the network, load balancers, firewalls/IPS, broadcast domains, etc., have to be reconfigured. There is no automation in place, meaning that the network is not flexible or agile enough to make the changes required. Networking companies such as Force10 Networks are driving an open approach to automation to enable network changes. I spoke with Steve Garrison, Vice President Marketing for Force10 Networks about their “Open Automation” approach to networking. Enjoy, Nick

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In their recently released OpenScape UC Server 2010, Siemens has incorporated application virtualization allowing UC applications such as OpenScape Voice, OpenScape Branch, OpenScape Media Server etc., to load on standard compute hardware avoiding the installation, configuration and maintenance of running multiple complex software stacks, operating systems and applications. Paul McMillan, Director UC Technical Vision & Strategy at Siemens Enterprise Communications, joins me to talk about what virtualization in a UC environment delivers to IT business leaders as we dive into the details of UC Server 2010.
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While the networking industry is full steam ahead with the transition from 1 to 10 Gb Ethernet in corporate uplinks plus virtualized and cloud spec data centers, the IEEE has been working on 40 and 100Gb Ethernet standards to be ratified soon. It’s anticipated that the 40GbE standard will be completed first and built with lower cost, long-range optical components than 100GbE. The question on the minds of most IT business leaders is when and where to deploy these ultra high-speed Ethernet technologies and at what cost? We answer these questions with Steve Garrison, Vice President, Marketing of Force10 Networks. We’ll dive into Force10’s 40 GbE leadership position and the new network design options it unleashes upon IT business leaders.

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There is huge growth in video traffic on corporate networks thanks primarily to on-demand video clips and increasingly video collaboration, TelePresence, video surveillance and Digital Signage. But how do IT business leaders support the various forms of video on their corporate networks before a video tsunami wreaks havoc to network performance?  Also how do IT business leaders deliver a good video experience to a wide range of endpoints such as low bandwidth remote offices, mobile smartphones, WiFi connected laptops etc?  Tere’ Bracco, Senior Marketing Manager for Network Systems and Security at Cisco, joins me to discuss Cisco’s Medianet technologies that offer an approach to managing and delivering video services over corporate IP networks. 

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WAN optimization products are central to delivering excellent application performance to employees in branch offices especially as applications continue to be centralized in data centers.  Another key attribute of WAN optimization is that these solutions reduce WAN bandwidth requirements thus spend.  At the heart of WAN optimization technology is cache architecture, or how device stores or caches data to minimize WAN transfers.  We dive into the two main cache architecture approaches; “per peer” and “universal” then ask the key question.  Does caching architectures and cache sizing affect WAN optimization performance or are there other more important aspects of WAN optimization that buyers should be concerned with as they undergo vendor selection”?  In this Lippis Report podcast, I talk with Baruch Deutsch, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Cisco Systems, to demystify WAN optimization. Enjoy, Nick

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There is huge growth in video traffic on corporate networks thanks primarily to on-demand video clips and increasingly video collaboration, TelePresence, video surveillance and Digital Signage. However, how do IT business leaders support the various forms of video on their corporate networks before a video tsunami wreaks havoc to network performance? Also, how do IT business leaders deliver a good video experience to a wide range of endpoints, such as, low bandwidth remote offices, mobile smartphones, WiFi connected laptops etc? Tere’ Bracco, Senior Marketing Manager for Network Systems and Security at Cisco joins me to discuss Cisco’s Medianet technologies that offer an approach to managing and delivering video services over corporate IP networks.

Find out by listening to this podcast.

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Our industry is in a compute innovation cycle thanks to virtualization and cloud computing and it’s changing fundamental networking requirements and design. These changes are beyond increased packet processing performance and ultra low latency. They extend to network design and product features that enable increased server virtualization scale, workload mobility and cloud computing. I discuss a new model for networking born out of data center virtualization and cloud computing with Doug Gourlay, Vice President Marketing at Arista Networks. This is Arista Networks’ first podcast; sure to be a classic.

Enjoy, Nick

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Arista’s new 7500 Series of Ethernet switches is touted as the fastest Ethernet switch on the planet. Arista Networks has been delivering ultra high performance fixed 1/10 Gb Ethernet switches for high performance computing and cloud computing data centers. But this week Arista shocked the industry by introducing a massively powerful Ethernet switch platform that is 10 GbE port dense, compact, cloud spec fast, amazingly green plus smart and prepared for 40 and 100GbE with a price tag 50% below competitive offerings. I talk with Douglas Gourlay, Vice President Marketing and Anshul Sadana Vice President, Customer & Systems Engineering both from Arista Networks about a new age of network design in the cloud-computing era.

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This is the question that Zeus Kerravala, SVP of the Yankee Group and I address in the Lippis Report podcast. Here’s a hint, lack of standards and the vendor community’s lack of interest of embracing the ones we have. Post your ideas on twitter with the following hash mark #UCINTEROP.

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Power over Ethernet (PoE) powers IT endpoints like IP phones and WLAN Access points. But newer devices like IP video phones, IP surveillance cameras, thin client display, next Generation IP phones, 802.11n WLAN access points and Pan Tilt Zoom (PTZ) Surveillance cameras require more than 15W of power so the IEEE recently standardized a new 30W PoE standard called PoE Plus. Soon most, if not all, corporations will have a mix of end points that require old PoE and new PoE plus power. IT leaders can meet these requirements by leveraging the enhanced PoE and PoE Plus features offered by Cisco’s Catalyst 4500 E-Series product line. Moreover Cisco has announced two new Catalyst 4500 Series Line Cards with readiness for PoE Plus and inline power up to 30W per port. I talk with Sachin Gupta, Director and Product Manager at Cisco Systems about these new PoE design features and what new options are available to IT architects as they build out corporate collaborative solutions.

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A panel of IT business leaders discusses their experience with Network Virtualization as we dive into motivations, design options, economics and business outcomes. On the panel is Marilyn Hay, Manager of the Network Management Centre at the University of British Columbia, Frank Hoonhout, Senior Lead Network Engineer at the State of Oregon’s State Data Center and Hasan Siraj, Director of Product Marketing at Cisco Systems. This is a podcast you surely want to listen to.

Find out the real world value and business outcome of investing in Network Virtualization by listening to this podcast.

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In addition to desktop connectivity wiring closet switches now connect wireless access points, laptops, kiosks, netbooks, IP phones, printers, video desktop systems and more while also managing electrical power of the devices they connect. New PoE Plus standard 802.3at allow 30W per port to be delivered which has driven a change in wiring closet power management. I talk with Berna Devrim, Sr. Manager, Access Switching Marketing at Cisco Systems about the dynamics forcing a change in wiring closet switching and the new Cisco X and S series of edge switching products which represent progressive thinking in this space. Enjoy, Nick.

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Cisco’s TrustSec is architecture with its implementation spread across client software, infrastructure (Catalyst & Nexus) and policy (Access Control System and NAC appliance). Cisco has expanded TrustSec to incorporate 802.1x clients allowing IT leaders to mix and match NAC and 802.1x endpoints. TrustSec organizes and simplifies authentication and policy schema allowing administrators to configure and maintain identity-based access to IT resources while identifying and applying policy based on a user roles in the organization. TrustSec also provides encrypted links at the switch port level. Steven Song Security Business Manager in the Network Systems & Security group at Cisco Systems joins me to discuss TrustSec and how Cisco is expanding its services and importance for IT business leaders.

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The Web is increasingly being used as the threat vector of choice by hackers and cybercriminals to distribute malware and perpetuate identity theft, financial fraud, and corporate espionage. Is exploit sophistication and complexity evolving beyond traditional end-point anti-virus mitigation? Is a network centric model a faster and more accurate approach to zero day threat defense where massive cloud computing resources are put to work identifying and mitigating complex, polymorphic threats designed to evade anti-virus software and are mitigated before they reach desktop or mobile end-points? Mark Guntrip, Product Manager at Cisco Systems joins me to discuss Cisco ScanSafe, a Cloud Web Security Offering and debate client- versus network-based zero day threat defense.

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IT leaders are not comfortable with mobile computing security. And they do have a lot to be concerned about as securing a plethora of different devices accessing both corporate and SaaS applications from a vast array of locations and network access methods is a challenge. Traditional VPN methods are too cumbersome for users and don’t factor the huge growth in SaaS application use. A new model for securing remote and mobile access is needed and Cisco has delivered one. Cisco just launched AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client that offers a simple use model for mobile workers that leverages Cisco’s ASA, IronPort Web Security Appliance, ScanSafe, and SIO to wrap a corporate perimeter around its mobile workforce. Kevin Kennedy, Product Marketing Manager at Cisco Systems discusses a new approach to securing mobile computing.

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Analysts estimate 30% of today’s data center workloads are being virtualized and this number continues grow. As such, the need to provide the same intrusion protection system or IPS security for applications in virtualized and non-virtualized data centers is a must. In short applications on virtualized servers need the same protections as applications running on non-virtualized servers. To meet that end 3Com has launched its Secure Network Fabric and TippingPoint’s Secure Virtualization Framework. Alan Kessler, President of TippingPoint is my guest to discuss these initiatives and how they solve the problem of securing applications running on and off virtualized servers.

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3com offers a global support network for its customers that are staffed around the world. Their hallmark is flexibility in engagement arrangement and customization of support needs. Vendor transition and product support are two key aspects offered by 3Com so that risk of vendor transition is transferred to 3Com and not the customer. Service and support is needed more now then ever as data center and enterprise network design and deployments have become complex thanks to a plethora of new technologies and options. I discuss the Importance of service and support in enterprise networking with Imran Khan Vice President of Global Services at 3Com. Enjoy, Nick

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How we do IT is fundamentally changing. Applications are increasingly being accessed from mobile devices while cloud computing offers a new approach to application delivery. Case in point, the iPhone adoption rate is 8 times faster than AOL was! As a result corporate application portfolios are shifting in their mix of total IT manager control to partial control to none. IT leaders are finding that the largest application growth in their corporation is coming from outside of their traditional perimeter/firewall with no control knobs. In essence applications and networks are becoming borderless and as a result a new flexible security model is needed to reestablish boundaries. To address this industry concern, I talk with Fred Kost, Director Security Solutions for Cisco Systems about a new approach to securing networks without borders.

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Zeus Kerravala of The Yankee Group and I make our annual top ten IT predictions. This year we make ten predictions ranging from data center/cloud/virtualization/IT Budgets, etc., to which firms will be gone by the end of the year. Enjoy, Nick

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We decided to re-run this podcast interview with Ron Sege in light of HP’s intent to acquire 3Com.
Ron Sege, President and Chief Operating Officer of 3Com discusses its worldwide strategy, value proposition and how it plans to gain share and compete in the large enterprise market. 3Com has an entirely refreshed product line that spans switching, routing, security, wireless and unified communications and has been tested in large enterprise customers. 3Com is differentiating this product with cost advantage, total cost of ownership and services. Ron explains how 3Com survived the crash and is positioned to lead in the recovery as IT leaders’ buying patterns have shifted. It’s a fascinating discussion, enjoy. Nick

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We live in an ever-increasingly connected world where our workspace is with us constantly, independent of geographic location and user device. The days of boundaries or obstacles to accessing information which location, applications and devices erected are limited and dwindling. These boundaries are being torn down by business necessity, personal preferences and technical innovations. Joel Conover, Senior Marketing Manager at Cisco Systems joins me to discuss Borderless Networks, a new Cisco network architecture which addresses today’s most complex IT challenges.

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As businesses grow across borders, a new era in branch office IT is emerging, born out of systemic business efficiency planning prompted by the efforts of business leaders to reduce corporate spending as revenues declined during the market crash of 2008. To assist business and IT leaders in reducing operational spend, get closer to customers, automate new streamlined business processes and position their firms for the current economic recovery, Cisco has launched the second generation of Integrated Services Routers (ISR G2), their flagship branch office solution for Borderless Networks. Shashi Kiran, Senior Manager Network Systems and Security of Cisco Systems discusses macro business trends and explores how these trends are creating a new era in enterprise networks.

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Avaya Aura is being extended to the mid sized enterprise market by simplifying its packaging into a single server solution loaded with unified communications and contact center applications. The Mid Market is typically characterized as 100 to 250 employees with revenues of $50M to $1B dollars. These Line of Business (LoB) managers seek to increase revenue and improve customer experience while differentiating against larger competitors. Their IT issues include older and dead ended communication technologies, limited IT and contact center agent staff and the need to rapidly reduce cost. To make LoB and IT ends meet, the Avaya Aura solution for Mid-Size Enterprises is offered for businesses with up to 2,400 users and 250 locations. Bruce Mazza Director of Unified Communications Market Solutions for Avaya joins me to discuss the mid enterprise market challenge.

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Zeus Kerravala of Yankee joins me to discuss the post Great Recession IT industry structure. Our industry has dramatically consolidated over the past year and as the economy improves a new concentrated order is emerging filled with winners, losers and dark horses. Layer on top of macro economic caused shifts is new IT buying patters plus a new technology wave of virtualization and cloud computing which promises to alter IT delivery. We discuss Cisco, Nortel, Avaya, 3Com, Siemens, HP, IBM, Juniper, Force 10, Brocade, Arista Networks, Alcatel Lucent, Ruckus Wireless, Enterasys the potentially new JV between Cisco and EMC plus many others in this jam packed extended edition podcast. You may want to load this onto your ipod and listen to it coming or going to work. Enjoy.

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The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported over 182,166 laboratory-confirmed cases of 2009 H1N1 influenza virus with 1,799 deaths. In June 2009 the WHO raised the pandemic alert level to six, signaling a pandemic of this influenza is underway. If the H1N1 virus is in full pandemic force during the fall and winter months of the flu season then an estimated 40 to 50 percent of the workforce could be affected. To assist business and IT leaders in developing strategies to mitigate the impact of pandemics and other natural or man-made disasters, I asked Samantha Ma, Security Solutions Manager at Cisco Systems to be my guest since she is an expert in business continuity preparation.

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Mixed vendor network environments increase complexity and complexity is not reliability’s best friend. In the following 3-minute Lippis Report podcast, Nick Lippis discusses network complexity and the disruptive outcomes it creates via two examples: the US Customs and Border Protection Agency at Los Angeles Airport and global Skype VoIP service.

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The system that provides electricity transmission, commonly called the electrical grid, is under intense scrutiny to make it smarter. Today’s electrical grid was designed decades ago without optimization and information flow of electricity consumption beyond local utilities, leaving businesses, homeowners and utilities blind to how electricity is being consumed. The Smart Grid adds intelligence from energy source to consumption end- points so that businesses and homeowners can view their consumption and control their usage while utilities can better manage electricity demand and delivery. The building of the Smart Grid is an estimated market of $20 B/yr over the next five years with governments passing legislation, mandates and partial funding to build it. For perspective, Smart Grid networks have the potential to be much larger than the Internet! The building of highly scalable and secure IP networks is Cisco’s core competency, making them uniquely qualified to supply it. I talk with Inbar Lasser-Raab, Senior Director, Network Systems and Smart Grid Solutions at Cisco about Cisco’s Smart Grid.

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Mixed vendor network environments increase complexity and complexity is not reliability’s best friend. In the following 3-minute Lippis Report podcast, Nick Lippis discusses network complexity and the disruptive outcomes it creates via two examples: the US Customs and Border Protection Agency at Los Angeles Airport and global Skype VoIP service.

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The system that provides electricity transmission, commonly called the electrical grid is under intense scrutiny to make it smarter. Today’s electrical grid was designed decades ago without optimization and information flow of electricity consumption beyond local utilities, leaving businesses, homeowners and utilities blind to how electricity is being consumed. The Smart Grid adds intelligence from energy source to consumption end- points so that businesses and homeowners can view their consumption and control their usage while utilities can better manage electricity demand and delivery. The building of the Smart Grid is an estimated market of $20 B/yr over the next five years with governments passing legislation, mandates and partial funding to build it. For perspective, Smart Grid networks have the potential to be much larger than the Internet! The building of highly scalable and secure IP networks is Cisco’s core competency, making them uniquely qualified to supply it. I talk with Inbar Lasser-Raab, Senior Director, Network Systems and Smart Grid Solutions at Cisco about Cisco’s Smart Grid.

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Mixed vendor network environments increase complexity and complexity is not reliability’s best friend. In the following 3-minute Lippis Report podcast, Nick Lippis discusses network complexity and the disruptive outcomes it creates via two examples; the US Customs and Border Protection Agency at Los Angeles Airport and global Skype VoIP service.

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Unique is the operator of Zurich Airport and offers a broad service portfolio to about 180 other companies, which also reside in the airport. Zurich Airport offers work for about 20,000 individuals and transports approximately 18 million passengers annually. Airport applications like air-traffic control and tower communications demand the highest uptime and need to be separated from operations like baggage distribution, business administration, video surveillance, and public WLAN traffic. Peter Zopfi, head of Communication Engineering for Unique was confronted with building a network with tunable attributes that were as varied as the businesses that relied upon it. In this podcast Peter discusses what worked and what didn’t and how a LAN-based MPLS VPN Cisco Network Virtualization strategy was key to delivering business value to all businesses and operations at Zurich Airport. It’s a fascinating discussion that you don’t want to miss. Enjoy, Nick.

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The word Gestalt means a structure or configuration of elements so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by the summation of its parts. IT can create greater security defenses by approaching security as an integrated system of its siloed security tools and appliances. The Gestalt approach is a way to make sure that every device is contributing to the security of the corporation by being able to share information and work collaboratively to defend against increasingly sophisticated exploits through increased visibility and control. The best example of the Gestalt approach is Cisco SAFE, a security architecture and framework to network existing security devices so they work in unison and thus deliver a higher level of IT defense. I talk with Bill McGee, of the Security Technology Marketing group at Cisco Systems about Cisco’s new SAFE security architecture.

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Zeus Kerravala of Yankee joins me to discuss the many changes occurring in the industry including Nortel’s liquidation and Cisco’s huge influence over the industry as it reshapes to respond to its UCS and data center 3.0 initiatives. We discuss HP’s new relationships with MSFT and Alcatel-Lucent, Brocade, Enterasys, Extreme, Force10, IBM, Juniper, and much more. We talk winners and losers and provide insight into the major trends that are focusing on new corporate IT buying behavior. Enjoy.

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The market crash of 2008 has modified business behavior & processes permanently. When capex resumes it will not fund follow-on pre crash IT projects but IT projects that are top down driven by executive mandate to streamline operations. IT project winners are Collaboration, Video Conferencing, OPEX reduction, virtualization, security. mobility and cloud computing. Zeus Kerravala, SVP at Yankee and Steve Garrison, VP Marketing at Force10 Networks are my guest as we discuss data center network design in a virtualization post crash era. It’s a great discussion, enjoy.

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According to Frost and Sullivan’s July 2008 World Web Conferencing Services Forecast, the web collaboration market is expected to grow at 22.5% CAGR through 2013! That’s the good news. In larger organizations that use web conferencing for a mix of internal, external and a combination of sessions there is growing evidence that WAN bandwidth is being heavily consumed. To significantly reduce WAN bandwidth cost while Web conferencing load increases, Cisco has offered a hybrid model by introducing the WebEx Node for the ASR 1000. Tere’ Bracco, Senior Marketing Manager for Network Systems and Security at Cisco joins the program to discuss web conferencing trends and the new hybrid model for WebEx.

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Today’s collaborative infrastructure and evolving security landscape brings an abundance of risk. Newly adopted IT tools and services, often untried and vulnerable, allow cybercriminals to exploit them to sabotage or gain financially. The newest wave of threats such as Conficker, McColo, Srizbi etc often target personal data propagating via multiple blended vehicles such as web, email, and USB keys to bypass legacy security tools. Even strong security technologies are often unable to keep up with today’s attacks: they are too nimble, specialized, and targeted. Cisco’s new Security Intelligence Operations or SIO offering identifies threats in real time via global correlation so that businesses can be more secure in their IT defenses. Ambika Gadre, Director Product Marketing in the Cisco Security Technology Business Unit discusses SIO, reputation scoring, global correlation and a powerful approach to mitigating blended exploits from infecting your corporation.

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Marlowe Fenne, Cisco Systems Solutions Marketing Manager in the Network Systems group, joins me to talk about the IT Innovations forum and Cisco’s spring announcements. We discuss the business results of exploiting WAN Advantage, Webex Node, Virtual Connect, Security, Unified Communications, AXP, Switching, H1N1’s reminder of the importance of telecommuting and much more. Marlowe also provides a sneak preview of the May 7th IT Innovations Forum at which I present and you can attend for free at http://www.ciscoitinnovationsforum.com.

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In late March of 2009 Siemens Enterprise Communication announced a UC cloud service where it has placed its OpenScape Voice and UC applications on Amazon’s EC2 cloud infrastructure. This is significant and important as it’s the first time that a UC application is available in the cloud and offered in a SaaS model. This represents a new and fundamentally different channel to address the SMB market. The hope is that UC delivered as a SaaS offers a radically different delivery and price model and may very well be the model enterprises have been waiting for to consume UC on a massive scale. Paul McMillan Director of UC Technical Vision & Strategy at Siemens Communications is my guest as we talk about UC in the cloud and offered as a SaaS.

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Of the original 500 S&P companies just 82 remain. The pace of change and corporate flexibility required to keep up continues to dramatically accelerate. Both McKinsey & Company and Boston Consulting Group say one-third of companies in the top quarter of their industry failed to maintain their competitive position during the 2000 economic slowdown. Five years later, just 10% returned to their same competitive position. The Business Roundtable reports 45% of CEOs expect declining sales over the next six months. The bottom line is that companies which excel figure out how to save money but also prepare for the rebound. Mark Straton, Senior Vice President of Strategic Marketing at Siemens Communications is my guest as we discuss three imperatives for communications management during a tough economy that will ensure your company maintains its competitive position during and after the economic slowdown.

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Along with a turbulent macro economic cycle comes business rationalization and in networking the wide area offers a unique opportunity to deliver value both in terms of operational efficiency and business initiative alignment. The branch WAN as been pieced together usually site by site without a comprehensive plan as branches are connected with inconsistent WAN Services. IT planners are being offered an opportunity to implement a common set of WAN Services embedded within routers such as UC, WAN optimization, security etc., which promise to lower operational spend, align business initiatives and policy while delivering Local Area Networks (LANs) like application performance over the WAN. Tere’ Bracco Senior Marketing Manager for Network Systems and Security at Cisco joins me to discuss Cisco’s new WAN Advantage initiative that delivers a common set of WAN Services between ASR and ISR routers.

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Force10 Networks has introduced ExaScaleTM E-Series family of switch/routers to meet the stringent performance, management and cost requirements of today’s virtualized data center and cloud computing environments. As enterprises transition toward virtualized data centers and adopts cloud-based services, the network is increasingly required to be more dynamic and responsive to changing resource demands. Steve Garrison, VP Marketing for Force10 Networks is my guest as we discuss the new design options for data center networking in a virtualization era.

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Avaya has launched a new architecture for Unified Communications (UC) with its new software product Avaya Aura™. This enterprise-wide SIP architecture connects users, UC devices, disparate legacy voice and IP systems plus UC applications, creating a holistic UC services delivery system. That is, a centrally managed Avaya Aura™ can disseminate common UC services to every corner of the enterprise independent of locations and multivendor systems, across all kinds of SIP endpoint. Avaya Aura™ promises to significantly reduce communications and management costs, using a single multivendor dial-plan, common user profiles and by simplifying SIP trunking, while offering federated presence and application integration software to integrate UC into enterprise applications. To understand Avaya Aura™ and what’s next for UC, Lawrence Byrd, Director of Unified Communications Architecture for Avaya, is my guest.

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There are over 1.5 billion people worldwide using the internet representing only 23.5 percent of world population and we are now entering an Internet population explosion as emerging internet countries go online and need address space. Experts predict that an IP address exhaustion date is coming between Nov 2010 and Feb 2011 or sooner as countries potentially rush to acquire the last available addresses to avoid being shut out of the internet. In addition the number of IP addresses per person is growing too as millions to billions of new devices have become IP aware such as Mobile internet IPhones, smart phones, etc plus new internet services on trains, plains and the home grow. So the question is, is the industry heading toward another Y2K event? Fred Wettling, a Bechtel Fellow plus Manager-of Architecture & Planning and coauthor of the book “Global IPv6 Strategies: From Business Analysis to Operational Planning” joins us to provide perspective and strategy on how IT leaders can manage IP addressing and avoid a Y2K event.

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While world governments figure out how to save the banking system our industry is changing at a pace I haven’t seen since the mid-1990s. Nortel is bankrupt, Cisco is making a huge announcement the week of March 15th, Force10 and Turnin have merged, Cisco launched EnergyWise, HP ProCurve launched ProCurve One, Juniper announced its EX2500 and Stratus, Brocade extended its DCX backbone, Mallanox launched a converged fabric gateway. IBM is getting close to Juniper while HP TSG fortifies its data center position with EDS services, etc. Zeus Kerravala, Senior VP, Global Enterprise Research for the Yankee Group joins me to discuss the blizzard of announcements and changes taking place in our industry and offer our opinions and guidance on how to make sense of an industry in fundamental change.

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Clearly the economic news over the past five months has been disturbing and at many times scary. So the question we ask is why invest in Unified Communications (UC) now and not wait until the recovery? The answer is straightforward, as UC not only pays for itself with a rapid payback measured in months, and at times as short as six weeks, but most importantly it reduces corporate operational cost by streamlining business processes. Steve Hardy Director Global Product and Solutions Marketing for Avaya joins me to discuss investing in UC now during a challenging macro economic climate. For any executive seeking both IT and corporate cost cutting projects, you need to listen to this podcast.

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The future of IT is a networked model. Value creation and innovation is found in content that flows freely throughout networks. Cloud computing, Web 2.0, mobile applications, unified communications, video on-demand, social networking, etc are the result of the networked IT model. But IT and networks can be more tightly integrated with an applications enablement layer offered by service providers, which provide Over the Top suppliers with reliability, privacy, billing and security services. To link and simplify IT and networks in the most complex environments the industry needs a Network Integrator. I talk with Avedis Menechian, Chief Marketing Officer for Alcatel-Lucent about Alcatel-Lucent’s role as the Network Integrator of Choice.

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IT suppliers are delivering products that consume less energy while offering new IT delivery approaches such as data center virtualization to reduce cooling and power demands. Cisco Systems has taken a broader approach to energy management by delivering a power command and control architecture called Cisco EnergyWise which seeks to provide business and IT leaders with the tools to measure, manage and control the power consumption of all devices connected to the corporate network. Further, EnergyWise seeks to connect facility heating, air conditioning, lighting and other non-IT systems—systems that consume the largest proportion of corporate energy—in an effort to provide IT leaders with the tools and means to manage their overall energy consumption. Berna Devrim, Sr. Manager, Access Switching Marketing at Cisco Systems is my guest as we discuss Cisco’s EnergyWise initiative and what it means to business and IT leaders who seek to control energy consumption.

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