The Lippis Report

By CFO World

With CAPEX accounting for only 20% of the cost of a network, it is important to look beyond initial expenditures and consider TCO and the business value a network can provide. A third-party TCO comparison of a Cisco network versus other vendors illustrates that Cisco can deliver a 13% better TCO even before business benefits, such as network uptime and employee productivity are considered. Further, the Cisco Borderless Network Architecture acts as a platform for service delivery, allowing your IT organization to say “yes” to business and revenue-enhancing opportunities.

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.

There are a growing number of options to make data center networking more flexible. One option is the use of Edge Virtual Bridging or EVB, which has been standardized in project IEEE 802.1Qbg and championed by IBM, HP, Brocade, QLogic, Emulex and many others. This approach extends the Virtual Ethernet Bridge or VEB sometime called Virtual Ethernet Switch (VES) used by hypervisors to connect VMs to the data center network. Renato Recio, IBM Fellow & System Networking CTO joins me to discuss IBM’s approach to virtual network infrastructure overlays and in particular its support for Edge Virtual Bridging.

By Extreme Networks

Today’s mobile users require consistent Wi-Fi with high throughput, but traditional ceiling-mounted access points can make it challenging to extend 802.11n into facilities with many rooms, walls and other obstructions. The combination of the Altitude™ 4511 wallplate access point, fortified with Motorola radio technology and intelligent switches from Extreme Networks, makes it faster and easier to deploy and manage a converged wired and wireless network edge with security and high performance
that’s right where the mobile users are located for better access and service.

By Infoblox

When asked to identify the No. 1 cause of network performance problems, IT organization typically point to denial-of-service attacks, computer viruses, fiber cuts, power outages and hardware failures-the events that receive the most publicity and media coverage. However, studies by research firms such as Gartner Group and Enterprise Management Associates indicate that over two-thirds of network issues are actually tied to seemingly simple everyday activity: the process of IT staff making network configuration changes. This whitepaper looks at the top 5 common network performance management mistakes and discusses how IT organization can mitigate them via automating network management and giving appropriate visibility to different levels of IT staff.

By Tim Green, Network World

Chicago-based real-estate management company Equity Office ran all its voice and data traffic over a 40-branch office network via a MPLS WAN, costing some $400K per year. But when poor peak-time performance drew complaints from end users, it switched to technology that delivers more bandwidth at half the cost, delivering a 10-month ROI. The new WAN blended DSL, cable, fiber and Ethernet over copper in a single local network via WAN virtualization from Talari Networks,

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.

IBM System Network looks into its clients’ needs and extracted their top 10 predictions. The data center network is experiencing a major transformation to support server virtualization and cloud computing, convergence of data storage, application-to-application traffic and new high-performance applications. To address these needs, the data center network will become smarter and faster in 2012. Here are 10 reasons why:

By Jim Metzler, Ashton Metzler & Associates

This white paper proposes a new approach to architecting and designing data center networks for current dynamic and highly virtualized data centers.

By CIO Magazine

Feature-rich, next-generation networks help drive innovation and value to midsize companies and position them for competitive advantage. Next-generation networks give midsize companies a competitive advantage. By removing many of the operational headaches of running a network, Cisco’s solutions free up departments to focus on driving business value and innovation. Feature-rich, strategic networks built for today and tomorrow remove the barriers to growth and give midsize businesses the agility they require to lead their markets. Find out how by downloading this executive white paper.

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

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.

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.

By Cisco Systems

A new enterprise architecture for delivering policy-based services has become available. This document discusses the need for a policy-based architecture in today’s enterprise networks and presents “Policy-Governed Network” architecture as a pragmatic business solution. Building identity and context awareness into the network is critical to implementing an effective infrastructure.
Major topics include:

● What policies are and who implements them
● Changing network dynamics and problematic new technologies
● Important challenges to implementers
● Characteristics of a Policy-Governed Network architecture
● Policy-implementation platform: the Cisco® Identity Services Engine
● Scenarios showing how policies can address specific network issues
● How to begin transitioning to a Policy-Governed Network