The Lippis Report

For the first time in the networking industry a benchmark has been created to measure a cloud network fabric that utilizes active-active protocols. In the Open Industry Active-Active Cloud Network Fabric Test for Two-Tier Ethernet Network Architecture report, Arista, Avaya, Brocade and Extreme Networks submit their cloud networking products for test and evaluation. I thank each of these firms for their participation in this industry test and for their contributions to creating the new fabric benchmark. If you are building a two-tier ethernet fabric as part of your cloud infrastructure, then you have read this test report.

by Cisco Systems

Less than one percent of things in the physical world are network connected. In the near future, the growth of the Internet of everything (IoE), which Cisco defines as the convergences of people, process, data, and things, will make networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever before, creating unprecedented opportunities for countries, businesses and individuals. However, although the number of devices, applications and bandwidth demands are growing, the size of IT staff and budget remains static. IT organizations are struggling to manage the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend and growth of mobile devices and traffic.They face two main challenges:

● Complexity of managing separate wired and wireless networks, multiple management and network operating systems plus chaotic device onboarding processes.

● Inconsistency of wired and wireless architecture, policy, security, features and operations.

When compared with wired networks, wireless also does not have the same level of granular quality of service (QoS), policy and security enforcement close to endpoint devices. Cisco® Unified Access is an intelligent network platform for IoE to enable greater business agility, operational efficiencies and new connected experiences.

By Cisco Systems

Video surveillance in hospital settings can help provide high-quality, affordable healthcare. This white paper, intended for hospital executives, explains how hospitals can use Cisco® Video Surveillance solutions to lower costs and improve patient safety. Capturing video can mitigate expenses associated with patient sitters, drug diversion, other theft, and false accident or injury claims. Hospital personnel gain earlier awareness of incidents that can compromise patient safety by using video analytics software to send an alert based on loitering, boundary crossing, or queue length. And as part of emergency preparation, video surveillance provides situational awareness to help officials plan an effective response. In this paper are ten use cases for video surveillance in hospitals using a Cisco Video Surveillance solution and the hospital’s existing Cisco network.

Ross Sedgewick

Unstructured business process is more distributed than ever thanks to smartphone platforms iOS and Android. As the workforce has become more mobile, work teams have become more distributed and virtual. Mobility brings freedom and increased individual productivity but a new study finds that working in virtual teams has a long way to go before group productivity climbs. I discuss how to tap into the huge potential of organized virtual teams through Unified Communications and Collaboration or UCC with Ross Sedgewick, Global Marketing at Siemens Enterprise Communications.

Duration: 14:50 minutes

Lippis Intro/Analysis @ : 00:10 sec

Question 1 @ 1:26 sec: Ross, lets start with the study. What were the main findings about virtual teams?

Question 2 @ 6:24 sec: Ross, there’s a lot of untapped productivity in today’s virtual teams. One main problem is that people are using old tools like email, voice and conference calls while virtual and they are getting frustrated with them. What are the new tools for virtual teams?

Question 3 @ 9:36 sec: Ross, Siemens’s approach to virtual team collaboration tools is called amplifyTEAMS. What is amplifyTEAMS and how does it increase virtual team productivity?

Question 4 @ 12:55 sec: Ross, what’s the business outcome gain when organizations implement amplifyTEAMS?

Jan Hickish

The communications industry changed in 2007 with the iPhone introduction, resulting in a fundamental change in the way people communicate!  Smartphone communications experience is richer and as such employees are demanding to use their iOS and Android devices at work, which has ushered in the Bring You Own Devices era.   But there’s a divide between smartphones and Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC)?  How do IT leaders bridge the gap between BYOD and UCC investments?  I talk with Jan Hickisch of Siemens about the bridge it’s building to link BYOD and UCC from a user experience point of view.

Duration 9 minutes and 32 seconds:

Lippis Intro/Analysis @ : 00:10 sec

Question 1 @ 2:01 sec: Let’s start with a discussion about how Siemens is adjusting its product set to user adoption of mobile platforms and what changes you anticipate in user experience

Question 2 @ 3:05 sec: There’s a concept that Siemens calls “vibrant conversations” to describe the future of user experience.  Can you elaborate?

Question 3 @ 5:00 sec: Another Siemens’ concept in the area of user interfaces and experiences is “thought trail”.  What is it and how does it work?

Question 4 @ 6:43 sec:  There’s one last concept I want to explore and that’s “unified domains” for presence, messaging, contact and directory integration within OpenScape UC Mobile? What is unified domains and how does it work.

Question 5 @ 7:47 sec:  The coolest feature of OpenScape UC Mobile is Call Swipe; can you quickly describe?

Register to attend the Open Networking User Group hosted by Fidelity and the Lippis Report on Feb 13^th 2013 in Boston, MA

Mark Monday

Mark Monday Vice President, Product Management, Collaboration Platforms and Endpoints at Avaya joins me to discuss virtualized unified communications.  Avaya announced its Aura Virtualized Environment or Avaya Unified Communications on VMware, which are full-featured Avaya Aura core platform and applications installable as VMware virtual appliances.  This affords a range of new deployment opportunities not previously available that promise to accelerate mobility, video and overall business collaboration deployment. We discuss the implications and new options afforded by Aura on top of VMware.

Duration: 13 minutes 17 seconds

Lippis Intro/Analysis @ : 00:10 sec

Question 1 @ 1:52 sec: When you say that Avaya Aura is now virtualized, what does that actually mean, what is virtualized?

Question 2 @ 4:37 sec: While it may be obvious for some; let’s start with a discussion about the motivations to virtualize Avaya Aura.  What’s the key value proposition for customers and partners?

Question 3 @ 8:27 sec: There are new go to market models for partners with Avaya Aura Virtualized Environment, can you describe them and their implications for Avaya’s reach?

Question 4 @ 10:53 sec: How do existing customers take advantage of Avaya Aura Virtualized Environment as well as new prospectus?

Register to attend the Open Networking User Group hosted by Fidelity and the Lippis Report on Feb 13^th 2013 in Boston, MA

By Cisco Systems

People around the globe are enamored with smartphones and tablet computers, and feel strongly that they should be allowed to use these devices at work. By combining an architecture-based technical implementation with carefully considered business policies, organizations can create a safe and appropriate environment that blends personal and business resources. This paper discusses:

• The growing importance of mobile devices to an efficient, productive workspace
• The technical and business challenges of securely integrating personal devices into the enterprise network
• Business strategies for a “bring your own device” (BYOD) environment
• Point versus architectural network options and related products
• The Cisco® BYOD Smart Solution

The adoption rate of Unified Communications and Collaboration or UCC has been disappointing.  Its value proposition was rooted in its ability to unify different ways people communicate in the hope that business process would be streamlined, productivity increased and cost reduced.   Some of this is true, but we are entering a new era where most of the underlying UCC assumptions are no longer valid.  Chris Hummel, Chief Commercial Officer at Siemens Enterprise Communications and I believe that a new “people and team” driven UC architecture is emerging that includes mobility, video, social and cloud that’s focused on individual productivity.  In this Lippis Report podcast we discuss a new way to think about and evaluate UCC in the mobile Internet age.

Duration: 23:16

Lippis Intro/Analysis @ 00:10 sec

Question 1 @ 2:09 sec: Chris, let’s start with a discussion about why the UCC market has not been deployed as widely as many industry observers anticipated?

Question 2 @ 4:12 sec: Chris, how do UCC offerings need to change to make UCC more appealing to enterprise buyers?

Question 3 @ 8:21 sec: Chris, how does the people and team approach to UCC manifest in terms of products and services and what are the anticipated business outcomes?

Question 4 @ 17:04 sec: Chris, are we entering into a new productivity period where smart IT business leaders will seek to measure personal productivity gains made through individual centered UCC?

By Arista Networks

If you are a virtualization and/or network administrator who wants to increase the scalability or mobility of your virtual architecture between data center and/or between routed domains while remaining full workload portable, then download this paper.

Find out how using Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and SDN technologies, such as OpenFlow, can potentially transform the way customers are doing networking in their data center, as discussed in this on-demand webcast by IBM System Networking EMEA Business Executive, Charles Ferland

by IBM

Discover in this short, informative webcast with IBM System Networking EMEA Business Executive, Charles Ferland, how network virtualization, specifically the new emerging protocol 802.1Qbg (Edge Virtual Bridging), can benefit dynamic data center network infrastructures

by Nick Lippis

Over the past several years, computing has accelerated its fantastic pace of innovation that has manifested into cloud and mobile computing. There are numerous metrics that have tracked these trends to show their increasingly mainstream acceptance. But the most telling set of data comes from supporting technologies or approaches that are no longer able to support both legacy and the new cloud plus mobile computing models. Wide area networking or in particular, the approach to branch office wide area networking, is in need of an overhaul as its current form does not support cloud computing. This is particularly troubling as nearly 55% of a corporation’s employees reside in branch offices, and are now, in essence, cut off from secure cloud computing, experience poor cloud application performance and cost their corporation more money than needed. This white paper provides the guide to cloud-ready branch office networking.