The Lippis Report

October 22nd, 2010

A Comprehensive Approach to Corporate and Government Energy Cost Savings and Carbon Reduction

Being green is increasingly being forced upon IT business leaders from their management, government regulations and societal pressures. Ask a recent college grad what is the number one societal contribution they would like to make with their career and the answer is “make the world greener.” The workforce is changing worldwide with a sense of personal and corporate social responsibility to reduce carbon emissions, and choose sustainable materials and processes to power our lives and deliver products and services. And being green is no longer a luxury that IT leaders can choose as governments, boards of directors and presidential directives issue mandates forcing energy efficiency upon IT executives.

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October 5th, 2010

One significant trend that has emerged during the current business/economic cycle is that IT projects that reduce cost are winners. This savings trend is as strong as I have experienced in my twenty-five years within the IT industry. In particular, it’s propelling data center consolidation, server virtualization and mobile computing projects. As enterprises consolidate data centers and miniaturize them with virtualization, cloud-computing providers are busy offering a new lower cost IT delivery economic model. In short, a new tier of computing has emerged were endpoint devices are mobile and applications are delivered via corporate data centers and cloud computing facilities. This new model of computing that also increases convenience and productivity is lacking in one important area; network security for both mobile endpoints and the ability of data center security appliances to keep up with application demand.

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October 5th, 2010

By Nicholas John Lippis III

Network access has evolved rapidly as IT business leaders have embraced new network technology. Access methods such as wired, Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), and mobile plus Virtual Private Network (VPN) methods have flourished over the past business cycle. In addition, a plethora of new endpoint devices have emerged using multiple access methods. But all of these network access approaches have evolved at different rates resulting in siloed networks that do not interact with each other, thus increasing IT operational cost and decreasing application portability and flexibility with user experience suffering. In this paper, we offer a new unified approach to network access that is based upon a thoughtful five-phase method to enable IT business leaders to simplify management, increase user experience and decrease operational cost.

Find out how to eliminate network silos by downloading this white paper:

October 5th, 2010

By Nicholas John Lippis III

Information flow precedes cash flow, and in the Global economy, networks and applications deliver intrinsic value to both. The huge investment in corporate application portfolios has never been optimized in a holistic manner, rather each application or suite of applications is optimized via specialized management tools. In today’s corporate world, IT business leaders are faced with increasing application performance demands for both legacy and new cloud-based applications to deliver excellent user experience while contributing to corporate agility. In this paper, we offer a new holistic network service approach to application performance optimization called Application Velocity.

Find out how to increase application performance by downloading this white paper:

September 22nd, 2010

Major IT Delivery Transitions IT Business Leaders Are Managing
Application owners and developers have been deploying and writing applications as if networks had no boundaries or were borderless. By “application owners” I mean IT departments chartered with IT application delivery and management. By “application developers” I mean in-house corporate software developers, independent software vendors (or ISVs) and software companies. There has always been a disconnect between applications and network architects where developers write applications to run over a network as long as there is connectivity. In addition, service-oriented architecture (SOA) based applications call for greater application componentization, which increases messaging between application components, resulting in the network having a direct impact on application performance. In essence, application owners, developers and application standard bodies assume that networks are borderless as the industry is organized around the OSI model where knowledge and skills at one layer, e.g., the network is not necessarily taken into account at another layer, i.e., the application. Therefore, the normal state of affairs is that network designers have been tasked to optimize applications to improve user experience especially when the application was not written to run over a particular kind of network. This status quo does not scale and needs to be re-thought.

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September 9th, 2010

Networking is entering a new phase or era. During the 1990s, new networking markets opened up, creating multi-billion dollar opportunities for the vendor community and corporate cost savings for IT business leaders. First, it was shared LANs and routing, then switched LANs, then Frame Relay to speed up WANs, then SNA over IP, then remote access via dial-up and VPN, then MPLS, then IP telephony, then Wireless LANs etc… and now, it’s video and cloud networking. You get the picture. But what we didn’t realize as we build these networks is that they are silos with disparate management systems and unique access methods resulting in operational cost overlap and, most importantly, user frustration as they transition application use from desktop, to mobile end point, to remote endpoint. In short, we built boundaries around applications in the form of networks and it is the dismantling of these borders that vendors are now starting to deliver and differentiate upon. It’s not just Cisco that communicates borderless networks, but HP Networking, Juniper, Brocade, Extreme, Avaya, Force10 and others too. Why is the industry entering a new age of borderless networking and what’s in it for IT business leaders, is explained in this Lippis Report Research Note.
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September 9th, 2010

By Infonetics

In this white paper, Matthias Machowinski of Infonectics Research describes how network borders came to be. He then describes Borderless Networking and its associated attributes plus benefits. A checklist to aid in the implementation of a borderless network is then provided.

Download this white paper now and learn how to get started with borderless networking.

August 10th, 2010

By Cisco Systems

Traditional security techniques are unable to respond to threats that can arise from anywhere. To protect today’s borderless networks, IT managers must adapt by implementing faster, smarter security measures that monitor the constantly changing global landscape. This white paper, written for IT managers and executives, examines the security risks and needs of borderless networks, details a systematic plan of action, and describes how Cisco can help implement threat defenses that will serve you today and for years to come.

Find out how by downloading this white paper

June 30th, 2010

By Cisco Systems

We work, live, play, and learn in a world that has no boundaries and knows no borders. We expect to connect to anyone, anywhere, using any device, to any resource—securely, reliably, transparently. That is the promise of borderless networks. To fully deliver on this promise, Cisco is advancing along three critical fronts: workplace transformation, technology leadership, and operational excellence.

March 22nd, 2010

With all the investment in IT security over the years, one would think that threats would have subsided; but they have only increased and largely increased with exploits and iframes (redirection on a reputable website to infect its visitors) up nearly by a factor of 2000 over the past two years. This has resulted in an increase in data theft Trojans over the same period by a factor of 6000, according to the 2009 ScanSafe Global Threat Report, enriching hackers and cybercriminals. What’s driving this exploit growth is that hackers and cybercriminals are automating successful techniques for mass website infection. In addition, hackers increasingly collaborate, sharing best practices to infect websites for personal gain. In short, IT and business leaders are not confronting individual hackers, but a community of cybercriminals working together to steal corporate data that is increasingly organized as a traditional business with suppliers, resellers and end users. And this community’s opportunities to attack individuals and corporations have only increased with the huge growth in mobile access and deep corporate reliance of web-based applications to automate business processes.

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March 9th, 2010

No matter where you look today the structure of IT is fundamentally changing. Applications are increasingly being accessed from mobile devices along with traditional laptop, desktop and even kiosk machines. SaaS has taken off and is far more prevalent than most executives realize as they are acquired by line of business and divisional budgets, leaving many IT leaders blind-sided and out of control with their relevance coming into question. As a result corporate application portfolios are shifting in their mix under IT leaders from one of total control to partial control to none. In short, IT leaders are finding that the largest application growth in their corporation is coming from outside of their traditional perimeter and with no control knobs. In essence applications and networks are becoming borderless.

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March 9th, 2010

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.

January 25th, 2010

No matter where you look today the structure of IT is fundamentally changing. Applications are being increasingly accessed from mobile devices along with traditional laptop, desktop and even kiosk machines. Applications are downloaded for free or a few dollars on mobile devices, while cloud computing and anything as a service offers a new approach to application delivery. As a result corporate application portfolios are shifting in their mix under IT leaders from one of total control to partial to none. In short, IT leaders are finding that the largest application growth in their corporation is coming from outside of their traditional perimeter and with no control knobs. In essence applications and networks are becoming borderless.

While borderless networks offer productivity improvements allowing work to follow individuals, IT leaders are concerned about its security implications, that being how do I secure corporate assets when applications are being accessed and used within and outside of corporate perimeters? Can IT leaders deliver the ease of use afforded by borderless networks securely? In this Lippis Report Research Note we offer an approach to securing networks without borders.

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January 25th, 2010

Garter has moved Cisco up to the Leaders Quadrant in its Magic Quadrant for 2009 Secure Web Gateways. Gartner reflected in their analysis that Cisco’s long-term focus on innovation and quality has resulted in market leadership. Garter identifies the following Cisco strengths.

On-Premise
* On-box malware prevention
* Performance & scalability
* DLP
* Real-time categorization

Cloud
* Simple management interface
* Reporting
* Ease-of-deployment
* Real-time categorization