The Lippis Report

April 30th, 2012

By Lucinda Borovick and Richard L. Villars of IDC

In today’s IT marketplace, Big Data is often used as shorthand for a new generation of technologies and architectures designed to economically extract value from very large volumes of a wide variety of data by enabling high-velocity capture, discovery, and/or analysis. IDC believes that organizations that are best able to make real-time business decisions using Big Data will gain a distinct competitive advantage over those that are unable to embrace it.
As Big Data efforts grow in scope and importance, the network (both within the datacenter and across the WAN) will play a critical role in enabling quick, sustainable expansion while also ensuring these systems are linked to existing mission-critical transaction and content environments.

April 16th, 2012

By Cisco Systems

Increase security and reduce risk by using existing technology in a non-traditional fashion.

Security is all about risk mitigation. How much risk is an agency willing to accept, and how much are they willing to spend to lower that risk to an acceptable level?

There are multiple ways to lower risk, such as:

• Increasing situational awareness through continuous monitoring of network, data, hardware and personnel resources.

• Tightening security policies for employees and guests moving within buildings.

• Increasing physical security measures when entering the building.

• Isolating physical networks.

• Using stronger authentication mechanisms (multi-factor authentication).

• Implementing an identity management system.

Unfortunately, these solutions all come at a financial cost and, in some cases, can actually prevent employees from doing their job, impacting their productivity. This paper suggests that by using some non-traditional devices in a security arsenal, and by using the network as the platform, an organization can significantly increase its security posture and reduce risk without requiring significant behavioral engineering or infrastructure costs.

April 3rd, 2012

By Cisco Systems

How Today’s Government, Education, and Healthcare Organizations Are Benefitting from Cloud Computing Environments

Cloud computing is a disruptive technology model that is changing the way public sector organizations consume information and communications technology (ICT), and how they deploy and deliver services to stakeholders. A trusted network infrastructure is the foundation for any successful cloud implementation. This paper briefly reviews the status of cloud computing in government, education, and healthcare organizations. It also helps make the business case for a cloud implementation by summarizing the chief advantages and business drivers. Case study snapshots describe how public sector organizations have successfully implemented cloud services models in various environments worldwide.

March 19th, 2012

By Deloitte

Enterprises face increasingly complex choices in their network vendor strategies. IT leaders must introduce new technology for critical business functions, while managing IT costs and balancing operational risks.This report summarizes the findings from a detailed customer survey conducted by Deloitte to examine the operational, financial, and risk factors associated with the use of single vendor and multivendor approaches in different types of enterprise networks. By providing a framework for understanding the overall value drivers associated with these networking strategies, this report is intended to help IT decision makers evaluate the potential impact of different approaches.

February 28th, 2012

There are multiple definitions of Software-Defined Networking or SDN. But this is common in a new breakout space for the computer networking industry that’s evolving fast. The most common SDN definition is based upon splitting the data plane or the forwarding hardware of an Ethernet switch from its control plane or the logic that controls how packets flow from ingress to egress. But this definition alone is too limited and needs to be expanded. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we offer the industry a broader SDN definition and view.

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February 28th, 2012

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.

February 14th, 2012

The Unified Communications market has twisted and turned over the past eighteen months, thanks to mobile and cloud computing plus the huge uptick in web plus video collaboration. This market has recovered from the 2009/2010 downturn with a gusto as providers expand UC to include collaboration and mobile platforms while targeting the red hot Small- to Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) market that consist of some seven million employees. With only a third of SMEs having a communication strategy plus less than a quarter with a deployed UC solution, the SME market is huge and wide open. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we take a look at Avaya’s and Siemens’ new UC offering for the SME market from a traditional voice vendor perspective and explore non-traditional SME offerings from Apple, Google, Facebook, Cisco, Microsoft, et al.

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February 14th, 2012

By Cisco Systems

This paper introduces the new Layer 3 network virtualization solution Easy Virtual Network (EVN). It discusses the need for enterprise network virtualization and compares EVN with the traditional solutions. In-depth architectural information as well as the new provisioning syntax is included to get users fully familiarized with EVN at first look. Click here for a short video on EVN

January 29th, 2012

Computer networking vendors have been increasing the speed and port density of their Ethernet switches while reducing power draw and price per port. But while Ethernet switching hardware marches on linearly, thanks to 10, 40 and 100GbE, networking software is taking a different historical path as the pace of compute and network technology evolution has diverged, with networking lagging. Highly virtualized server deployment has broken traditional networking approaches on multiple levels, for example. In response, the industry is now developing a “virtualized infrastructure” or “stack” to add network flexibility. To close the technology gap, Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is promoted as the new “organizing principle” to deliver network software and service value. While it will be, likely, years before SDN’s organizing principles take hold, I propose that these two industry activities are inexplicably linked and phased; here’s why…

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January 29th, 2012

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.

January 16th, 2012

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.

December 5th, 2011

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

November 7th, 2011

by Cisco Systems

It can be easy to forget how much depends on the enterprise network—until you have to tell the VP of sales that he can’t use his iPhone on the corporate network because the appropriate security controls aren’t in place. Or you must tell the CIO that expanding the virtualization initiative to include business-critical applications will severely tax bandwidth. The truth is, nearly everything in modern businesses is dependent on the enterprise network, and every decision you make is based on whether the network can handle it. This paper takes a look at a common pitfall in IT circles that can have a serious impact on the IT decision maker’s ability to say “yes” to new business initiatives. It also offers recommendations for IT organizations that wish to act as business enablers.

October 12th, 2011

A third-party business consulting firm analyzed the total cost of ownership (TCO) of Cisco enterprise customer networks, and contrasted that TCO to “good enough” networks from other networking vendors. Key findings:
1) TCO is a better metric than CapEx to assess network cost because it considers the full impact on IT spend, including CapEx, services, labor, bandwidth and energy.
2) The Cisco Borderless Network Architecture can deliver up to 13% better TCO than a “good enough” network, offering compelling value for the strategic Cisco investment.
3) Even if architectural benefits are discounted in the analysis, Cisco is, at most, a 7% TCO premium over other vendors due to IT labor savings and extended product lifecycles from Cisco solutions.
4) The single biggest benefit of Cisco’s architectural approach is labor savings. Labor constitutes 50% of TCO and Cisco delivers 5% to 10% labor savings driven by unified wired and wireless and embedded security.
5) A quality network delivers business benefits beyond TCO, including improved network uptime, higher user productivity and a lower threat of security breaches.