The Lippis Report

June 10th, 2013

by Nick Lippis

Cloud and mobile computing deployment has accelerated at a fantastic pace over the last five years, changing the economics of where computing and storage are located, how applications are written and accessed, and most importantly, how corporate computing automates business processes. The pace of change in cloud and mobile computing has been much faster than the evolution of wide area networking, which is now on the critical path to reaping the rewards of modern computing and its favorable business outcomes. Wide area networking, or in particular, the approach to branch office WAN design, is in need of an overhaul as its current form does not support cloud computing. This white paper provides design guidelines for the new WAN in the era of mobile and cloud computing via “cloud connectors.”

June 3rd, 2013

To assure 100% throughput, that is no packet loss or network performance degradation takes place during an inter-chassis switch over, Cisco invested in its third generation of Virtual Switch System or VSS. It introduced support for four Supervisors within a VSS, which it calls VS4O for short. VS40 supports a VSS pair to be resilient to up to three simultaneous supervisor failures; providing deterministic and automated recovery from failures and increases network uptime tremendously in the campus backbone. Sudeep Padiyar Senior Product Manager at Cisco Systems and Charles Okochu, Network Engineer at MarketAxess join me to discuss Cisco’s new additions to the Catalyst 6500 and the resiliency network design options it affords to Cisco customers.

May 6th, 2013

Miami Children’s Hospital or MCH deployed an 802.11n Wi-Fi network some two years ago to support their Clinical EMR deployment, which enabled clinicians and physicians to access applications such as PowerChart via mobile devices. The Wi-Fi network also enabled BYOD for patients, families and friends visiting MCH. MCH also developed its Fit4KidsCare mobile application that leverages location services so that food orders or gifts can be delivered to patient rooms while it’s WayFinding feature provides turn-by-turn navigation services to guide patients/family and guest around the complex children’s hospital. Edward Martinez, MCH SVP and Chief Information Officer discusses how its connected mobile network is having a positive impact on clinical operations and patient network services beyond connectivity for mobile devices.

April 8th, 2013

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.

March 25th, 2013

by Cisco Systems

The age of cloud and virtualization is spawning renewed focus on networking, increasing the demands that networks be highly resilient at all times. While advanced features within network technologies clearly play a role in meeting this need, advances in network management technologies and practices are also an essential ingredient. This has driven demand for converging and integrating network management tools and functions, to pave the way for better awareness of the role that networks play in the organizations they are designed to support, and also for improving efficiency and accuracy in planning and operations. In this ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES® (EMA™) whitepaper, the essential drivers and requirements for converging, unifying, and aligning network management are examined, and the newly updated Cisco Prime Infrastructure management solution is reviewed in this context.

February 4th, 2013

By Cisco Systems

The Cisco® Global Cloud Index is an ongoing effort to forecast the growth of global data center and cloud-based IP traffic. The forecast includes trends associated with data center virtualization and cloud computing. This document presents the details of the study and the methodology behind it. Great forecast and projections are detailed in this report.

January 7th, 2013

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.

January 3rd, 2013

Nick Lippis, Zeus Kerravala

Zeus Kerravala of ZK Research and I host our annual predictions podcast. We provide our top ten 2013 predictions that span consolidation in the SDN market, Cisco breaking away from HP/Dell, VMware jumping the shark, Micosoft’s rebound, the formation of the white box Top of Rack switch market, UC providers moving into context aware services, the rise of truly mobile applications and how Cisco will win with Cisco ONE. Enjoy and the very best for a happy and healthy New Year.

Register to Attend the Lippis Report’s Open Networking User Group meeting hosted by Fidelity on Feb 13th in Boston.

December 5th, 2012

Cisco’s Catalyst 6500 series is by far the most popular switching platform in the history of computer networking. Consider that the Catalyst 6500 has generated more than $45B in cumulative revenue for Cisco, thanks to its large footprint of close to 800,000 systems, 110 million ports shipped thus far to some 45,000 customers. Some deployments are as big as 4,000 Catalyst 6500 switches large! Factor in an installed base 20 times bigger than its nearest competitor with the resources to deliver long-term service and support, and the best analogy to describe the Catalyst 6500 is that of Boeing’s airplanes. Airlines upgrade from 737 to 747 to 757 and 777 as they grow and improve their service, maintaining operational consistency, quality and investment protection of training plus supply chain. In short, Boeing builds platforms that last, creating trust between airlines and Boeing. So, too, is Cisco’s Catalyst 6500 because Cisco is investing hundreds of million of dollars on a roadmap innovation with investment protection. We predict that the Catalyst 6500 will be in operation well into 2025. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we explain why.

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December 3rd, 2012

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

November 26th, 2012

By Cisco Systems

Organizations that want to harness the power of the web must deal with a consequence: becoming vulnerable to web-based threats that can negatively impact data, reputation, and operations. Trends such as social networking and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) add to the challenge of securing the safety of network traffic and increase the attack footprint. Cisco® ASA Software Release 9.0, integrated with Cisco Cloud Web Security, and powered by Cisco Security Intelligence Operations (SIO), solves the combined problems of performance and breadth of security—without affecting network complexity or business agility. This white paper explains how Cisco uses the advantages of the cloud to protect enterprises from web-based threats and to apply comprehensive policies to web content and web-application visibility within the enterprise.

November 5th, 2012

During mid-September 2012, Arista Networks and Cisco Systems launched what both claimed to be the industry’s lowest latency switches aimed at big data, cloud, Web 2.0 and high frequency trading markets. Both products are Top of Rack (ToR), 10 and 40GbE switches. Arista’s is based upon merchant silicon, while Cisco utilized custom ASIC. Arista’s 7150 Series claims 10 and 40GbE, 350 nanoseconds Layer 2 or 3 forwarding, VXLAN support and what it calls “flexible forwarding.” Cisco’s Nexus 3548 claims 10GbE, 250ns to 190ns Layer 2 or 3 forwarding, and Cisco Algorithm Boost or Algo Boost technology. At 10GbE speeds, a bit is 1/10 of a nanosecond long, so Arista’s 7150 and Cisco’s 3548 switches delay is 3500 and 2500 or 1900 bits, respectively. That is, these products offer processing delays equal to the time it takes a few thousands of bits to traverse a simple metallic or optical wire at 10Gbs! In this Lippis Report, we review Arista’s and Cisco’s new ToR switches and answer the question: what comes after zero latency switching?

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November 5th, 2012

By Cisco Systems

The Cisco Nexus® 3000 Series Switches are a comprehensive portfolio of 1, 10, and 40 Gigabit Ethernet switches built from a switch-on-a-chip (SoC) architecture. Introduced in April 2011, this series has established itself as a leader in high frequency trading, high-performance computing, and big data environments by pairing high performance and low latency with innovations in performance visibility, automation, and time synchronization.

November 5th, 2012

By Cisco Systems

The modern workplace continues to evolve, with demands for improved mobility, new bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and VDI initiatives, plus a need for an increasingly agile, productive and collaborative workforce. Deploying VDI at the branch or remote office has proven a challenge to most VDI adopters. Centralizing user desktops at the data center and having users access those desktops across the WAN results in poor user experience and WAN connectivity dependency for business continuity. Cisco® Office-in-a-Box consists of the award-winning Cisco Integrated Services Routers Generation 2 (ISR G2) platforms and the new Cisco UCS® E-Series Servers. With Cisco’s best in class network technology combined with a powerful enterprise grade compute platform in a single box Cisco delivers a way to easily collapse branch office or retail store IT services into a single box.