The Lippis Report

March 25th, 2013

Open Networking User Group (ONUG) meeting in Boston that we organized with partner Fidelity Investments. ONUG was a first for many reasons, but the biggest contributor to its success was its Board and the fact that the conference was closed to press, vendors and any recording. The ONUG Board, made up of chief network architects of the largest financial and retail concerns, developed ONUG sessions plus invited 10 pre-IPO firms to demonstrate their SDN solutions. The fact that the audience of 180 IT executives was able to openly discuss their open networking challenges, successes and hopes created a special mystique. Jayson Noland, Managing Director, Senior Analyst of Robert W. Baird, described the mystique best:

“There’s talk about standards and consortium, and what was apparent at ONUG is that there are very innovative early adopter IT leaders who will drive the market and determine the speed and success of true network transformation.”

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January 7th, 2013

For the past nine months, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a group of IT architects from Fidelity, Goldman Sachs, UBS and Gap Inc. to develop the industry’s first Open Networking User Group or ONUG. This work has come to fruition with the Lippis Report’s first ONUG meeting hosted by Fidelity Investments on February 13th in Boston. The ONUG board developed topics to be explored, hand-picked speakers who are IT architects with SDN experience, chose 10 start-ups to demonstrate their open networking value and sent colleagues personal invitations. The result is that ONUG will be the biggest, most exclusive and important event for IT executives in 2013. Here’s why:

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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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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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March 20th, 2012

SecureX is the network security framework that Cisco launched last year. The company has now deepened SecureX to bolster its ability to provide SecOps greater visibility of applications and network traffic, and control of network security resources to mitigate exploits faster and more effectively by providing context- aware security information brought on by Bring Your Own Device or BYOD plus cloud computing applications and services. Cisco achieves this through its new ASA-CX Context-Aware Security capabilities, expanded support for Security Group Tagging or SGT within TrustSec enabled devices, and the addition of device profiling functionality in the IOS of its routers, switches and wireless access points. All of this security technology works with its Identity Services Engine or ISE—Cisco’s identity and access control policy platform.

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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 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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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 9th, 2012

During the middle of 2012, a few firms will introduce core switches for campus networking. Many of these products will be based upon merchant silicon such as HP Networking’s A10500 Series Enterprise Core Switch. While these products will boast performance advantage, they will find it difficult to win share against established firms such as Cisco’s Catalyst 6500, thanks to its investment in network services. In this Lippis Report Research Note 184, we explore the importance of network services and their role in campus network design.

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December 20th, 2011

In this Lippis Report Research Note 183, we provide our very popular annual top 10 2012 industry predictions that were provided by Andre Kindness, senior analyst at Forrester Research, Nick Lippis, CEO of Lippis Enterprises, and Zeus Kerravala, principal at ZK Research. We take a look into the year ahead and provide our view as to what will come to pass. This Research Note is based upon the “2012 Networking Industry Predictions” Lippis Report podcast.

The following are our top 10 2012 Networking Industry Predictions.

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December 5th, 2011

The Fall 2011 Open Industry Network Performance and Power Test Report is now available. Since our Spring 2011 test, we added four products from three vendors to the 11 products from eight vendors already tested. We now have data on 15 data center switching products from nine vendors in the new report to be released after Thanksgiving. Our cloud networking test of 10 and 40GbE is now the industry benchmark for cloud networking. In fact, only those companies that are sure of their product(s) enter the test at Ixia’s iSimCity. We found that 40GbE is hard, and thus you have to give credit to the vendors that go through the testing—in this test, those vendors are Extreme Networks, Brocade and Alcatel-Lucent. These firms have high performance data center switching product that is Enterprise and Cloud service provider ready. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we share our the top 10 findings from this round of testing. Lippis Report subscribers can download the 125-page report here, free of charge.

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November 7th, 2011

During the weeks of October 10 and October 31, 2011, at Ixia’s iSimCity, the Lippis Report conducted its third industry test of cloud networking data center switches operating at 10 and 40GbE. In just six short months, the industry has moved forward by breaking all previous records of data center switch speed, power consumption, port density and bandwidth. We added four products from three vendors to the eleven products from eight vendors already tested. We now have data on fifteen data center switching products from nine vendors in the new report to be released after Thanksgiving. During May 2011 Interop, we had eleven vendors provide verbal commitment to participate in this Fall industry test (remember it is free for vendors to submit products to test). As the deadline for signed agreements came, this field of eleven dropped to three because their products were simply not ready. 40GbE is hard, and thus you have to give credit to the vendors that go through the testing—in this test, those vendors are Extreme Networks, Brocade and Alcatel-Lucent. These firms have high performance data center switching product that is Enterprise and Cloud service provider ready. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we share our insights gained from testing all these products and provide the topic cloud networking industry trends taking shape now.

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September 26th, 2011

By all counts, Cisco’s upgrade of the Catalyst 6K via its new Supervisor 2T, or Sup2T, is its most ambitious and thoughtful yet for the venerable platform. The Sup2T is a 2 Terabit (Tb) platform that triples the previous Sup720 performance. Thanks to the support of Virtual Switching System (VSS), the platform allows two 2 Tbps switches to combine into a single 4 Tbps virtual switch. The Sup2T is a major upgrade to the most widely-deployed switching platform in campus and data center networking in the industry. But while these performance numbers are impressive, it’s the new Cat6K’s network services and pricing that deliver most of the value. From a services’ point of view, the Cat6K stands alone.

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September 12th, 2011

Back in November of 2009, I wrote Lippis Report Research Note 136 titled “HP Plans to Acquire 3Com Accelerating a New IT Convergence Era.” In that Research Note, I wrote

“When 3Com is fully integrated into HP what kind of networking revenue and market share can HP gain? ProCurve + 3Com is approximately $2B of revenue now. With the existing product lines can HP generate $5B, $10B or more of network revenue over five years? Time will tell.”

Well after nearly two years, HP Networking or HPN’s North America (NA) layer 2/3 Ethernet switch market share by revenue is nearly the same, bouncing between 5% and 6.1%, according Dell’Oro, with HPN’s Q2CY11 NA switch revenue share being down to 6%. Considering HPN’s limited results after significant investments in sales, channels and marketing, including its “proof-of-concept” plus “A Catalyst for Change” Cisco Trade-in program, not to mention engineering investment, the question is can HP make it in networking? We attempt to answer that question in this Lippis Report Research Note.

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