Brocade CEO Carney challenges status quo in networking

The interesting thing about chili con carne is that you can have variations in the flavor and quality of the food depending on how the different ingredients are tweaked and mixed together. The same thing can be said for tech companies. Bring in a new CEO, tweak a few things, and get different results. The Mike Klayko era of Brocade is now in the books, and its time for the newly appointed CEO, Lloyd Carney, to make this version of Brocade his own. It appears he is doing so by looking ahead and not back.

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Top vendors at Interop 2013

There’s a Katy Perry Song called "Waking Up in Vegas" in which the young Miss Perry sings "Shut up and put your money where your mouth is / that’s what you get for waking up in Vegas." That first line, "Shut up and put your money where your mouth is," should be the theme for Interop. Vendors all across the network market come to Mandalay Bay to show off their latest products and impress buyers, channel partners, media and Wall Street. The following is a list of vendors that I thought did indeed put their money where their mouth is (listed alphabetically):

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Thoughts from Interop 2013: The network has never been more important

Well, the 2013 version of Interop is now in the books and while conventional wisdom dictates that “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” I thought there were a number of themes at the show that rose above the general noise of the event and are worth sharing. In no particular order, these themes were:

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Riverbed unveils the Mini-Me of ADCs

If you remember the old Austin Powers movies, Mini-Me was a full replica of Dr. Evil in every way. Just as evil, just as cunning, and just as powerful. Today, Riverbed announced a “mini-me” version of its Stingray application delivery controller (ADC). Stingray came into Riverbed through the acquisition of Zeus so, in a way, Riverbed’s latest product is Mini-Zeus.

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Cisco extends Developer Network to include application experience

It feels like Cisco has been retooling the Cisco Developer Network (CDN) for the better part of a decade now. The program got life when the company acquired Metreos and Cisco put together a program called Cisco Technology Developer Program (CTDP) to build applications for the IP phone. There may be some of you chuckling at that notion, but many have thought (myself included) that there was indeed a market for such applications. Well, that never materialized, and CTDP evolved into what’s now known as CDN.

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HP Networking finally rolls out a data center switch

The data center is where all the action has been in networking over the past few years. We saw the introduction of the network fabric, the rise of software defined networks (SDN), a number of startups emerge, and we’ve seen a fair bit of M&A activity as well. Because of the rapid evolution, we’ve seen almost every major network vendor – Cisco, Brocade, Juniper, Extreme, Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent and others – revamp the data center portfolio.

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Intel's push into SDN works in theory, but not in reality

All eyes were on Silicon Valley and the Open Networking Summit this week. One of the big topics of conversation was Intel’s push into an already highly competitive software defined networking (SDN) space.

In theory, this move by Intel makes sense. SDNs transform the data center and create an opportunity for low-cost switch manufacturers to become a more important part of the data center. However, “theory” and “reality” are two different things, and I don’t believe a pure, white box switch really works in this market.

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Alcatel-Lucent focuses on practical SDN

Last week, Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) held its annual Industry Analyst conference in Annapolis, Maryland. Unified Communications has historically been the primary focus for ALU’s go-to-market strategy, but the company has spent the last few years beefing up its OmniSwitch data networking portfolio as well. In fact, if you recall, ALU was the focal point of this Network World Article where the company beat out Cisco for a network project in its own home state.

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Aruba beefs up its BYOD tools, splits business and employee data

Talk to anyone in IT today about anything and it’s hard not to transition to a discussion on BYOD. Almost every IT leader I speak to is struggling with the pressure of having to allow workers to use personal devices in the workplace while still maintaining security. This is one of the reasons the mobile device management (MDM) market has been growing.

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Brocade brings fabrics to the campus networks

This week, data center specialist Brocade announced its "HyperEdge" architecture for campus networks. The concept of HyperEdge is similar to the value proposition the company put forth with its data center fabric architecture – networking is becoming increasingly complex, so a simpler, flatter network is required to support companies moving forward.

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Sorting out the Juniper data center switching puzzle

Last week, the esteemed Jim Duffy wrote this news article covering the release of the Juniper EX9200 data center switch. The article left many questions in my mind, including when should customers buy an 8200 now? What about QFabric? What types of customers are right for the beefiness of a product like the 9200? I had a chance to talk to Juniper about the product and I thought I’d clear up some questions that were still outstanding.

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Magor rolls out cloud-based visual conversations

The annual Enterprise Connect event was held in Orlando last week. I had a number of speaking slots at the event, including as one of the panelists on the final session of the conference, the Locknote. One of the questions that co-chair Fred Knight asked me was what was new at this year’s event, to which I responded that I hope the term "conferencing" is stricken both from our vocabulary and our corporate collaboration tools. Conferencing tools are typically single-purpose tools that aren’t integrated with any other collaboration tool.

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Extreme Slaloms its way toward an end-to-end SDN solution

Big Switch stole many of the networking headlines this week when it announced its Switch Light software release. Switch Light, based on the open source technology Indigo, can be used on commodity white box switches to create an OpenFlow-based switch than can be used as part of a software defined network implementation. One of the elements of the press release that I felt flew under the radar, was that Extreme Networks would be the only “mainstream” network vendor that was committing to this reference architecture for a rack switch.

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Brocade evolves the storage network

Normally, when a vendor is the undisputed king of a market, there’s a risk of the company taking their eye off the ball and letting markets slip away. BlackBerry in the smartphone market, 3Com with NIC cards and switches, and Nortel with almost everything they made are some examples of this. However, every once in a while vendors do surprise by trying to change the very market they dominate. Sure, it has risk, but generally markets need to be shaken up once in a while to make sure they don’t stagnate.

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Microsoft Lync shows off the basics, but misses the mark

This week, the 2013 edition of Enterprise Connect was held in Orlando, Florida. I don’t attend many of the sessions as I try to use the time to meet with companies, but I always reserve time for the keynote sessions. I hope to see something new and, as C+C Music Factory used to sing, “things that make me go hmmm."

The keynote I was most excited for was Microsoft’s because of all the changes that group has gone through recently. It’s merged with Skype, it’s part of Office 365, and the product recently held its first dedicated Lync conference.

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Unified Communications needs specialty middleware more than ever

This week is the annual Enterprise Connect (formerly VoiceCon) conference in Orlando, FL.  One of the many panels I’m on and moderating at the conference is titled "UC? Mobility? FMC? BYOD? SIP Trunking? Video? WebRTC? It’s time to take control."

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GoDaddy drops the .com, alienates businesses

In a somewhat surprising move last week, the provocative domain name registrar GoDaddy.com has decided to drop the .com from its logo and become just "GoDaddy."

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Cisco revamps the router

In the words of John Travolta and Oliva Netwon John, Cisco and enterprise routers "go together like rama lama lama ka dinga dong." This is the business that kicked off the company’s incredible rise to where it is today. It’s also the part of the business that comes under fire as being the most vulnerable to competition. Cisco has greater than 90% share in the enterprise router market, and has by far the highest price points in the industry. Many have tried to take share, at what should be some low-hanging fruit, but all have failed. Why?

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MWC 2013: Big Data is now a network problem, too

This week is the annual “Mobile World Congress” shows in Barcelona where we get a glimpse of what’s to come in the world of mobility. I didn’t go to Barcelona, but I’ve been following the news, and one of the more interesting announcements was Gigamon’s “Big Data for Mobile Operators.

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Marissa Mayer: CEO of the year 1955

Think back to the mid 80s. Michael J. Fox starring in the hit movie "Back to the Future." His 1981 DeLorean, powered by the flux capacitor invented by the esteemed Dr. Emmett Brown, was sent back in time to Hill Valley on the date of November 5, 1955. What was going on in 1955? Well, we know George McFly was still in school. We also know that Goldie Wilson was thinking of running for Mayor of Hill Valley. And we know that no one telecommuted back then, and working from the office was the norm.

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