Why FCoE is Dead, But Not Buried Yet
Have you ever watched one of those spy films where someone gets fatally poisoned, but it hasn't hit them yet and they are acting like its any other day and not the last days of their life and you just want to tell them that they should enjoy it while they can? I feel like that for FibreChannel over Ethernet. Basically my assertion is that FCoE is a dead technology, and there are a few vendors who have not figured it out yet, here's why.
Storage Value Read more
Can you build profitable public clouds out of enterprise tech?
If I were to play buzzword bingo today I'd really like to have the words Cloud, Fabric, OpenFlow, API, and Stack lined up - I would be sure to win in any vendor briefing in the first 42 seconds of the meeting. Let's face it, even if a vendor has products that were designed for wiring closets or branch routing they are all trying to find some way of hitching them to the Cloud train. Read more
Minimum, Nominal, Average, or Max...
Recently I was interacting with some data center designers and architects and some other vendors when the topic of power draw came up. This is always a fun one, and an area where a lot of 'specsmanship' is being played nowadays as people try to find creative ways to showcase their power efficiency, or hide/mask power draw that is less than optimum. Needless to say it makes for a fun conversation or two. Read more
Changing IT Demands on Network Infrastructure
Last week I received an email from Julie Bort, editor of this site, asking me a very simple question, "Where have you been? Are you going to write again soon???"
A good question! It made me pause and reflect for a second, where have I been? - besides 'busy' which really isn't a place but seems to be a common destination all the same. Read more
The Riddles and Numbers In Networking
Just when I thought I had seen it all in the world of marketing math I recently witnessed another new low... Scary thought isn't it - I mean in the world of mis-representing the performance capabilities of a product the networking industry has seen some real gems. Maybe I should recap some of my favorites, a few of which I may have even contributed to before becoming a reformed statistician. (Sound's rather Calvinist doesn't it?) Read more
A bet on BBCs and VM Mobility
Last week a friend from work bet me I couldn't write an intelligible blog about 'BBCs.' As usual, without thinking too much, I took the bet. So a BBC- British Broadcasting Corporation? Nah, hard to write about customers and you don't want to violate anyone's NDA or security posture. So how about the fabled and storied "Bailey's Banana Creme Colada" from Cyril's Fish House in Amagansett, New York? What the heck, why not... Read more
Innovations - something I love in networking...
Sadly I do not think there has been a lot of innovation in networking in recent memory that has really helped the networking professional to be more effective and efficient in their job. I would actually endeavor to say that in the past years many of the new capabilities and features have actually made the job of maintaining a network harder, not easier. Read more
Why Data Centers Must Fundamentally Change -- Part 2.2
The second change that is creating disruption in the data center is a result of how we solved for the space, cooling, and power issues highlighted in my previous post. The industry created denser servers, denser storage, and denser networks - I actually used to be convinced that some product managers were the densest people I ever met because every time they had a chance to create some Read more
Why Data Centers Must Fundamentally Change -- Part 2.1
I started writing this section, and when John Peach from the UK commented to me, "Doug, this isn't a blog, it is a dissertation" I felt I needed to shorten it a bit to make it more consumer-friendly. Well, I didn't want to shorten it too much, in case I lose something important, so it got much easier to break it up into chapters- a relatively easy way out. Read more
Why Data Center Networks Must Fundamentally Change
At Interop I was on a panel hosted by the inimitable Jim Metzler titled, "Why Networks Must Fundamentally Change." Now, just judging the attendance alone I must say that there certainly seemed to be enough interest in this topic to warrant a belief that there must be some pressures on IT and the Networking team that are making them wonder how the network will change. The room was seated to capacity, and people were sitting on the floor and standing along the back and side walls - a far cry from Interop panels in the past where success was defined as having more attendees in the Read more
Vendor Math
Math is a word that should never need any qualifiers, however, in our industry I have heard of Cabletron Math, Cisco Math, Vendor Math, etc. If the qualifier is needed it is because something is wrong. Math is an absolute.
I don't care who started it, everyone has their own egregious examples, no one is ever totally open about their specs, and everyone tries to hide weaknesses in their portfolio by creative 'specs-manship.' Read more
Implications of Virtualization and Cloud
I am sitting here in my green chair at home listening to 'Desperado' by the Eagles and reading my friend Greg Ness' recent piece on Infrastructure 2.0. I've done a few panel discussions with Greg in the past, including a really fun one at the Read more
Virtualization's Impact on Networks
I've often postulated that virtualization would require the network to change, dramatically. There are two main vectors to this argument, one technical, one business. Read more
Brad Reese, PR's Worst Nightmare
Let's face it, Brad is a controversial guy. Read more
Hello World, and Random Career Thoughts
I've had a lot of people ask me a lot of questions lately, and I am not certain by any means that I am the best source of advice, especially when it comes to careers- but for some reason many people ask me about theirs and what they should do. One question though recently hit me, I was asked, "what is the best job you've had, and why?" Read more
- About Default Gateway
Douglas Gourlay is the vice president of marketing at Arista Networks - the leading developer of 10Gb Ethernet switching platforms. In this role Gourlay is responsible for the global marketing and product management for Arista. Arista has recently won the ClearChoice award by NetworkWorld for top 10Gb Ethernet data center switch, and Best of Interop: Infrastructure and overall Best of Interop for the Arista 7500.
Prior to joining Arista Networks Gourlay was the vice president of Cisco’s Data Center Solutions Group, where he defined and executed Cisco’s global marketing strategy for data center, virtualization, and cloud computing. This included the Nexus and Catalyst data center switches, application and server load-balancing, storage networking, blade switching, and wide-area application services product families. Under his leadership Cisco’s data center segment grew from a nascent business to over $5B in annual revenue.
Since 1998 Gourlay has led and contributed to numerous hardware, software, and systems architecture developments across Cisco. He has served as senior director of product management for the Nexus Family of data center switches, director of product management for the Catalyst 6500 Series of LAN switches, and led product management for Cisco’s Application Delivery product family. Gourlay has filed or holds more than 20 patents in networking technologies.
Prior to his work at Cisco, Gourlay was an industry consultant and served as a US Army Infantry Officer. Gourlay is an avid pilot and can often be found tinkering on his Cirrus at Palo Alto Airport.
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