Avaya
Some Thoughts on The SANS 20 Critical Security Controls
As I transitioned from the weekend to the work week last night, I settled down to review the 20 Critical Security Controls (v3) published by the SANS Institute. If you haven’t seen this list, you really should take a look as it’s an extremely focused, well written, metrics-based strategy for protecting your organization against the most likely security risks.
The first two controls are:
1. Inventory of authorized and unauthorized devices.
2. Inventory of authorized and unauthorized software.
Data Center Networking Demystified
As part of my job as an analyst, I talk to a lot of IT, networking, and security professionals. Based upon these conversations, I have no doubt that data center networking is going through a profound transition. Why? Simply stated, the old model of static inflexible physical networks can't keep up with new requirements like rapid provisioning, server virtualization mobility, low-latency, and massive scale. Read more
What's Next for Virtual Switching?
According to ESG Research, most organizations host 5 to 10 VMs per physical server today. This is likely to increase moving forward as enterprise implement servers with multiple CPU cores, gigabytes of memory, network interconnects, and additional network bandwidth. Read more
As this happens, we will also see more direct VM to VM traffic within each physical server.
Data Center Networking Confusion and Reality
Before leaving for vacation last week, I completed an ESG Market Landscape Report on data center networking. In this process, I worked with a great line up of networking vendors including Arista, Avaya, Brocade, Cisco, Enterasys, Extreme, Force 10, Gnodal, HP, IBM, Juniper, and NEC. Based upon this project, here are a few of my initial thoughts: Read more
Aligning data center networking with L4-7 services
Several data center technologies, such as flat layer 2-3 network fabrics and virtual appliances, are currently in their early stages of development and deployment. I believe that each of these technologies are transformational on their own but dare I say that they may be revolutionary when they are implemented together. Read more
Checking In On Check Point
I attended the Check Point analyst event on Monday of this week in Chicago. It’s been a while since Check Point got the analysts together so there was plenty of catching up to do. Read more
Day 1 of Interop: Avaya, Cisco, Juniper and lots of technology chatter
It's Tuesday AM in Vegas and the official start of the 25th Interop trade show. I arrived yesterday, got some early meetings in, and I've already heard my share on industry banter. Here are some quick highlights: Read more
Founding engineer of Cisco TelePresence jumps to rival
Another notable Cisco official is leaving the company. Phil Graham, engineering founder of Cisco's TelePresence initiative has joined Avaya to lead its R&D for "next-generation endpoints that improve the user experience and promote effective business collaboration," according to an e-mail from Avaya PR. Read more
Is Ethernet Storage On The Horizon?
There's been a lot of banter in the industry about storage-over-Ethernet over the past few months. It seems like every Ethernet switching vendor has added the words, "Fibre Channel and iSCSI," to their PowerPoint slides and now champion standards efforts like Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE), Data Center Ethernet (DCE), or Data Center Bridging (DCB). All of these standards are designed to make Ethernet behave like a channel rather than a network and thus create a unified uber transport for the data center. Read more
How CEBP creates Professional Services Revenue
In previous articles I have outlined the business and technical value of Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP) software and application development. I was also in a video most recently that will air on CNN, Discovery Channel, Fox News, and other media in a segment for the Today in America Show with host Terry Bradshaw, discussing the value of CEBP applications that my company has created. Bottom line and apologies to repeat myself, but CEBP is the differentiating fac Read more
CEBP - How Microsoft will win the Unified Communications War
The battle for the top solution in the Unified Communications (UC) marketplace is absolutely not a battle, it's a war! This is a war between ideals, concepts, innovation, and territory. We all know who the major players are and how long they've been there. We've seen the acquisitions and the changes in solution design and implementation to stay up to date and retain customers by slapping an IP layer on top of their proprietary communication systems. We have seen the uprising of the new players and the general market confusion that has transpired over the past several years. Read more
Cisco, Avaya abstain from UC interoperability forum -- for now
Two vendors were noticeably absent from a unified communication interoperability group announced last week. Indeed, the two of the leading vendors of unified communications: Cisco and Avaya.
It might be because the Unified Communications Interoperability Forum was founded by a handful of their competitors. Microsoft, Polycom, Juniper and HP are all involved, as is LifeSize, which makes a competing telepresence system to Cisco's. Read more
Unified Communications Summit 2010 - La Jolla, California
Held at the exquisite Estancia Resort in La Jolla, California amongst some of the most beautiful landscaping my wife and I have ever seen, the Unified Communications Summit which occurred the week of April 26th was a very well planned and strategic business event hosted by UC strategies and sponsored by the likes of Avaya, Cisco, IBM, NET, and others. Read more
Analyst shares thoughts on Cisco competitor Avaya
The bottom line for enterprises and channel partners following the completion of Avaya's purchase of Nortel Enterprise Solutions is to expect product consolidation, aggressive pricing and improved performance of Avaya product. Those are the takeaways of Steve Hilton, principal analyst for enterprise solutions at Analysys Mason.
In an e-mailed commentary, Hilton believes some telephony products will be whacked: Read more
Cisco competitor Avaya just got bigger
Avaya this week completed its acquisition of Nortel's Enterprise Solutions group, making the company an even more formidable competitor to Cisco and everyone else in enterprise telephony and unified communications. About 6,000 Nortel employees have joined Avaya, including 25 top managers like Joel Hackney, previously president of Nortel Enterprise Solutions. Read more
Avaya Buys Nortel. What's that mean for Microsoft?
After much hullabaloo, the actual Nortel auction was anti-climatic. Avaya was bid up by a bunch of other smaller players and ended up paying $900 million for Nortel's Enterprise assets. Did they overpay, maybe... But ebay-style sometimes it's hard to let something go once you've madeup your mind. Read more
Klausner Technologies sues Cisco, Avaya for patent infringement
Klausner Technologies said today that it is suing Cisco and Avaya for alleged patent infringement. The company asserts that the vendors' visual voicemail products violate Klausner's visual voicemail patents. Read more
This week's 10 most-read stories
The tearing apart of Nortel was the most-read story of the week, mixed with lighter fare such as a slideshow of tech-related T-shirts and a look back at the "fathers" of the technology we use every day.
1. Avaya reportedly offering $500M for Nortel enterprise biz Read more
2. Tech tees release your inner nerd
Deconstruction of Nortel under way
It was a long time coming, but the moment of truth appears to be upon telecom giant Nortel. Reports are surfacing that Avaya has offered $500 million for the company's enterprise business, while we know Nokia Siemens Networks has offered $650 million for the wireless business. Read more
New Endpoints Enable "Touch Telephony"
Submitted by Matthew Nickasch on Wed, 03/18/09 - 11:20am.The VoIP endpoint market has been an extremely one lately, with the introduction of many new devices by a wide variety of vendors. I recently discussed the Polycom VVX 1500, a new hybrid voice and video device that boasts a new and intuitive touch-based UI. While recent offerings by Snom and Avaya offer similar interfaces, the Polycom VVX's clear advantage is the integration of video into the device. Read more
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Network World, Inc
The Connected Enterprise