The Lippis Report

November 27th, 2007

Bill Kish, Chief Technical Officer of Ruckus Wireless, talks with Nick Lippis about enterprise Wireless LANs and the new 802.11n standard. With the increase in bandwidth, spectrum and power of 802.11n many IT leaders are now starting to think through how to incorporate 802.11n into their network architecture. Backbone link speeds, access point and WLAN controller placement, security, power over Ethernet, wireless bandwidth and spectrum power are all factors which plug into the calculus of next generation WLAN deployments. Bill Kish is uniquely qualified to talk on 802.11n as he is an active participant on IEEE project 802.11, the organization creating the standard. He is also a co-founder of Ruckus Wireless, and their CTO. Bill offers a vision for how the industry will progress that I buy into. Here’s a hint, think of 802.11n as a platform not just a product.

November 19th, 2007

Business and IT leaders in the financial services industry are early adopters of IT as their product is in essence information. Their early adopter learnings and feedback to IT vendors usually prove in or out solutions for the rest of the economy. So it is with an eye toward the future that we report on how the financial services industry is using communications to add operational value and competitive differentiation. We find that these leaders have a broader view of IP telephony and UC, and are starting to wrap their minds around Communications-Enabled Business Processes (CEBP). This is not a Lippis Report solely for the financial services executive but for any business and IT leader.

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November 19th, 2007

Charles Kolodgy, Research Director, Security Products for IDC and Jim Doherty, Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President for CipherOptics join the Lippis Report Podcast to discuss network defenses and threat mitigation strategies that are effective in protecting IT assets. Charles Kolodgy believes that “protecting the network?” has reached a point of diminished returns. He believes that the biggest vulnerability that exists in most of today?’s networks is “protecting data?”. Charles acknowledges that there are two aspects of data protection: “data at rest?” and “data in motion?”. While many companies are currently engaged in projects that provide protection for “data at rest?”, most are neglecting the “data in motion?” aspect of protection altogether. I talk with Charles and Jim about this and all agree that it?’s time to pervasively encrypt data in motion.

November 19th, 2007

By Mirage Networks

IP telephony imposes specific requirements on Network Access Control solutions. IT leaders who have or are planning to deploy IP telephony should ensure that the requirements to support and protect the voice environment are included in their search for a strategic NAC vendor. They should seek products from those available today that protect IP telephony and data infrastructure equally, and allow traffic to pass without added latency.

This paper identifies three main challenges posed by IP telephony and details how the Mirage NAC solutions resolve the problems. The paper concludes that NAC vendors should leverage their visibility model to provide additional value to enterprises with IP telephony environments in play. In conjunction with Avaya’s DevConnect program, Mirage Networks engineered and tested a set of IP telephony policies designed to provide base level protection for any IP telephony environment. These policies are available out of the box to any Mirage customer, and provide a valuable starting point to truly securing enterprise voice-over environments.

November 19th, 2007

By Quintum Technologies, Inc.

VoIP can offer significant telecom cost savings, the convenience of managing one network instead of two, simplified provisioning of services to remote locations, and the ability to deploy a new generation of converged applications. But it can also create all kinds of problems for IT project teams, especially as they extend VoIP to remote offices. Quintum’s Tenor switching solutions prevent these problems simply and economically, and enable businesses to reap maximum returns on their convergence investments and avoid the hassles that have plagued enterprise VoIP roll-outs.

November 19th, 2007

By SyncVoice Communications, Inc.

Establishing a plan to transition voice communications to the data network is a complex process with many uncertainties. To ensure a successful transition to IP telephony, businesses are turning to products that analyze the current voice communication environment and the readiness of the data network to support real-time voice applications. Beyond simple data gathering and reporting, analytics identify and present useful information to aid in the decision making process. This paper will examine some of the challenges businesses face when planning their transition to IP telephony and will reveal the many advantages of using analytics before, during and after the convergence process.

November 6th, 2007

Over the past few years, while our heads were down working diligently, network infrastructure products were on a linear progression curve. Network infrastructure products have faster link speeds and greater backplane capacity while being more secure and mobile. But during this time a new network design paradigm was in the making. Gone are the days when IP addressing, switch placement, physical connections and their speed defined network design. Like a building foundation, the physical structure of networks such as the three-tier LAN structure of edge, distribution and core as well as routing being the key building block to WAN design, will remain the same for years to come;. The new network design model is based upon network service placement, pooled management, logical isolation, full utilization of all network assets, mobility, et al. These concepts are coming together under network virtualization, which strives to make ITinfrastructure more dynamic and responsive to business requirements. In this Lippis Report I define network virtualization and its associated building blocks. Not since I authored the “Internetwork Decade” back in the early 1990s has a new design model entered the industry. This Lippis Report is a white paper with embedded podcast and other references.

To understand the new design model for networks click here.

November 5th, 2007

Inbar Lasser-Raab, Director of Marketing for Network Systems at Cisco joins me to discuss the recently announced Empowered Branch 3. The Wall Street Journal noted correctly that Cisco is providing branch offices with the same level of networking services as headquarter offices with its large Empowered Branch 3 announcement. Cisco introduced new Catalyst 2960 switches with LAN Lite IOS plus the new Cisco 1861 Integrated Services Router or ISR for small branch offices and a flurry of additions to its flagship 2800, and 3800 ISRs. With the integration of IPS/NAC security, application intelligence, unified communications, and mobility into its branch office routers, netops is simplified while design choices are expanded. Inbar and I discuss the new network design options available to network architects afforded by the latest empowered branch announcement.

November 5th, 2007

By Avaya Global Services

As business communications technology becomes increasingly sophisticated and complex, the challenges – and benefits – of ensuring a tight linkage between investments and strategic business imperatives have never been greater.

November 5th, 2007

By Cisco Systems

Virtualization is not just a buzzword. It is a response to the growing deployment and ongoing management challenges associated with the sheer number and scale of current and future storage and server environments. The move toward virtualized storage and processing is real and has tangible impacts on storage product mix and spending patterns.

November 5th, 2007

By Cisco Systems

This white paper extensively reviews many of the server virtualization hosting benefits offered by VMware, the added value of Cisco network services in scaling virtual machines when hosting business critical and Internet-facing applications, and a real-time integrated provisioning approach between VMware’s VirtualCenter management platform and the recently released Cisco VFrame Data Center (VFrame DC) service orchestration platform. This is one of the most important changes in IT service delivery.

November 5th, 2007

By Cisco Systems

Server virtualization solutions such as VMware© Infrastructure are increasingly being deployed because of their effectiveness in addressing current challenges related to the cost and operation of data center server environments. VMware addresses these challenges by running multiple virtual machines on a single physical server, thus increasing utilization and simplifying operations, which reduces both operating expenses (OpEx) and capital expenditures (CapEx). However, widespread deployment of virtual machines can stress data center infrastructure designed to support a traditional server model, where one application runs on one physical server. Cisco Catalyst© switches and Cisco© MDS 9000 family storage area network (SAN) switches address these new design requirements and support functions that deliver predictable application performance, security, segmentation, and availability for dense virtual machine environments.

November 5th, 2007

By Cisco Systems

The unique virtualization capabilities of the Cisco® ACE Application Control Engine enable enterprises and service providers to accelerate and scale application deployments, reduce costs in the data center, simplify application delivery network architectures, and delegate application delivery management tasks.

November 4th, 2007

Nick Lippis will be delivering a keynote presentation at the Avaya DevConnect Developer conference taking place on November 27th and 28th. The conference is open to all developers including corporate IT staff and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs).

Day 1 of the conference will be held at the Sheraton Eatontown Hotel, Eatontown, New Jersey.

Day 2 of the conference will be held at Avaya Labs, in Lincroft, New Jersey.

Follow the link above to register.