The Lippis Report

Featured Download: 10GbE DC Fabric Test Vendor Announcement

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Nick Lippis of the Lippis Report announces the participating vendors in the 10GbE Data Center Network Fabric test at the iSimCity lab during the week of Dec 6-10, 2010.  Watch it here

Featured Download: An Open Industry Network Performance Test Evaluating 10 Gigabit Ethernet Switching Prospectus

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Our industry is ramping up to build private and public cloud infrastructure, but IT architects do not have comparative 10Gigabit Ethernet Switch performance information to assist them in purchase decisions and product differentiation. New data center Ethernet fabric network design requires low latency, high performance under north-south plus east-west flows, low power consumption and minimum number of network tiers. During past industry cycles open industry tests contributed to growing the network market by shortening sales cycles due to the elimination of IT departments conducting internal performance test. In addition, performance question obstacles were eliminated during the sales cycle thanks to reliable industry data being available, speeding up market adoption. This was true in the LAN plus bridge/router industry battles as well as every major Ethernet switch evolution. There is no broad industry comparative 10GE modular switch performance test available.

Lippis Enterprises has developed a series of open industry performance tests and teamed with Ixia for their execution. The goal of the test is to provide the industry with comparative performance test data across all 10Gigabit Ethernet switch providers. While the main test is focused on modular switching products, fixed configuration switches are welcome too. The final test report will profile each supplier and segment products based upon modular or fixed configuration.

Download the prospectus now and sign up while there’s still room

Featured Download: Nortel Liquidates & Industry Moves On

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Zeus Kerravala of Yankee joins me to discuss the many changes occurring in the industry including Nortel’s liquidation and Cisco’s huge influence over the industry as it reshapes to respond to its UCS and data center 3.0 initiatives. We discuss HP’s new relationships with MSFT and Alcatel-Lucent, Brocade, Enterasys, Extreme, Force10, IBM, Juniper, and much more. We talk winners and losers and provide insight into the major trends that are focusing on new corporate IT buying behavior. Enjoy.

Featured Download: Cisco’s WAN Advantage

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Along with a turbulent macro economic cycle comes business rationalization and in networking the wide area offers a unique opportunity to deliver value both in terms of operational efficiency and business initiative alignment. The branch WAN as been pieced together usually site by site without a comprehensive plan as branches are connected with inconsistent WAN Services. IT planners are being offered an opportunity to implement a common set of WAN Services embedded within routers such as UC, WAN optimization, security etc., which promise to lower operational spend, align business initiatives and policy while delivering Local Area Networks (LANs) like application performance over the WAN. Tere’ Bracco Senior Marketing Manager for Network Systems and Security at Cisco joins me to discuss Cisco’s new WAN Advantage initiative that delivers a common set of WAN Services between ASR and ISR routers.

Featured Download: Can Collaboration Deliver a $100 Billion Stimulus Package in 2009?

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By Cisco Systems

In this ten-minute video (64MB download) with Alan Cohen, Cisco’s VP of Enterprise Solutions, he makes the strong argument that collaboration solutions can deliver $100B worth of stimulus through productivity gains and cost avoidance. Alan also builds upon this argument in a two-part blog found here:

1. Part 1
2. Part 2

Featured Download: Lippis and Kerravala on Cisco’s Unified Computing, Nortel’s bankruptcy and more

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While world governments figure out how to save the banking system our industry is changing at a pace I haven’t seen since the mid-1990s. Nortel is bankrupt, Cisco is making a huge announcement the week of March 15th, Force10 and Turnin have merged, Cisco launched EnergyWise, HP ProCurve launched ProCurve One, Juniper announced its EX2500 and Stratus, Brocade extended its DCX backbone, Mallanox launched a converged fabric gateway. IBM is getting close to Juniper while HP TSG fortifies its data center position with EDS services, etc. Zeus Kerravala, Senior VP, Global Enterprise Research for the Yankee Group joins me to discuss the blizzard of announcements and changes taking place in our industry and offer our opinions and guidance on how to make sense of an industry in fundamental change.

Featured Download: Conserving Energy Consumption via The Corporate Network

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IT suppliers are delivering products that consume less energy while offering new IT delivery approaches such as data center virtualization to reduce cooling and power demands. Cisco Systems has taken a broader approach to energy management by delivering a power command and control architecture called Cisco EnergyWise which seeks to provide business and IT leaders with the tools to measure, manage and control the power consumption of all devices connected to the corporate network. Further, EnergyWise seeks to connect facility heating, air conditioning, lighting and other non-IT systems—systems that consume the largest proportion of corporate energy—in an effort to provide IT leaders with the tools and means to manage their overall energy consumption. Berna Devrim, Sr. Manager, Access Switching Marketing at Cisco Systems is my guest as we discuss Cisco’s EnergyWise initiative and what it means to business and IT leaders who seek to control energy consumption.

Featured Download: The Network’s Sustainability Effect

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Marie Hattar, Vice President of Network Systems and Security Solution Marketing at Cisco Systems, is my guest as we discuss the sustainable effect afforded by networks and communications. Networking has always contributed to green initiatives by providing teleworking, collaboration, telepresence and other ways of organizing people and workflow independent of geographic location. But networking is now taking the role of power management and control for IT and non-IT systems offering one of the most powerful sustainability tools available. Find out how by listening to this podcast.

Featured Download: Increasing Corporate Value Though Integrated Networks and Applications

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Enterprise networks, especially branch office networks, have experienced a level of service integration over the past five years that has delivered lower acquisition and operational cost while increasing the number of services available to branch office employees. Branch office routers now include switching, WLANs, PoE, network security, WAN optimization, VPN, unified communications and advanced routing which increase application performance over thin wide area network links. In this podcast we explain the next generation of branch office optimization, which is the integration of applications into the network fabric. The networking industry has started to open up its software in the form of SDKs and APIs. Cisco, Juniper, Extreme, 3Com and the open source routing initiatives are all allowing developers to write to defined router software interfaces. The concepts here are based upon research contained within an industry paper available for download here. We explain integrated networks and applications in this podcast and provide recommendations to exploit it for corporate advantage to business and IT leaders.

Featured Download: Top Ten 2009 Predictions

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Zeus Kerravala of The Yankee Group and I make our annual IT predictions. This year we make ten predictions ranging from data center/cloud/virtualization, green IT, the fate of UC, the new IT organization design to which firms will be gone by the end of the year. Enjoy, Nick

Featured Download: How To Prevent Data Loss From Compromising Your Company

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While the global economy slows down, network security spending continues to be robust as business and IT leaders seek to protect corporate assets, thus avoiding a major distraction when market focus is needed most. Recent analyst numbers suggest that data loss can result from myriad corporate security vulnerabilities. It’s getting harder to protect a company’s intellectual property as the modern concept of work is based upon anywhere and anytime electronic collaboration and the borderless enterprise. Nasrin Rezai, Senior Director of Information Security for Cisco Systems is my guest as we discuss PPT or People, Process and Technology as the strategy to mitigate data from being lost or stolen from your company.

To understand best practices of data loss prevention, you need to listen to this podcast.

Featured Download: Over 300 Service Providers Now Offering Cisco Based Managed Services for Branch Offices

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There are many facts that point to continuing growth in branch office deployments, and the realization that application delivery has become data-center and branch office focused. Delivering business innovation to branch office locations has always been challenging with few, if any, IT personnel on site, inconsistent application and service delivery among branches and employee demands for higher levels of business services that are available at headquarter facilities. In the current difficult macro-economic scenario, managed services offer the favorable trade-off of capital plus salary cost for facilities cost, lowering operational spend. Joel Conover, Sr. Manager, Network Systems Marketing at Cisco Systems joins me to discuss options available to IT leaders to accelerate business innovation while lowering operational spend through managed services delivered by service providers harnessing the power of Cisco’s Empowered Branch solution.

If you are looking for a new model to deliver branch office innovation and cut capital costs, then you have to listen to this podcast.

Featured Download: Business Value Creation Through Branch 2.0

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Many business thought leaders are exploring strategies to leverage their branch assets to increase revenues and improve the branch office customer experience by mitigating branch office constraints. These thought leaders are collectively thinking in terms of Branch 2.0, which from a real estate and staffing point of view is a smaller footprint but rich in information technology (IT). Branch 2.0 offers a solution to the business challenges of staff skill levels, right here, right now customer transaction requirements, broad lack of loyalty thanks to increased competition and using the large branch office footprint to up- and cross-sell customers while gaining new ones. The communications industry is driving new value in branch offices with Branch 2.0, which leverages communications and IT to remove the above branch office constraints and improve corporate performance. The combination of business and communication technology trends is creating the next generation branch office. The Branch Office 2.0 concept and its associated business value are developed in white paper available for download at http://lippisreport.com/2008/08/business-value-creation-through-branch-20/ which contains industry recommendations so that business and IT leaders may exploit it for corporate advantage. We use retail and financial services as examples, but Branch 2.0 may be applied to any branch or store facility in any geographic theater.

Featured Download: American Century Investments Invests In Cisco Virtual Office Solution

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Mr. Michael Whaley, Network Engineering Specialist at American Century Investments is my quest as we discuss American Century Investment’s teleworking strategy and solution. American Century Investments was looking to reduce the operational burden of supporting a large teleworking population while delivering an office IT experience to those working from home. Mr. Whaley describes how American Century Investments paid for a new teleworking solution with wide area facilities cost savings while increasing security, employee productivity and reducing IT management’s operational spend. It’s a fascinating podcast, if you’re developing a teleworking plan, then you need to listen in.