The Lippis Report Analyses
A new issue of the Lippis Report is published approximately every two weeks. These reports contain not only links to the latest podcasts and industry white papers, case studies, and webinars, but also industry analysis from Nick Lippis, a world-reknowned authority on corporate computer networking, with over 15 years experience. Below you’ll find links to those analyses which are free to read and provide the opportunity for discussion as well.
In Lippis Report 172, I mentioned three huge trends that are starting to interact with each other creating a perfect storm that is gripping the tech industry. One of those trends is the creation of a software ecosystem in the networking market, thanks to the Clean Slate program out of Stanford University that has spawned the Software Defined Network (SDN) initiative and open controller protocol called OpenFlow. I spent a week in the Valley talking to people at Stanford and many industry executives from Cisco, Juniper, Marvell, Big Switch, Nicira, Arista, IBM and others. In this Lippis Report Research Note, I share with you what I learned. OpenFlow-based SDN is being both hyped and in its current state, limited, but it does represent a new paradigm that has the industry abuzz, filled with possibilities.
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Three strong trends are taking shape that are so powerful they threaten the status quo of the networking industry. These trends are more like storms than new markets; in fact they represent a major industry discontinuity. The first storm is happening now and is represented by merchant silicon for 10 and 40 GbE chips lowering the barrier of entry for new entrants in the Ethernet switch market. The second storm is much weaker but promises to be just as big, or bigger, than the first. This second storm is the creation of a software ecosystem in the networking industry, thanks to initiatives such as Software Defined Networks (SDN), OpenFlow, Arista Network’s EOS Central, etc. The third storm is the paradigm shift in enterprise IT spending thanks to mobile and cloud computing. These three storms are starting to interact and feed upon each other, forming a perfect storm in the networking industry. The perfect storm is already doing damage, as all major IT firms position product portfolios to navigate through it and prepare for its aftermath of making existing networking legacy.
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Even during the most difficult recession in decades, videoconferencing endpoint unit shipments increased according to Frost and Sullivan. In fact, unit and revenue growth rates are projected to be on a tear with an 18.3% and 16.5%, respectively, compound annual growth rate between 2009 and 2015. Why so bullish? Consider Camp Dresser McKee (CDM), a global water treatment design and build firm who, during the downturn, invested in high-quality video conferencing, not only to save on travel cost and executive wear and tear but to transform its business processes. CDM has been able to consolidate offices in regional centers for design engineers while close to customer projects outposts are linked back to centralized design centers via high-definition video conferencing. The value gained is far greater than travel cost savings as the capital spend on video conferencing has reduced corporate operational spend and increased efficiency while at the same time making them more competitive.
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There is no escaping the fact that cloud computing is a fundamental change in the IT industry that is in the early stages of its adoption curve. Yes, we hear a lot about Amazon’s Elastic Compute or EC2, Rackspace, Microsoft’s Azure, etc. And yes, there are multiple definitions and cloud markets such as PaaS, IaaS, SaaS, UCaaS, etc. So it’s no wonder that most IT executives think of cloud computing in terms of servers, real or virtualized, applications and power spend. And yes, the primary reason that cloud computing is a reality is because we can scale compute power. But for those building private and public clouds as well as those supplying them, a critical eye is turning toward networking as a fundamental differentiator. With IT giants hording some $300B in cash on hand, we expect networking to be a target for acquisition. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we review the large providers of IT and assess their networking capabilities.
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In the Lippis Report, we have discussed the fundamental changes shaping a new data center network architecture. These drivers are massive virtualization, a sea change in traffic patterns that are now dominated with east-west flows on top of existing north-south traffic, ultra low latency, the emergence of cloud spec data centers, etc. As a result, data center networking attributes are changing with requirements of traffic, steering in virtualized infrastructure, avoiding manual network changes as VMs move, removing oversubscription (thanks to spanning tree), streamlining network tiers to hasten east-west traffic flows, etc. The industry is responding to these changes and requirements with new approaches to data center networking, such as the Open Networking Foundation, Cisco’s FabricPath, Juniper’s QFabric, Brocade’s VCS, Avaya’s VENA, Nicira Networks’ network virtualization software, etc. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we explore a key technology to enabling two-tier network fabrics, and that’s link aggregation and its various approaches, including Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation Group, Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) and Shortest Path Bridging (SPB).
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Cisco recently launched its SecureX architecture that extends perimeter-based network security to secure modern IT, recognizing the huge growth in mobile and cloud computing. SecureX is a multi-layer architecture built upon Cisco’s AnyConnect client, its global footprint in real-time threat intelligence found in SIO (Security Intelligence Operation), Cisco TrustSec, including policy servers of NAC manager and server appliances, ASA firewall and the security enforcement features of its switches and routers. SecureX is an architecture to Cisco’s network security products and service to work together in an effort to create deeper defenses and contain exploit infestation if, and when, they occur. Fundamental to SecureX is the concept of “context aware†policy across the enterprise, including remote endpoint devices, centralized policy creation with distributed security device and network enforcement. SecureX provides for innovation injection points through APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for management and SIEM or Security Information and Event Management. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we explore SecureX with a focus on how context increases defenses and keeps IT assets safer.
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The data center switching market is heating up. To address the scale issues posed by mobile and cloud computing nearly every network vendor is launching its own version of a 10/40/100 GbE fabric to connect servers and storage to the internet. At the heart of this fabric is a two-tier (Fat-Tree) network made up of leaf/ToR and spine/Core switches. Here leafs connect servers and spines connect leafs while also being interconnected in a logical mesh. The protocols to create this logical mesh are based upon IS-IS link state routing, but each vendor is taking a unique approach with Cisco using its FastPath, Alcatel-Lucent and Avaya using SPB (802.1aq Shortest Path Bridging) while Brocade VDX is based upon TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links). Juniper recently announced QFabric but has not detailed what it’s using for logical meshing. At the center of new data center design are leaf and spine switches. In Lippis Report Research Note 166, we detailed the latest ToR switches. In this Lippis Report Research Note 167, we dive into performance and power consumption measurements plus the use of SPB of Alcatel-Lucent’s OmniSwitch 10K, a new entry into spine/core data center switching market.
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During December 6-10, 2010, the Lippis Report and Ixia conducted the industry’s first 10GbE data center switching evaluation of Top-of-Rack and Core Ethernet switches at the modern iSimCity lab in Santa Clara, CA. We evaluated Alcatel-Lucent’s OmniSwitch 10K, Arista’s 7504 Series Data Center Switch, BLADE Network Technologies’, an IBM Company, IBM BNT RackSwitch G8124 and IBM BNT RackSwitch G8264, Force10 Network’s S-Series S4810, Hitachi Cable’s Apresia 15000-64XL-PSR, Juniper Network’s EX Series EX8216 Ethernet Switch and Voltaire®’s Vantage™ 6048. We are conducting a second round of test scheduled for the week of April 4-8 at iSimCity, and it is open to all suppliers of 10GbE data center switching. We learned a lot about these products, both in the lab and out. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we dive into the Top-of-Rack 10GbE switches we tested as they represent a new generation of products that exhibit low power consumption, low latency, high performance and are all based upon new single chip designs from Broadcom, Marvell or Fulcrum Micro.
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There are powerful market forces changing IT delivery. IT application delivery is becoming increasingly centralized thanks to data center server virtualization plus mobile and cloud computing. Desktops are being virtualized, too, thanks to network speeds that deliver low latency and high bandwidth, creating a thin client user experience that is indistinguishable from a thick client but at lower desktop management cost. One serious implication of this concentration of IT in data centers is that a new IT security model is needed as mobility brings greater threat exposure while virtualization changes traffic patterns and the rules of security appliance placement. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we present a new model for IT security in the virtualized mobile and cloud-computing era.
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Any IT business leader knows that the single most important technology driving data center design change is server virtualization to the point that a virtual machine (VM) is now the data center building block. As server virtualization marches on until nearly every physical server has been virtualized, networking in a virtualized environment is being forced to fundamentally change too. By networking, I mean not only layer 2 and 3 forwarding but network services too, such as application controllers, WAN optimizes, firewalls, etc., which are fundamental for mission critical application performance, cost reduction and high application availability especially where service level agreements are required.
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In an effort to offer a multi-vendor SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) solution, Cisco is placing its SIEM product, CS-MARS, in end-of-life and in its place, offering the industry its first SIEM ecosystem. Cisco acquired MARS six years ago in December 2004. MARS provided traditional event management and security monitoring along with limited forensic capabilities and compliance reporting. But the market demanded a broader cross-vendor SIEM solution rather than a SIEM focused primarily on Cisco products. In response Cisco has launched a SIEM ecosystem to support deep event monitoring, forensics and compliance reporting across a heterogeneous enterprise network. IT has also expanded the role of its Cisco Security Manager or CSM to support policy management and troubleshooting across a wider range of Cisco products. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we examine the new distribution of security responsibilities that now stretch across Cisco CSM and its new SIEM ecosystem with an eye toward stronger defense of IT assets.
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Ethernet networking is now the single most important data center technology to assure the new IT economic model of centralized application delivery. Yes that’s right—Ethernet as the data center fabric is the stability point in data center design that will dictate if a data center or cloud facility can scale to support huge application and storage traffic loads. And if you think that Ethernet switch performance is not important then you would be as right as the engineers who designed the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we explain why network performance of data center Ethernet switching products matter more now than ever.
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For as long as I have been following Avaya—and it’s been a decade since it was spun out of Lucent back in October of 2000—it has undergone three fundamental transitions. First, Don Peterson, Avaya’s first CEO, managed to fix Avaya’s balance sheet after Lucent saddled it with heavy debt. He also pointed the way toward IP telephony in his six years at the helm. Then came Louis D’Ambrosio, with high energy and confidence, to point Avaya in the direction of unified communications, and a software and services business model, while bringing the company private in 2007 through TPG Capital and Silver Lake Partners. In 2008, Charlie Giancarlo became chairman, while Kevin Kennedy took the helm, ushering in a new wave of innovation and nimbleness while re-engineering sales and channels plus absorbing the Nortel enterprise business. Yes, what a long, strange trip it’s been, but Avaya is now the most innovative in its history and well positioned for the post-recession business cycle. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we examine Avaya’s prospects and challenges.
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Little-known Voltaire is a powerhouse in High Performance Computing (HPC) networking with a full line of InfiniBand switches and performance software. It has been in this market since 1997 and has amassed big system partnerships to distribute its products such as HP, IBM, Oracle, NEC, et al. But seeing the multibillion-dollar market for 10Gb and higher Ethernet switching as the new high performance data center fabric has motivated Voltaire to enter this mainstream market. Note the InfiniBand market is slightly north of $200m annually. Its motivation has materialized in the introduction of two top-of-rack switches and one core switch plus Unified Fabric Manager software for physical and virtual infrastructure management and Voltaire Messaging Accelerator (VMA) software which reduces application latency increases application performance. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we profile Voltaire and layout its strengths and challenges.
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