The Lippis Report

To create a seamless collaboration environment for mobile and remote workers, Avaya has fully embraced mobile computing by integrating Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Symbian mobile endpoints plus Windows and Mac computing into its Aura core infrastructure. In this podcast Avaya’s VP of Unified Communications Product Marketing, Nancy Maluso, discusses Avaya’s UC mobile collaboration strategy and how IT business leaders can put this technology to work in their corporation.

Camp Dress McKee or CDM is a consulting, engineering, construction and operations firm delivering exceptional service to public and private clients worldwide. CDM’s traditional areas of expertise include water and the environment. In this podcast, I talk with Peter Palmisano, CIO, CDM, about how CDM is using HD videoconferencing to speed business processes and reduce operational cost.

The UC market is rapidly moving toward a cloud service for the small to medium business (SMB) market, thanks to Siemens Enterprise Communications and others offering powerful communications and office productivity software delivered as a service. Cloud services offer the SMB market with some of the same IT services that large enterprises enjoy, but without the complexity and cost. For example, Siemens has been working with Google to offer its OpenScape Cloud Service that integrates features into Google applications, like click to call/conference, etc. In this Lippis Report podcast, I talk with Paul McMillan, Director UC Technical Vision & Strategy at Siemens Enterprise Communications, about the SMB market and how its OpenScape Cloud Services is offering new, innovative solutions that allows these firms to be more competitive and agile.

Arista Networks is at the forefront of public and private data center cloud networking, having most of its customers building extremely demanding infrastructure. As such it is working with early adopters and sees the problems that most other networking firms do not. This places Arista in a position to offer solutions first to market. In this Lippis Report video podcast, I talk with Jayshree Ullal, President and CEO of Arista Networks, as we discuss its virtualization strategy.

As IT operations become more complex, it steals productivity. Unchecked complexity slows down new applications from being deployed or virtualized, elongates troubleshooting, stresses operational staff, creates compliance vulnerabilities and shrinks IT operational budgets. All IT departments seek to manage this complexity inflation before it impacts business processes. One of the largest drivers of complexity inflation is the growing rate of “IP addresses and network change management requirements.” The fact is that IT business leaders must deploy dynamic IT solutions to enable their businesses to support flexible business processes to address market dynamics. Without automated tools to facilities change management, complexity inflation simply eats up IT operations. In this Lippis Report podcast, I talk with Steve Garrison, Vice President, Marketing for Infoblox, about solutions to tame complexity inflation with automated IP address management and network change management.

Adding new applications in a data center has become highly complex thanks to routing paths set-up to provide connectivity/reach of Layer 4-7 network services and their associated configuration and policy set-up for specific applications. Then, once the application is operational it’s hard to virtualize it and move it via v-motion while keeping set-up and policies intact especially routing paths. This is a difficult problem riddled with complexity and associated cross-administrative operational cost limiting the number of applications that can be virtualized. A fundamental new approach to networking is needed to solve this and Cisco has been thinking about it for some time now. In this Lippis Report podcast I talk with Gary Kinghorn Product Marketing Manager Data Center Solutions Marketing at Cisco Systems as we discuss Cisco’s Unified Network Services strategy.

Andy Bechtolsheim, Founder, Chief Development Officer and Chairman of Arista Networks, joins me to discuss how the public and private data center cloud network market is emerging and the new type of networking it’s requiring.

Move a Virtual Machine (VM) from one physical server to another, and network port profile, VLANs, security settings, etc., have to be reconfigured. Many networking companies haven’t taken the critical step of giving complete visibility and control of the VM lifecycle from an infrastructure perspective. But with XNV, Extreme Networks is bringing this functionality and visibility to network administrators, tracking VMs and applying policy as they move throughout the network. Shehzad Merchant, Senior Director for Strategy at Extreme Networks, joins me for a discussion about Extreme’s approach to network automation and visibility of virtualized infrastructure through its XNV software module.

IT business leaders are faced with a great economic shift, while at the same time are afforded the opportunity of a shift in IT delivery models. Business leaders must balance maintaining their current infrastructure, while exploring these IT delivery innovations. Most importantly, IT business leaders need to use their IT budget, approximately 4% of corporate spend, to significantly enhance and reduce the other 96% of corporate spend. But it’s not just an economic calculus that is diving post great recession IT spending. IT leaders need to engineer their delivery to be flexible to support current business growth, ongoing change, and long-term business goals. Robert Taylor, VP of HP Enterprise Services joins me to discuss what he has learned from HP’s global 2000 customers as they emerge from the economic downturn and prepare for a new business cycle with IT.

Move a Virtual Machine (VM) from one physical server to another, and network port profiles, VLANs, security settings, etc., have to be manually reconfigured, adding cost, delay, security issues and rigidity to what should be an adaptive infrastructure. BLADE Network Technologies’ data center 1/10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet blade and top-of-rack switches incorporate what its calls VMready with Virtual Vision that enables data centers to deploy VM-aware networks that automate network change management as VMs come online and move between physical servers within or across data centers. Vikram Mehta, CEO of BLADE Network Technologies (BLADE), joins me to talk about BLADE’s data center network virtualization strategy, plus the company’s pending acquisition by IBM. It’s a great talk, and we hit lots of industry nerves in this thought-provoking podcast.

Gigabit Ethernet networking has expanded to desktop connections in campus networking and to dense server connectivity in data centers. In short gigabit Ethernet has become mainstream with multiple use cases driving its growth. But a new generation of gigabit Ethernet switches is needed to satisfy market demands with attributes such as PoE-Plus, stacking, data center cooling, power efficiency and more. It’s these attributes and more that Extreme is delivering with its new Summit X460 Gigabit Ethernet switch. I talk with Darius Goodall, Senior Manager Product Marketing at Extreme Networks about the Summit X460 and the new network designs it enables.

Avaya has developed a unique approach to branch office networking with the introduction of its Advanced Gateway 2330. Previous to Avaya’s acquisition of Nortel’s Enterprise Solutions business, its branch office solution was focused on communications, but now it has computer-networking capabilities that is manifesting into a powerful branch office portfolio offering. I talk with Michael Fitzgerald, Portfolio Leader of the Unified Branch at Avaya, about Avaya’s investment in branch office networking with particular focus on network designs its approach affords.

Enjoy, Nick

With energy efficiency and sustainability mandates being issued by government officials and corporation boards, IT vendors have focused engineering resources to deliver products with increased feature sets that consume less energy. But one company in particular has taken its core competency and found a way to not only make its own business more energy efficient but everything it touches too. That company is Cisco Systems. Laura Finkelstein, Senior Director of Switching Marketing at Cisco Systems, is my guest as we discuss Cisco’s Borderless Green service and the value it delivers to both IT business and government leaders.

Before HP purchased 3Com it would seldom engage in discussion about the future of networking. It was product focused. But now in an exclusive interview with Mr. Saar Gillai, Vice President of Advanced Technology Group & CTO of HP Networking, HP opens up and talks freely about industry trends it’s watching and most importantly influencing. These trends are guiding HP investment in networking with hopes of market share gain, thought leadership and increased industry influence. It’s a fascinating interview into the mind of HP Networking.