Redefining the Branch Office With SD-WAN

By Shamus McGillicuddy on May 5, 2017 3:36:32 PM

Editor’s Note: This blog post is sponsored by Citrix. The ideas and analysis are entirely the authors own.

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Cisco introduces “Digital Building” Catalyst switches for IoT

By Shamus McGillicuddy on Feb 10, 2017 5:03:17 PM

Cisco recently announced a new series of Catalyst “Digital Building” switches. These Catalyst switches are designed for connecting and powering Internet of Things (IoT) devices and systems in smart buildings and other related environments. For example, one design innovation is the use of a separate power plate for Power over Ethernet (PoE), so even when an administrator reboots the device or updates its software, the switch will continue to deliver power to peripheral devices such as smart lighting and surveillance cameras.

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Juniper founder steps away to run new startup Fungible: What is Fungible?

By Shamus McGillicuddy on Feb 10, 2017 10:45:30 AM

What is Fungible, Inc., the new startup created by Juniper Networks’ founder Pradeep Sindhu, working on?

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Why It’s Never Too Soon to Think about IPv6 Network Management

By Shamus McGillicuddy on Sep 9, 2015 3:23:37 PM

Most network managers are still many years away from turning on Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) in their enterprise local area networks (LANs). Private non-routable IPv4 address ranges can happily exist behind a network address translation (NAT) gateway for the foreseeable future. However, things could change. At any time, someone above your pay grade might [...]

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Know when it’s time to replace open source and freeware infrastructure management tools

By Shamus McGillicuddy on Aug 28, 2015 2:02:09 PM

Many small and midsized IT organizations rely on a mix of freeware and open source software to manage their infrastructure. These free tools can be effective and economical choices for smaller networks. But how do you know when it’s time to upgrade to a commercial product? Scale is one of the first indicators that you [...]

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InterMapper Application for Splunk Answers Need for Log Analytics in Network Management

By Shamus McGillicuddy on Aug 28, 2015 2:02:08 PM

You may not have noticed, but log analytics has become table stakes for network management toolsets. Last year, Enterprise Management Associates® (EMA™) surveyed network managers about the data sources that have become important to engineering and operations tasks. Log files consistently scored higher than anything else, including flow data, packet analysis, and SNMP metrics. Fifty-nine [...]

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Cisco’s Big Data Analytics Vision: Some Data Will Be Distributed Forever

By Shamus McGillicuddy on Jun 12, 2015 12:26:17 PM

Champions of big data analytics extoll the virtues of massive data stores. Enterprises have so much unstructured data that could help them improve operations and generate new revenue, they say. The more bytes, the better. Some might assume that enterprises will simply push every byte they can find into a Hadoop cluster or data warehouse. [...]

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Open network management is the focus on spring ONUG meeting

By Shamus McGillicuddy on May 21, 2015 1:19:20 PM

The Open Networking User Group (ONUG) is a community of IT executives that are using their combined buying power to influence the networking industry. Members hail from companies such as Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Fidelity Investments. ONUG’s goal is to specify requirements and reference architectures for products that are open, more affordable and more agile than what vendors traditionally offer.

Over its first two years of existence, ONUG has focused on software-defined WAN (SDWAN), network virtualization overlays and network service virtualization (also known as network functions virtualization or NFV).  Last week, ONUG convened its spring meeting at Columbia University, where its focus expanded into network management and operations. ONUG introduced three new working groups that will specify open networking requirements and begin testing vendor solutions in various management areas.

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SDN and Network Management at ONUG

By Shamus McGillicuddy on May 12, 2015 9:13:36 AM

As an analyst who focuses on network management research, I am particularly intrigued by software-defined networking (SDN). As SDN architectures are deployed in data centers, local area networks and WANs, network management practices will have to evolve. For instance, SDN may make it easier for cloud administrators to provision network services and connectivity for a new application, but how do you ensure that your new programmable network remains compliant with configuration controls and policies? Is your performance management tool able to model and monitor an SDN controller? If you have traditionally relied about appliance-based load balancers and firewalls in your data center, how do you monitor and manage those network functions when they become virtualized services that are as mobile and dynamic as the workloads they serve?

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Docker acquires SocketPlane for multi-host container networking

By Shamus McGillicuddy on Mar 4, 2015 2:36:21 PM

Docker Inc. acquired networking startup SocketPlane today, indicating that Docker wants to accelerate the development of networking APIs and software that will help network managers operationalize production Linux containers. Docker is a suite of open source software that helps developers and admins manage and scale their use of Linux containers. Containers offer the same resource [...]

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