Broadband Developments

I cornered Doug Gourlay Senior Director of Product Marketing of Cisco’s Datacenter Business Unit, at the Infrastructure 2.0 event to answer my question about what he means when he says “The Modernization of the Datacenter”.

Question (John Furrier): What do you say to all the skeptics who say that you’re promoting the modernization of the datacenter because you’re in that business and that it really isn’t a problem? Is this just virtualization or is there another issue?

Answer (Doug Gourlay): It’s absolutely a systems approach. There are multiple factors. Lets take Moore’s law for instance which has proven true over the past 30 years. In datacenters you want it to last at least 10 -15 yrs. With 750x processor improvements under Moore’s law in the last 12 years yet cooling efficiencies has only grown 64x for IT assets - that is an 11 or 12x disparity. That’s why you see datacenters with racks designed to cool 4000 to 6000 watts. If I took a set of blades today I would need to cool it with only 30,000 watts. The reality is that we can draw more power then we can efficiently cool today. You either run out of space so — we made denser equipment; you ran out of cooling capacity — you bought more crack units; you ran out of power and the power company will NOT give you more. So when we talk about a modernization were talking about the underlying physical facilities that we built are being obsoleted almost every 5 yrs.

Question (John Furrier): It’s not just a Cisco issue it’s more of an environmental issue around the datacenter themselves ..the raw infrastructure the physical plant or whatever to equipment.

Answer (Doug Gourlay): That’s the biggest compelling event. how do i enable the IT infrastructure to make that facility infrastructure last longer.

To View the Entire Infrastructure 2.0 video feed click here (sorry registration required).

I had a chance to meet with Doug Gourlay, Senior Director of Cisco’s Datacenter Business Unit, to ask him about what he thinks of Infrastructure 2.0.

Very interesting response.  I have a few more segments:  Modernization of the Data Center and What Cisco thinks of the phrase “Moving up the stack”.

To view the entire Cisco event in video you can go here - Click here for the Cisco Infrastructure 2.0 event.

Enjoy the video (less than 2 mins).

Here is the press release from the Infoblox and Cisco event that I went to yesterday. I got some good video from Cisco on their ‘moving up the stack’ views and what ‘modernize your datacenter means’.. Doug Gourley was on the panel and I had a chance to talk to him after. I was impressed with Cisco guys Doug Gourley and Omar Sultan both are active bloggers at Cisco. I was impressed with their social outreach on doing some collaborative blogging together. I’ll have that video up tomorrow.

Meanwhile here’s the text from the Edge DNS solutions from Cisco that now includes Infoblox. In essence reduces the amount of hardware at the branch.. very ‘green’ solution since reduction of equipment and power are big focuses right now in enterprise infrastructure.

SANTA CLARA, CA–(MARKET WIRE)–Jan 15, 2009 — Infoblox Inc., a global leader in appliance-based platforms for highly secure, manageable and robust core network services — including domain name resolution (DNS), IP address assignment (DHCP), and IP address management (IPAM) — announced today in a live video web cast “Unleashing the Power of Dynamic Infrastructure” event that its virtual software module is now available on the Cisco Application Extension Platform (AXP) for the Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR).

Now, enterprises can take advantage of Infoblox’s core network services, offering powerful, cost-effective and highly reliable and manageable DNS, DHCP and IPAM services on the Cisco ISR. The solution is ideal for highly distributed organizations, such as retail, healthcare and manufacturing verticals with multiple branch offices and a critical requirement for local survivability and automation of core network services at those sites.

“For robust delivery and management of core network services at the branch office, companies that have already standardized on Cisco’s ISR for branch routing can easily add Infoblox’s virtual software to the system,” said Jon Oltsik, Senior Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “This can be especially prudent for organizations that consider local survivability and automation at the branch a high priority, but are strapped with requirements to reduce footprint, and operational and administrative costs.”

Further, highly reliable and automated core network services provide the essential foundation for the transition from a static network — configured largely by hand and tracked with spreadsheets — to an intelligent and dynamic infrastructure, which can automatically, fluidly and seamlessly adjust to movement of users and servers. This is critical to support advance applications like virtualization and cloud computing at the data center and branch offices.

“Driven by new system and endpoint demands as well as new IT initiatives like cloud computing and virtualization, network infrastructure will need to meet new automation and intelligence requirements,” said Infoblox Vice President of Marketing Richard Kagan. “Infoblox’s robust core network services platform in conjunction with the Cisco ISR, which provides an excellent combination of resiliency, management automation and flexibility, can provide organizations the dynamic infrastructure necessary to support their new system, end point and IT initiatives.”

“Integrating Infoblox’s technology into Cisco Integrated Services Routers can provide local survivability of essential services like DNS, DHCP and IPAM at the branch office, reduce footprint and operational costs, while optimizing the network for greater visibility and control,” said Rahul Tripathi, Director, Cisco Access Routing Technology Group. “In teaming with Infoblox, customers with millions of Cisco ISRs are provided with intelligent core network services that will help drive their transition to an even more automated and dynamic branch office offering.”
Availability

Infoblox virtual software for the Cisco ISRs is currently available from Infoblox’s global network of channel partners.

Cisco and Infoblox will showcase the joint solution at several upcoming industry events:

– “Unleashing the Power of Dynamic Infrastructure in the Data Center
and Beyond” - a live virtual meeting Thursday, Jan. 15, 2009,
featuring Cisco Senior Director Doug Gourlay, Cisco Director,
Rahul Tripathi and Infoblox CTO Stuart Bailey; to register, visit:
http://www.infoblox.com/news/event-detail.cfm?eventID=84.
– Cisco Networkers - Infoblox and Cisco are demonstrating the solution
in booth #E16 at the Cisco Networkers, January 26-29, Barcelona,
Spain; for more information, or to arrange an appointment, visit:
http://www.infoblox.com/news/events.cfm.

About Infoblox Appliances and Grid Technology

Infoblox pioneered core network services appliances and delivered a number of industry firsts, including the first appliances to integrate DNS, DHCP, and IPAM, TFTP/FTP/HTTP file delivery, NTP, and other services in hardened, easy-to-manage network appliances.

Infoblox grids link a group of member appliances into a unified, centrally managed system with unique resilience and automation functions. For example, the software for all appliances in a grid can be updated in a single operation. Parameters for DNS, DHCP, and all network services can be set at a grid-wide level. Data from all members and services can be viewed and managed from a single location. Additionally, advanced functionality, such as automated failover to and from disaster recovery sites, is built in.

For more information about Infoblox products, visit: http://www.infoblox.com/products/.

About Infoblox

Infoblox delivers highly reliable and manageable platforms for core network services like domain name resolution (DNS), IP address assignment (DHCP), IP address management (IPAM) and more. Infoblox solutions — essential for the move from static networks to dynamic infrastructure and applications — are used by over 2,700 organizations worldwide, including over 100 of the Fortune 500. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., and operates in more than 30 countries.
Contact:

Media Contacts:
Jennifer Jasper
Infoblox
408.625.4309
Email Contact

Here is an opinion piece written by John Chambers CEO of Cisco.  Talk about a vision for Broadband no better to post on Broadband Developments.

President-elect Barack Obama’s ambitious economic recovery plan has a goal to create 3 million American jobs in the next two years. Broadband is a part of the answer.

Broadband has the potential to transform our country. It will create jobs in the growth sectors of our economy — jobs that are driving the collaboration and interaction economy. Obama deserves our full support as he looks to revitalize our economy. An economic stimulus package that focuses on infrastructure must put America’s broadband infrastructure at the head of the list. We have the opportunity to bring broadband to those who do not have access to it today and to dramatically improve the quality and speed of existing broadband to 21st century standards. Broadband is the highway to our future.

Obama understands the correlation between broadband and job growth and will be the first U.S. leader to execute a nationwide broadband plan that will spur innovation, productivity, growth and collaboration for generations to come.

He has discussed using the proposed stimulus package to rebuild our aging physical infrastructure of roads, bridges, water and energy systems. This is important and needed. If we want a new 21st century economy and society, he also recognizes that broadband connectivity is the additional infrastructure that is essential to our future.

Broadband’s economic power derives from two sources. The first is reach — how many people are using broadband at work, at home and in the community. The second is speed — the speeds of the connection determine the impact it has on user behavior. We are all aware of how little things have changed over the years when it comes to broadband rankings for the United States. We continue to fall behind.In 2002, TechNet, a group of technology executives that I co-founded with John Doerr and Jim Barksdale, called for 100 Mbs broadband adoption in 100 million American homes and small businesses by 2010. We are clearly not going to reach that goal, but the leadership from government that we asked for seven years ago still applies. We need to upgrade existing infrastructure to 20/50/100 Mbs and there should be tax credits provided to do this. And to prevent the disparity between the technical haves and have-nots from widening, we need funding to promote and provide broadband in unserved and underserved areas.

Including broadband in a stimulus package is not just about the longer-term vision — it will immediately create jobs, with the Communications Workers of America estimating that 97,500 jobs result from every $5 billion spent on broadband infrastructure. Longer term, an increase in broadband usage in the United States of 10 percent would add more than 2 million jobs, according to the group Connected Nation. And in California alone, increasing broadband usage could add 1.8 million jobs over the next 10 years, according to the Sacramento Regional Research Institute.

But it is more than a mere connection. Behavior is dictated by Internet speeds.

Imagine what the United States could accomplish if our broadband speeds were not just competitive, but leading-edge. Imagine what broadband could do for health care: A medical specialist in Cleveland, Ohio, could do a virtual house call via high-definition video to a homebound retiree in Henderson, Nev. We have the technology now, but we need the connectivity. Imagine applying that same technology to education and changing the very nature of the way students learn — or the way we train workers.

Our economic challenges are too dire to merely rely on Band-Aids. It’s time to broadband our economy. The innovation, the productivity and the growth that is possible with a proper broadband infrastructure is nearly limitless. The time to act is now. Doing so will not only help stabilize and stimulate a recovery but create the foundation for long-term prosperity and competitiveness.

News of Nortel’s bankruptcy filing hit the news yesterday.  No one is really surprised.
First thoughts, you can bet that giants like Cisco and Avaya will be courting some Nortel customers.  The truth of it is, Nortel while they have some great products – was not run well.   Hopefully this status allows them to have time to regroup.

But honestly, after their peak in 99-2000 it has all been downhill.  This is hardly a surprise to many.  From the dotcom downturn, to the bogus earning scandal in 2003, and an inability to turn it around for the last several years, this appears to be a swan song.

The Unified Communications properties may be amongst the strongest chips the company may have as it can be anticipated that it will sell pieces of itself off.  The question is in these economic times, what company would possibly have the cash to pick this up?  Natural speculation, but this much is clear, Nortel’s UC technologies and clientele present an opportunity that someone out there will not be able to resist.  We know Microsoft is aligned with Nortel.  John Fontana explores this relationship in his NetworkWorld post.

“Microsoft said it is waiting for more information before it can evaluate the fallout. “All ICA offerings are currently available to customers and no changes are planned at this time,” said a company spokesperson via e-mail. “We are not in the position to assess the impact of the ICA until we understand Nortel’s plans.”

Juniper may be out there, Cisco, and on and on, but again it all comes down to who can pony up the cash in a tight, but loosening credit market.  This story will surely evolve..

Reposted from my Furrier.org blog.  Network World is reporting that Cisco has done deal with Infoblox for managing DNS at the edge. In enterprise speak this is about the branch office - in tech speak this is about intelligent addressing and control of the edge. Infoblox vNIOS™ software for Cisco Integrated Services Routers (ISRs) empowers branch offices by automating core network services, providing the performance benefits of local service delivery with unparalleled resiliency and centralized visibility while reducing branch network capital and operating expenses.

Here is Yankee group perspective worth noting on this Cisco Infoblox announcement…“Remember the ‘Trapper Keeper?’ That’s what Cisco’s routers are becoming for enterprise branch office: a single place to keep all critical network applications and services,” says Phil Hochmuth, senior analyst at Yankee Group. “This is being enabled largely by the AXP, which allows organizations to cram as many services — even ones beyond Cisco’s own scope, such as Infoblox IP address management — onto a single platform.” …hmmm DNS in core and edge routers.. hmmm policy at the edge… interesting.

There is a bigger picture here. DNS is the small little Internet feature that will be the focal point for the upcoming Internet war between Google and networking vendors including Cisco. Why? DNS is the Internet Oxygen. DNS made Google - no DNS - no URLs; no URLs - no Web; no Web and URLs -no search. Here we go again except instead of web pages and search, we have web services up for grabs - that includes enterprise and cloud services.

Having a technology that is automated and programmable (i.e. policy) will gives the winner the viable solution to deliver the next generation search and application paradigm from advertising to brokering transactions.

Over the past 8 years insiders at Cisco have been debating the future of Cisco. Many back in 2000 were arguing internally at Cisco that they have to “move up the stack”. Well they never did it. In fact Cisco has been spending a ton of time rewriting IOS and figuring out what to do. Meanwhile back in 2000 a little growing company named Google was scaling their DNS offering (aka URL search) to take over the online advertising market. Now it’s apparent that Google has a mission in the cloud and networking space - they have been moving down the stack - right into Ciscoland.

This middle ground (Cisco moving up and Google moving down the stack) will be where the battle of the titans will take place. This new feature from Cisco is an indicator of what the battle will be for.

Update: I just found out that this has not been officially announced yet. I believe it will be discussed here at this event in San Jose this week.

I will be blogging this Infoblox event this coming week its a discussion around the Cloud Computing and Dynamic Infrastructure or Infrastructure 2.0.  Here is Cisco blog post talking about the upcoming Cisco event with Infoblox.

If you’re interested in attending click on this link.

The core network services (DNS, DHCP, RADIUS, TFTP, etc.) that are the foundation for branch office networks carrying data, voice, and video services on a converged network can now be viewed and managed in real-time from a single console, with powerful IP address management (IPAM), logging and reporting.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced it has acquired Q-layer, a cloud computing company that automates the deployment and management of both public and private clouds. The Q-layer organization, based in Belgium, will become part of Sun’s Cloud Computing business unit which develops and integrates cloud computing technologies, architectures and services.

This is an interesting announcement because cloud computing is very “cloudy” in that it’s very ‘hot’ right now but there are some major security and reliabiity issues with cloud computing.  Just this week Amazon crashed my server on a project and we lost all of our code - we have backup but the hassle factor is high.  Cloud Computing is not ready for primetime so I’m interested in finding out how this annoucement might cause some “needed” SUN to shine in this cloud computing area.

Here is more info on the SUN acquisition.  The Q-layer technology simplifies cloud management and allows users to quickly provision and deploy applications, a key component in Sun’s strategy to enable building public and private clouds. As businesses continue to rely more on technology to drive mission-critical processes, the agility of the datacenter determines the flexibility of the entire company. The Q-layer software supports instant provisioning of services such as servers, storage, bandwidth and applications, enabling users to scale their own environments to meet their specific requirements.

“Sun’s open, network-centric approach coupled with optimized systems, software and services provides the critical building blocks for private and public cloud offerings,” said David Douglas, senior vice president of Cloud Computing and chief sustainability officer, Sun Microsystems. “Q-layer’s technology and expertise will enhance Sun’s offerings, simplifying cloud management and speeding application deployment.”

Cloud computing brings compute and data resources onto the Web and offers higher efficiency, massive scalability and faster and easier software development. Sun is an ideal advisor and partner for companies that want to build cloud computing facilities within their organizations, and for companies and service providers that want to build publicly available cloud computing services. Sun has the open technology, expertise and vision to help companies build, run and use their own clouds. For more information on Sun’s cloud computing strategy, please visit: http://sun.com/cloud.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed as the transaction is not material to Sun.

VMWare is adding a new executive to the stable - Tod Nielsen.  This on the heals of Diane Greene being forced out.

VMware Inc., (VMW: NYSE) the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, announced today the appointment of Tod Nielsen to the newly created role of Chief Operating Officer. Nielsen will report directly to President and Chief Executive Officer Paul Maritz.

Nielsen, 43, joins VMware from Borland Software Corporation where he served as President and Chief Executive Officer since November 2005.  Prior to Borland, Nielsen held several key executive management positions at leading software companies including Microsoft, BEA and Oracle.

“I am delighted to have Tod join VMware and bring his passion for software and wealth of leadership experience to our executive team,” said VMware’s President and CEO, Paul Maritz.  “In this newly created role, Tod brings unique skills and capabilities that will help us improve our operational focus and enhance our execution across all areas of the business.  With Tod on board, I will be able to devote more of my time to the product strategy and development, while Tod focuses more on business, marketing, and operations.  Having worked closely with Tod in the past, I know that we will work effectively together and complement each other.”

“VMware is an impressive company that is in the enviable position of giving customers a significant return on their IT investment which is becoming only more important in these challenging economic times,” said Nielsen. “As an admirer of the company’s strong track record of software innovation, I’m excited about working with my new colleagues at VMware to help our customers truly transform the way they manage their IT resources.”

Nielsen brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in enterprise software and application development to VMware.  Prior to Borland, Nielsen served as senior vice president, marketing and global sales support for Oracle Corporation. Prior to Oracle, Nielsen was the chief marketing officer and executive vice president of engineering at BEA Systems, where he had overall responsibility for BEA’s worldwide marketing strategy and operations, as well as all research and development operations. Nielsen joined BEA after the acquisition of his private company, Crossgain Inc., where he served as its chief executive officer. Nielsen also spent twelve years with Microsoft Corporation, in various roles, including general manager of database and developer tools, vice president of developer tools, and, vice president of Microsoft’s platform group.

Cisco has a great blog post about their 2009 predictions and it’s very upbeat. Although Cisco is aiming to be a household brand, they are the 800 pound gorilla position in the enterprise.

Ethernet and IP are remarkably resilient technologies and they can both take a lot of abuse, but there enough concurrent pressures in the data center right now (i.e. operational complexity, scaling, virtualization, power/cooling) that attention is shifting back to infrastructure.  As Jon Oltsik recently pointed out “…these core services have been a virtually ignored kludge leading to unplanned downtime, security vulnerabilities, and manual operations…”

Gregory Ness lays out why virtualized, dynamic infrastructure, such as Data Center 3.0 will continue to to see targeted investment in a recent post:

Network vendors who continue to focus on static infrastructure “speeds and feeds” and CIOs who embrace a dying status quo of networking manual labor empires will be replaced by more innovative and strategic approaches that embrace automation as much internally (within the network) as they deliver externally (systems and operations). Networking pros will be thusly rewarded for embracing policy tools versus reactionary configuration as ad hoc policy in response to higher rates of change within increasing complex networks.

The folks that are running out of something (budget, space, people, power, cooling) will move towards dynamic infrastructure out of necessity–its the only sustainable way they can support the needs of their business.  The second scenario are the folks that adopt dynamic infrastructure out of choice–they see the fluidity of the infrastructure as an advantage–furthermore the TCO reduction either allows them to invest in other places or return money back to the company–both of which will give companies competitive advantage and turn their CIOs into rock stars.