Broadband Developments

Infoblox Inc. today announced that the University of Minnesota has deployed Infoblox appliances for delivery ofcore network services, including internal and external domain name resolution (DNS) and IP address assignment and management (DHCP/IPAM) –essential to daily operation of its extensive network and applications,enabling access to resources such as student registration, assignments andhealth records. In addition to bolstering reliability, manageability and security of itscore network services infrastructure, ensuring nonstop delivery of DNS and DHCP services, the University has implemented a unique authentication portal enabled by Infoblox appliances that allows more than 6,500residential hall students easy, secure and authorized network access.

The previous solution for network address management services did not meetthe University’s requirements. The University requirements expanded inscope, scale and functionality, focusing on self-service and security.

Mike LeVoir, network design engineer at the University of Minnesota,commented: “The Infoblox solution met the University’s requirements ofbuilt-in reliability and features that allow delegated management withdata-entry templates for the various departments.”

“Infoblox made the process of implementing our student authenticationportal seamless. Students used to have to locate their MAC address — notnecessarily intuitive for some — and then register their device with theIT department by physically visiting one of our centers. With Infoblox,the students don’t need to know their own MAC address, nor do they have toleave their dorm rooms. What used to take 30 minutes now takes seconds,and we moved the process from something cumbersome to something muchsimpler both for students and the IT department.”

On campus, there are 6 Infoblox appliances running the Infoblox DNSonepackage that includes Infoblox’s unique grid technology. The gridtechnology links the Infoblox appliances together so they can operate as aunified system for resiliency and management advantages. An HA pair isacting as grid masters, two are delivering DHCP services, and the remainingtwo are performing DNS services as authoritative masters. Additionally,there is one at the Univ. of Washington, which via grid technology is fullyintegrated with a remote authoritative master and the local six appliances.

The University is currently using the authenticated DHCP function in campusresidence halls with plans to roll it out to the entire University. Whenlogging on to the University network, students are automatically redirectedto a captive portal where they are shown a registration page and acceptableuse policy. Once authorized, students are then assigned aUniversity-issued IP address. Previously, students had to go to a physicallab on campus and register their device(s). It was a cumbersome and timeconsuming process. Now using the portal, students simply plug in theirdevice in their dorm room, log on and they are on the network after aseamless host registration process.

I saw this from Caroline McCarthy at Cnet today and agree with this study. In the many years of research in online advertising and web 2.0 it is very clear that one of the roles a blogger plays in their area of coverage is one of newsmaker and analyst.

I did a speech at MIT in 2006 called “The Blogosphere:  New Navigators.”  - in this speech I predicted that certain blogger would asend to the highest trust level in communities to earn a place of trust.  Why? Because to be an effective blogger you have to know about the sector your covering.  To capture news, get scoops, provide content value, you need to know what you’re talking about.  Bloggers provide a real time service for users.  Often bloggers make mistakes, but more importantly to users they provide links to other sources that delivers on the real time alerting or redirection of attention and interest (this is what normal users are looking for).  Of course bloggers self correct or get corrected from their audiences.  This content cycle is two way and very effective in content development, story development, fact development, and opinion development.  This makes them valuable to users.  (side datapoint:  the best analysts of top firms have become bloggers - why?? ..Point made)

I am shocked to see marketing people pass on sponsorship of the top influencial blogs in their sector.  Yet pay 100k for an analyst firm to do some survey.  Blog advertising and sponsorship is the best game in town for marketing executives.  Here I posted about the Future of Blogging last week.

Of course I’m biased but do see direct results everyday.  Tell me if you agree?

Cloud computing is all the rage.  We’ve been covering it here at Broadband Developments since we started this blog in June 2008.  Just search on Cloud here on the blog for all the blog posts.

Microsoft announces Azure - here is Mary Jo’s post.

Am I bullish on Microsoft with the cloud?  No not really.  I’m confused is this part of their Unified Communications or Online plans?  I’m neutral because I think that Microsoft could do some compelling things if they can just get the formula right.  I will start covering this.  In the past stuff from Microsoft has been a big yawn.

Today, during a keynote speech at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2008 (PDC2008), Ray Ozzie, Microsoft Corp.’s chief software architect, announced Windows Azure, the cloud-based service foundation underlying its Azure Services Platform, and highlighted this platform’s role in delivering a software plus services approach to computing. The Azure Services Platform is an industry-leading move by Microsoft to help developers build the next generation of applications that will span from the cloud to the enterprise datacenter and deliver compelling new experiences across the PC, Web and phone.

Ozzie described how this platform combines cloud-based developer capabilities with storage, computational and networking infrastructure services, all hosted on servers operating within Microsoft’s global datacenter network. This provides developers with the ability to deploy applications in the cloud or on-premises and enables experiences across a broad range of business and consumer scenarios. A limited community technology preview (CTP) of the Azure Services Platform was initially made available to developers in attendance at PDC2008, giving them a chance to try out its features and functions and plan for their own future development.

“Today marks a turning point for Microsoft and the development community,” Ozzie said. “We have introduced a game-changing set of technologies that will bring new opportunities to Web developers and business developers alike. The Azure Services Platform, built from the ground up to be consistent with Microsoft’s commitment to openness and interoperability, promises to transform the way businesses operate and how consumers access their information and experience the Web. Most important, it gives our customers the power of choice to deploy applications in cloud-based Internet services or through on-premises servers, or to combine them in any way that makes the most sense for the needs of their business.”

Empowering Cloud Development With the Azure Services Platform

Unlike many of today’s service-based solutions, the Azure Services Platform provides developers with the flexibility and ability to create applications while taking advantage of their existing skills, tools and technologies such as the Microsoft .NET Framework and Visual Studio. Developers also can choose from a broad range of commercial or open source development tools and technologies, and access the Azure Services Platform using a variety of common Internet standards including HTTP, representational state transfer (REST), WS-* and Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub).

Key components of the Azure Services Platform include the following:

State-of-the-Art Datacenter Infrastructure

During the keynote, Ozzie said of Windows Azure, “It’s designed to be the foundation, to be the bedrock, underneath all of Microsoft’s service offerings for consumers and business alike.” Los Angeles, Oct. 27, 2008. Click for high-res version.

Microsoft also described the importance of building robust datacenters in delivering online services. Over the past year, Microsoft has opened major datacenters in Quincy, Wash., and San Antonio, with additional centers scheduled to open in Chicago and Dublin, Ireland. Microsoft is leading the way in services infrastructure with innovative use of shipping containers as flexible and portable housing for servers, providing 10 times the density and dramatic savings in power usage. Supporting the Microsoft software plus services strategy, Microsoft’s datacenters serve up e-mail accounts, Web pages, instant messages, photos, videos, software programs and search information to millions of Internet customers worldwide.

Cut Costs and Unlock Innovation

Services technologies, when employed alongside other core technology enablers such as virtualization and modeling, will result in dramatic benefits for customers’ IT departments. Specifically, these technologies will enable a new and more dynamic world, where IT departments can drive down operating costs, focus their spending on systems that differentiate the business, and ultimately enable IT to become a more strategic asset.

“Only a few companies in the world can bring the promise of cloud computing to reality, and we are excited about the strong capabilities of the Azure Services Platform,” said Paul Farrell, senior vice president of research and development for Epicor Software Corp. “We believe that Microsoft’s initiative and leadership in software plus services will be beneficial to Epicor customers as we architect our solutions to optimize for cloud and on-premises solutions.”

For those of you who wonder how our country will play out after
November 4, look no further than Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged.
In that book, anti-business policies in the form of higher taxes and
more regulation caused the major captains of industry to go on strike,
shutting down wealth-creation as we know it. That’s the essence of
Atlas Shrugged, and that is – at least directionally – what we may
face if such policies are enacted in coming months and years.

Actually, “shutting down” isn’t the only option for investors and
businesspeople anymore. Back in the 1950s, when Ayn Rand authored
Atlas Shrugged, the US constituted an extremely large share of the
world economy. In 1951, the average American ate 50 percent more than
the average European. Americans controlled two-thirds of the world’s
production, owned 80 percent of the world’s electrical goods, and
produced more than 40 percent of its electricity, 60 percent of its
oil and 66 percent of its steel. America’s 5 percent of the world’s
population had more wealth than the other 95 percent, and Americans
made almost all of what they consumed: Over 99.9% of new cars sold in
the U.S. in 1954 were U.S. brands. By the end of the 1950s, GM was a
bigger economic entity than Belgium, and Los Angeles had more cars
than did Asia.

There were very few other advanced, functioning economies. The US
captains of industry had no ships to sail, no destinations to go. In
this respect, the world has changed radically not only over the last
50 years, but perhaps the most dramatically in the last 15: The rise
of the Asian economies from India to China, Eastern Europe and Russia,
as well as Dubai as the Hong-Kong of The Middle East. Over 3 billion
people now have cell phones – half the world’s population. Cell phone
penetration is Moscow is 176% — the average Moscowite has 1.76 cell
phones.

For this reason, unlike the industrial shutdown in Atlas Shrugged, we
could simply see a giant emigration of capital, businesses and
eventually people. This has started already, with individual investors
and investment funds winding down US-domiciled investments in
preparation for international transfers if the US becomes filled with
anti-business, anti-rich and anti-Wall Street policies. Most Silicon
Valley companies have already been locating an increasing percentage
of their workforces abroad.

16 years later, Ross Perot would have called this “The Giant Sucking
Sound.” In Western Europe in the 1950s, they called it “The Brain
Drain.” People from all over the world, looking to get ahead, were
moving their money, their businesses, and themselves, to The Shining
City On A Hill – the place where the business climate was better. We
saw it in our universities, we saw it in Silicon Valley, and we saw it
on Wall Street. Well, I hope you captured those memories on your home
video camera, because the new anti-business climate in America will
make them only a memory.

Some Republicans used to make a big deal as late as 2007 about our
immigration problem. Now they will have to focus on describing our
emigration problem. In 2008, the emigration of our capital started,
and it belonged to John Galt.

Kara Swisher has the best headlines and is sniffing down the best stories these days.  Here in her blog post she is tracking the Microsoft counterstrike to Amazon in the quest for what I call the LSD awards (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds).

We have been tracking the Infrastructure 2.0 and Cloud Wars at Broadband Developments (BroadDev.com).   Kara is on to something here.

She writes:

Next week in Los Angeles, Microsoft will kick off its Professional Developers Conference (PDC), a place the software giant likes to unveil all kind of news in a big launchtastic flourish.

For all the noise, it’s worth paying attention, because Monday’s outlook will be cloudy, as in cloud computing.

The day will include a speech from Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie (pictured here) and others on, among other topics, its cloud infrastructure service initiatives–designed to match aggressive efforts from Amazon (AMZN) in the space.

Microsoft (MSFT) execs will probably be in a good mood, given the decent earnings results the company announced earlier this week for the third quarter. Revenue was up nine percent to $15 billion, even though net profits only increased 1.9 percent to $4.37 billion.

Still, that was a pretty good performance in a down economy, due to strength in Microsoft’s powerful Windows and Office franchises. And despite–as usual–the weakness of its online division.

While the revenue for its MSN, search and advertising network grew to $770 million or up 15 percent in the quarter, operating losses doubled to $480 million from $267 in the same period a year ago. Search grew more than display advertising, a forward outlook Microsoft that maintained.

And still no digital chief, long promised by Ballmer, in sight either. Sources said that head, who will lead the unit, has still not been selected.

I think it is only a matter of time before ALL of the leading networking players start talking about the (strategic importance of the) network as a way to succeed in an uncertain economic climate. Last week, in “Cloud Computing, Virtualization and IT Diseconomies” I talked about the increasingly intense pressures already building on static network infrastructure, and the underlying need for more intelligence and automation.

These intense pressures are setting the stage for the next technology boom, by creating gaps between what networks can do today and what they’ll need to do tomorrow. I was amazed at how quickly the concept of Infrastructure2.0 spread, including an interesting discussion at F5 Network’s pace-setting DevCentral blog.

These pressures are coming from increasing rates of change, especially in larger networks supporting more devices and branches and processes, as well as with the introduction of consolidation, virtualization and cloud computing initiatives. These new initiatives are introducing even higher rates of change and making it clear that a static network will no longer be a strategic network.

The rest of the article is here at Greg Ness’ personal blog

Thanks Greg for the deep analysis.

Broadband Developments blogger Greg Ness writes a guest post on Seeking Alpha today that basically asks the question:  Can cloud computing be as disruptive to changing the game as TCP/IP was?

TCP/IP fueld a entire generation of great companies as well as creating massive wealth for investors, entrepreneurs, and employees.

It’s a long article so bookmark it or take it to go with you.  It’s a good read.

Some higlights that I like…

We’ve seen this collision between new software demands and network infrastructure many times before, as it has powered generations of innovation around TCP/IP, network security and traffic management and optimization.

It has produced a lineup of successful public companies well positioned to lead the next tech boom, which may even be recession-proof.  Cisco (CSCO), F5 Networks (FFIV), Riverbed (RVBD) and even VMware (VMW) promise to benefit from this new infrastructure and the level of connectivity intelligence it promises.

Until the current network evolves into a more dynamic infrastructure, all bets are off on the payoffs of pretty much every major IT initiative on the horizon today, including cost-cutting measures that would be employed in order to shrink operating costs without shrinking the network.

Automation and control has been both a key driver and a barrier for the adoption of new technology as well as an enterprise’s ability to monetize past investments.  Increasingly complex networks are requiring escalating rates of manual intervention.  This dynamic will have more impact on IT spending over the next five years than the global recession, because automation is often the best answer to the productivity and expense challenge.

Cloud computing is dynamic computing power on a massive scale delivering new economies for IT services and applications.  In between those economies and the prices existing enterprises are already paying for their own services is the business case, in addition to operations, sales, marketing, and new infrastructure requirements.

As much as cloud computing has rallied behind the prospect of electricity and real estate savings, the business case still feels like a dotcom hangover in some cases.  Virtualization is still a bit hamstrung in the enterprise by the disconnect between static infrastructure and moving, state-changing VMs; and labor is the largest cost component of server TCO (IDC findings) and a significant component of network TCO (as suggested by the Computerworld findings).  So just how much will real estate and electricity savings offset other diseconomies and barriers in the cloud game?  I think cloud computing will also have to innovate in areas like automation and connectivity intelligence.

For the network to be dynamic, for example, it needs continuous, dynamic connectivity at the core network services level.  Network, endpoint and application intelligence will all depend upon connectivity intelligence in order to evolve into dynamic, automated systems that don’t require escalating manual intervention in the face of network expansion and rising system and endpoint demands.

Juniper Networks beats estimates in Q3.   I am very bulliish on Juniper Networks.  In talking to analyst they agree.  One analyst, who asked not to be named, told me privately that Kevin Johnson is grabing the reins fast and that his eyes are on service provider business and Cisco’s OEMs in particular.  Word has it that they have been puzzled by Cisco posturing into adjacent markets (like compute).

Blue Horseshoe loves Juniper Networks.

Juniper Networks beat Wall Street estimates for the third quarter, reporting earnings of $148.5 million, or 27 cents per share, up from $85.1 million, or 15 cents per share, for the same quarter last year.  Adjusted profit was 32 cents. Revenue for the quarter was $947 million, up 29 percent over $735 million a year ago. Analysts has been expecting earnings  of 27 cents on revenue of $852 million, according to First Call.

Company CEO Kevin Johnson said, in a statement: “Juniper delivered a solid quarter during a period of global economic uncertainty… The long-term growth potential of the high-performance networking market is strong and, even in this uncertain economic climate, we are cautiously optimistic about our near-term opportunities.”

Shares of Juniper were down more than 6 percent in regular trading, closing at $17.83, but were on the rise in regular-trading, up more than 2 percent.

Level 3 is in a tough market and the question is how will they deal.  They were effective in cutting expenses but the stock is taking a pounding.  The bright spots were the cost cutting and the Core Communications Services piece.  Core Communication Services segment recorded revenues of $964 million, a rise of 6% from $909 million in the third quarter of 2007.

Level 3 Communications Inc. reported a loss for the third quarter that narrowed from last year, benefiting from lower expenses during the period. Level 3 also said it lowered its outlook for revenue growth in Core communications services and narrowed guidance for adjusted EBITDA, for the fiscal year.

The stock is currently trading down almost 39%.  The communications services provider posted a third quarter net loss of $120 million or $0.08 per share, compared to a loss of $174 million or $0.11 per share in the same period last year.

On average, 14 analysts polled by First Call/Thomson Financial expected the company to report a net loss of $0.09 per share for the third quarter.

Total revenues for the quarter were $1.07 billion, up from $1.06 billion recorded in the prior-year quarter. Analysts anticipated revenues of $1.07 billion for the quarter.

Segment wise, Level 3’s Core Communication Services segment recorded revenues of $964 million, a rise of 6% from $909 million in the third quarter of 2007. Revenues from Core Network Services stood at $791 million, up around 5% from $756 million last year, while Wholesale Voice Services revenues rose 13% from prior year to $173 million.

Total costs and expenses were $1.06 billion, down from $1.12 billion a year ago.

Level 3 now expects a revenue growth of 7.5% in its Core Communications Services for the full year, compared to the initially expected growth in the range of 8% to 13%.

Additionally, Level 3 noted that it has recently completed several liability management transactions, reducing its outstanding maturities by $179 million, and reducing net cash interest expense by approximately $10 million on an annualized basis.

Juniper blogger Krishna Narayanaswamy runs a Juniper (yes corporate blog) called Technically Secure.  He is launching a new series.  Krishan describes the new blog series as the following:  “Security threats are as prevalent as ever, but not only that, interconnected networks are a prerequisite for doing business - this means your networks are now porous. No longer are people working purely inside the company, they are leveraging their contacts and colleagues at other companies, industry associations and in their social networks.  But what does this mean for your network integrity?”

For the next few weeks, my colleague Michael Rothschild is going to be taking a look at perimeter security, intrusion prevention and internal threats. I hope you find the topic useful.

I met Krishna when he cofounded TopLayer way back in the day.  He has the chops on the technical side and I’m looking forward to linking to some of his stuff.

Krishna is a Distinguished Engineer in the Service Layer Technologies group at Juniper. He is currently working on DPI technology initiatives in products targeted at service providers and enterprise markets.

Krishna has 19 years of experience in data networking involving Ethernet, ATM, IP, Switching and Security technologies. He has authored 10 patents in the areas of switching, security and QoS. He was actively involved in the IEEE 802.1 and ATM Forum standards committees.

Prior to Juniper, he was the co-founder and System Architect at Top Layer Networks where he played a pivotal role in bringing multiple products to the market. He has also held senior engineering roles at Digital Equipment Corporation and Fore Systems.

He describes his blog as the following…

Technically Secure, the Juniper Networks blog dedicated to trends and innovation in the world of IT risk management and security. Here we’ll offer technical perspectives on network security, covering things happening within Juniper Networks as well as issues across the industry as a whole. Our mission is simple: explore ideas, share information, and provide insight that will help you take a proactive stance on threat and risk mitigation.

Our primary objective is to explore technical IT security issues as business and technology challenges that could compromise the effectiveness of enterprises and service providers. We’ll share our strategies for staying ahead of today’s rapidly changing threat landscape and focus in particular on innovation in network security technologies.

We’ve assembled a great team of bloggers to kick off these conversations with you, but we encourage your participation. If there’s a topic that you’d like us to cover, let us know by commenting on the blog. We’re not just talking — we’re listening.