Data Center Networks July 2009 Archives

What’s Next for Enterprise IT?

At CiscoLive! one of the more common questions I was asked was around the future of enterprise IT from an organizational perspective.  To me, the shift in the conversation is an indicator that folks are continuing down the path of data center virtualization and are trying to get a better understanding of the long-term impact.  Conversations usually centered around the continuing role of IT in the enterprise and what kinds of skill sets will be needed in this new world.

A number of folks in IT management roles asked some version of “with IaaS/PaaS/SaaS, will enterprise IT go away?”—I could not really tell if they viewed this a negative or not. So, are we going to get to the point where someone in purchasing is buying services they same way they buy janitorial services?

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Posted by Omar Sultan at 03:58PM PST

Is Application Performance Management the key to WAN Optimization Services?

WAN Optimization is a top technology under consideration by IT organizations according to research by The Info Pro in their Technology Heat Index report. Many Service Providers are creating WAN Optimization services to meet the requirements of customer who want WAN Optimization but prefer to outsource management. See Cisco Press Release.  Organizations know that they can reduce IT expenditures as well as deliver new services more effectively by consolidating IT resources in the Data Center and by deploying WAN Optimization they can still give branch office users LAN like application performance. Whether organizations deploy WAN Optimization themselves or get it as a managed service they need to be able to justify the budget expenditure and that means being able to fully understand their requirements and being able to measure the performance improvements delivered of deployment of WAN Optimization.

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Posted by Michael Leonard at 05:40PM PST

Data Center Newsletter: Convergence in the Data Center

For more of the latest content from the Data Center teams, please check out the full version of the Data Center Newsletter, July 2009 Edition.

By Peter Linkin - Data Center Solutions Marketing

Consolidation is everywhere. People are moving back to cities to escape suburban sprawl. Industries are consolidating to a small number of mega-brands. And after years of distributed systems anarchy, IT is consolidating equipment and facilities back to a more efficient, controllable, centralized model. Sound familiar? People are even talking about the ‘virtual mainframe’, VDI to thin clients, and water cooling.

It’s not about pastel-colored, refrigerator-sized boxes this time. The average data center houses hundreds of rack units of servers, storage and networking equipment, miles of cabling, and aircraft-engine class AC fans. And that’s a challenge—actually, several:

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Posted by Kim Austin Peterson at 12:00PM PST

WAN Optimization and Application Acceleration Case Study - Manufacturing Monsanto

If your organization relies on Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 for global collaboration among thousands of employees across hundreds of widely dispersed locations, read this WAN optimization customer testimonial provided by Monsanto - a global agricultural company that uses technology to help farmers succeed while reducing agriculture’s impact on the environment. Monsanto has deployed Cisco WAN optimization solution across 107 sites and is taking it to the next phase. Let me first quote some highlights:

Microsoft Sharepoint application acceleration: The Monsanto IT team measured the time to open a 13.8 megabyte Office Excel file on a server in St. Louis from an office in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Without Cisco WAAS, opening the file through Office SharePoint Server 2007 took 4.5 minutes. With Cisco WAAS, opening it the first time took just 1.3 minutes—a performance increase of about 71 percent. Opening the same file subsequently, after it was cached, took just 8 seconds.

WAN optimization: Overall bandwidth usage has decreased by 50 percent in the sites using Cisco WAAS, which means that the same link can accommodate about twice as much traffic as in the past without becoming saturated.

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Posted by Feng Meng at 04:27PM PST

Feng Meng
Solutions Marketing Manager
Cisco Data Center Solutions
fenmeng@cisco.com
http://www.cisco.com/go/waas
http://www.cisco.com/go/datacenter
http://www.windowsserveronwaas.com

WAN optimization and application acceleration - Interwoven - Competitive Test Results

If you are relying on Interwoven software for collaboration and wondering how WAN optimization can support your offsite data replication and business continuity, please read on.

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Posted by Feng Meng at 04:25PM PST

Feng Meng
Solutions Marketing Manager
Cisco Data Center Solutions
fenmeng@cisco.com
http://www.cisco.com/go/waas
http://www.cisco.com/go/datacenter
http://www.windowsserveronwaas.com

IBM and Cisco Help Customers Adopt FCoE for Unified Fabric

So, we continue to see traction with customers for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)  because IT organizations are beginning to understand both immediate benefits through reduced capital and operating costs (a big incentive in today’s economy) and the longer term advantages as they continue to virtualize their data centers.  Cisco already has over 900 customers deploying the Nexus 5000 switch and today IBM announced that its Systems and Technology Group (STG) will re-sell the Cisco Nexus 5000 switch as part of its new Data Center Networking portfolio. 

Here’s what Barry Rudolph, VP, IBM Storage has to say: “Networking is an important element in highly virtualized and Cloud computing environments.  By working with market leaders like Cisco, IBM aims to provide choice and flexibility in providing dynamic infrastructures and world class solutions and services for our customers.”

This agreement with IBM extends Cisco’s ability to support our customers’ goals to deploy a unified fabric with converged networks, and expands Cisco’s routes to market.  As the pioneer and market leader in FCoE technology for converging networks into a unified fabric, Cisco offers IBM customers innovative technology coupled with investment protection.

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Posted by Omar Sultan at 09:23PM PST

Is WAN Optimization the Answer to Today’s IT Dilemma?

In today’s challenging economy many customers are asking how they can reduce IT costs while responding to increasing demands for IT services? What do you do in tough economic times when you need to lower branch office IT spending but at the same time you need to provide new productivity tools to branch office workers?  Your branch offices are where your customers come to do business so your branch office workers need IT resources that let them conduct business efficiently. In the past the answer was to install distributed computing systems in each branch office. These days that solution is costly to implement and to maintain, especially with reduced IT staffing.  Many organizations are moving applications to the data center, to reduce IT costs and gain better control over data, but that means greater demands are being put on the WAN, which impacts application performance. At the same time organizations want to ramp up their use of VoIP to extend the reach of their telephone network and bring costs down, but VoIP is especially sensitive to network congestion. So what should they do?

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Posted by Michael Leonard at 05:13PM PST

WAN Optimization and Application Acceleration Case Study - Consumer Products Company Sony Ericsson

Imagine being tasked with drastically reducing costs of branch IT operations across 80 countries, while ensuring 5,000 geographically dispersed employees have consistent LAN-like access to accounting, enterprise planning, product life-cycle management (PLM) software, video, and document management applications. Paul Stephens, Head of Network Services for Corporate IT at Sony Ericsson, doesn’t have to imagine it - he lives it.

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Posted by Feng Meng at 04:54PM PST

Feng Meng
Solutions Marketing Manager
Cisco Data Center Solutions
fenmeng@cisco.com
http://www.cisco.com/go/waas
http://www.cisco.com/go/datacenter
http://www.windowsserveronwaas.com

Unified Computing System: Bucking the Neigh-sayers

“The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty—a fad.”
The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903.

“If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse”
Attributed to Henry Ford

Its been quite interesting to watch the analysis of Google’s Chrome OS over the last few days.  Will Google pull it off?  Who knows, but, regardless, of whether they do or not, they have permanently changed the conversation. Even if the fail, the horizon has been permanently redefined and someone will eventually be successful.

The interesting part is how much of the analysis has missed the market transition.  It seems Google is planning on delivering the first internet-centric operating system.  Analysts or competitors who are trying to compare Chrome OS to current desktop-centric operating systems are simply missing the point—Google is not about delivering a better horse, they are focused on what’s coming next.

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Posted by Omar Sultan at 03:54PM PST

WAN Optimization and Application Acceleration Case Study - Manufacturing Company Lafarge

Why will a router-integrated WAN optimization and application acceleration solution give you better ROI results and ease of integration? Here’s a practical example from the world’s largest construction materials company - Lafarge. But don’t just take my words, see what Lafarge’s enterprise IT Architect has to say:

“Cisco WAN optimization solution - Cisco WAAS is saving us over [US]$250,000 per year in operating expenses by not having to support legacy email servers outside the data center and over [US]$420,000 in operating expenses through not supporting legacy file, print and directory services in the field,”

“Cisco WAN optimization is helping us save over [US]$100,000 in annual operating expenses by reducing helpdesk, change, and service tickets associated to legacy servers and storage footprints.”

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Posted by Feng Meng at 01:08PM PST

Feng Meng
Solutions Marketing Manager
Cisco Data Center Solutions
fenmeng@cisco.com
http://www.cisco.com/go/waas
http://www.cisco.com/go/datacenter
http://www.windowsserveronwaas.com

From Bastille Day to Virtualization &Unified Computing

Prise de la Bastille, by Jean-Pierre-Louis-Laurent Houel
“On 5 May 1789, (the King) Louis XVI convened the Estates-General to hear their grievances. The deputies of the Third Estate representing the common people (the two others were the Church and nobility) decided to break away and form a National Assembly. On 20 June the deputies of the Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath, swearing not to separate until a constitution had been established. They were gradually joined by delegates of the other estates; Louis started to recognize their validity on 27 June. The assembly re-named itself the National Constituent Assembly on 9 July, and began to function as a legislature and to draft a constitution.
The people of Paris, fearful that they and their representatives would be attacked by the royal military, and seeking to gain ammunition and gunpowder for the general populace, stormed the Bastille (on July 14th) , a fortress-prison in Paris which had often held people jailed on the basis of lettres de cachet, arbitrary royal indictments that could not be appealed.
The storming of the Bastille was more important as a rallying point and symbolic act of rebellion than a practical act of defiance. “(source :Wikepedia)

Revolutions happened and happen in all areas of our world - Some of them are violent - Lot of them are soft -But all of them are disruptive and bring new hopes. They create a new dynamic where more creativity and more freedom can emerge. Virtualization and Unified Computing are certainly part of these disruptive models

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Posted by Didier Rombaut at 09:29AM PST

WAN Optimization ROI Study by Forrester Research

If you are a Fortune 2000-size organization, with 40 branch offices in North America and 10 branch offices in Europe and Asia. How much money can you save by deploying WAN optimization technologies? What kind of ROI should you expect?

If you’ve been searching for a quantitative answer, look no further. Here’s a detailed study on 9 organizations across the globe, conducted by top-tier industry analyst firm Forrester Research:
1 leading healthcare company with 120 facilities
1 engineering services company with $650M annual revenue
3 Fortune 1000 manufacturing companies
1 Fortune 1000 consumer products company
1 transportation company
1 international law firm
1 Federal credit union

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Posted by Feng Meng at 03:44PM PST

Feng Meng
Solutions Marketing Manager
Cisco Data Center Solutions
fenmeng@cisco.com
http://www.cisco.com/go/waas
http://www.cisco.com/go/datacenter
http://www.windowsserveronwaas.com

The New Collaboration Effect : Cisco , Verizon and You

When Cisco talks about collaboration, Cisco talks about people connecting creating, and innovating .Together. That’s exactly what Cisco , Verizon and their customer are doing with Verizon Managed Optimization Service that uses Cisco WAAS
In this short video, Steven Capozzi, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Verizon who met at Cisco Live Michael Leonard, Cisco Data Center Solutions in charge of WAAS , explains how Verizon is deploying a Wide Area service for customers who are centralizing their applications to reduce IT costs but then seeing a drop in performance over the WAN.

By optimizing the WAN with Cisco WAAS organizations get the application performance that they need and by going with a managed service from Verizon they benefit from their expertise in monitoring and tuning application performance while freeing up staff to focus on the core business.

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Posted by Didier Rombaut at 10:17PM PST

Intel and Cisco:Together to help reshaping the internet and the data center

Kirk Skaugen, Vice President of the Digital Enterprise Group and general manager of the Server Platforms Group for Intel Corporation, was at cisco Live to highlight the partnership between Cisco and Intel. He met John Chambers, Cisco Chairman & CEO, at the Intel booth and presented to Cisco and John a XEON 5500 processor series wafer (code named Nehalem).

Picture taken by Hank Lea, blogger at Intel

The same day Kirk Skaugen delivered an impressive presentation at the partner super session. After his speech, Harris Sussmann, Cisco Unified Computing Market Manager,  asked him a couple of questions in a quick video interview

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Posted by Didier Rombaut at 05:06PM PST

Beyond CiscoLive 2009!

Well, we are all safely back from CiscoLive.  Speaking for the blogger crew, we had a lot of fun and had the chance to chat with a large number of customers across the length of the event.  To a person, the folks I talked to were positive about how our data center story has unfolded over the last year, but at the same time, many had good questions about what things like FCoE, UCS and clouds (in their seeming infinite variety) really mean for them, so that should keep up off the streets and out of trouble for a while, making sure we get those questions answered.

Here is our final blogger minute for you entertainment.  We captured a lot of video over the week, so look for highlights for the show floor and from key sessions in the coming days.

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Posted by Omar Sultan at 04:43PM PST

Cisco and EMC talk about FCoE -part 2

Couple of days after my first meeting in San Francisco with Stuart Miniman, EMC Technologist CTO Office and Kash Shaikh, Cisco Senior Manager Data Center Solutions, I invited both of them for another conversation on FCoE. This time they focus on the impact of FCoE on the network administration, and what is the best way to roll out this new opportunity for the storage networking

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Posted by Didier Rombaut at 03:25PM PST

WAN Optimization and Application Acceleration Case Study - Government Agency Peace Corps

The Peace Corps traces its roots and mission to 1960, when then Senator John F. Kennedy challenged students at the University of Michigan to serve their country in the cause of peace by living and working in developing countries. From that inspiration grew an agency of the federal government devoted to world peace and friendship.

Since that time, more than 195,000 Peace Corps Volunteers have served in 139 host countries to work on issues ranging from AIDS education to information technology and environmental preservation.

Recently, Peace Corps has deployed Cisco router-embedded WAN optimization solutions (WAAS) across 26 rural locations for cost reduction and application acceleration. Here’s my interview highlights with Domenico Palombo - Network Chief for Peace Corps:

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Posted by Feng Meng at 04:29PM PST

Feng Meng
Solutions Marketing Manager
Cisco Data Center Solutions
fenmeng@cisco.com
http://www.cisco.com/go/waas
http://www.cisco.com/go/datacenter
http://www.windowsserveronwaas.com

Cisco and EMC talk about FCoE standardization

At Cisco Live I had the opportunity to organize a meeting with Stuart Miniman -EMC Technologist CTO Office - and Kash Shaikh -Senior Manager, Cisco Data Center Solutions- to talk about FCoe Standardization and the impact on the market .
Here is the first part of the conversation

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Posted by Didier Rombaut at 10:02AM PST