Event Category Archives
May 02, 2008
Oy vei the chutzpah!
Just read this interesting write-up on feedback from Interop. Using the push to 10GbE to the server as an opportunity for insertion into the market is a good play, will be interesting to see how it bears out. I have to concur with the strategy since our Nexus 5000 does essentially the same, but also offers FibreChannel stateless gateways to make FCoE a reality.
dg
But the fun part for me was the comment about Nortel winning the Best of Interop in the Chutzpah category, gotta love it. I talked to quite a few of the Nortel folks at the show while looking for my friends Phil and Tony and it is good to see Nortel trying to 'bring it'.
I really enjoyed the panel discussions we had, my favorite being the one hosted by Bruce Tolley of SolarFlare. Bruce is the VP of Marketing over there and we had a good chuckle on the introductions since over half the people on the panel had worked at Cisco now or before. Other than a few vendor advertisements (the NetSCaler/Citrix one was most memorable) it was an excellent deep dive into the challenges that organizations will face as they 'dig into' virtualization. It's not all roses, there are some thorns. If we understand them up front we can design product and technology solutions that enable customers to maximize the value of their virtualization investments- in virtual servers, virtual storage, and virtual networks.
Posted by Douglas Gourlay at 12:05 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
April 30, 2008
Live from Interop 2008: Community Weighs in on Top Data Center Trends....Cast your vote now….
Text 8020 to 41411 for Policies
Text 8021 to 41411 for Performance
Text 8022 to 41411 for Instability
Text 8023 to 41411 for Costs
Posted by John Murphy at 09:05 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Live from Interop 2008: Community Weighs in on Top Data Center Trends....Cast your vote now….
Text 8010 to 41411 for Virtualization
Text 8011 to 41411 for Energy Efficiency
Text 8012 to 41411 for Scalability
Text 8013 to 41411 for Facilities
Posted by John Murphy at 08:47 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
April 29, 2008
In the Know at Interop 2008
Jayshree Ullal, Senior Vice President, Data Center, Switching and Security Technology Group, Cisco, shares key customer insights from Interop 2008
Posted by John Murphy at 04:47 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
April 28, 2008
Interop 2008
It's that time of year again, trade-show season! Interop has always been one of my favorites- I guess it's the technical roots of it. Interop started back as Networld and Interop. One more of a trade show, the other an interesting technical challenge and exercise. Back when Interop started no one was certain which protocols would win, whether bridging or routing was the way to go, whether it would be Ethernet, ATM, Token Ring, or FDDI/CDDI to the desktop, etc. What Interop did was force multiple vendors to work together to build a network to support the show floor in a matter of days. There were also interoperability tests of new protocols and such between multiple vendors hardware, software, protocols, etc. In the end it became a gathering place for 20,000+ network professionals to see what worked, what didn't, hear about the latest and greatest...
What made Interop unique is that in a way it and by some measure the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab really helped spur an industry. While Ethernet evolved 'in the open' and the interworking between vendors was tested openly at events like Interop some other areas where this openness did not exist caused massive vendor interoperability problems, FibreChannel comes glaringly to mind. The two main vendors 6 years ago barely worked together at all and you were lucky if plugging one into another would not crash your entire fabric.
I remember about 9 years ago working with a few other Cisco engineer and some folks from Nortel to set up the first multi-vendor MPLS network, at Interop. It was running over ATM on some Lightstream 1010s on our side, I can't remember what Nortel's was, but we got it working.
This year we are showing Fibre Channel over Ethernet interworking with several other vendors, a technology that I hope enjoys the open testing and development environments that IP and Ethernet and even MPLS all enjoyed through open standards bodies and events like Interop.
To Lenny and the rest of the gang that make Interop what it is to us as an industry, Thank You!
I'll be around our booth Tuesday and Wednesday and at some speaking sessions, feel free to come chat about anything with us.
Posted by Douglas Gourlay at 08:52 AM Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
