The Issue:

Network vendors have, for some years, been surveying the landscape,
looking for new worlds to conquer as supplying connectivity per se has become
more and more a commodity game. First they built core network‐related
functionality, such as IP‐address assignment and DNS service, into their gear
(although many, if not most, shops still use servers for these functions). Then
they offered security functionality, first filling in gaps that server and desktop
vendors left between their own security functionality; year by year offering more
and moving gradually to supplant or compete with server and desktop security
functions. They began to offer bandwidth optimization, followed some years
later by application acceleration, most recently incarnated as the specific
acceleration for file sharing known as WAFS (wide‐area file services). They
branched into voice and video over IP, and then into collaborative applications
with voice and video built in.

Now, Cisco specifically is moving further “up the stack” and into the
realm of enterprise messaging, specifically into the business of managing XML
message traffic among nodes – not just speeding up XML traffic (which many
vendors do) through compression and the like, but actually taking on the
message routing and transformation functions of traditional messaging
middleware. Others network vendors may follow Cisco’s lead, as they often
have in the past – and some non‐network companies, like IBM and Intel, have
ventured into the converged space via acquisition of messaging appliance
companies (DataPower and Sarvega, respectively). But how should network
vendors approach this market, now that they are competing against major
software vendors and outside the traditional network space?

Clients: Read this issue Paper

Non Clients: Nemertes Issue Papers are available to clients only.
If you're not a client and would like to receive a copy of the Issue Paper, please contact us.

The Issue:

The “data center network” is a myth. For nearly as long as there have been data centers (DC), there have been several DC networks that interact with and overlap one another, most importantly the data, storage and high performance compute (HPC) networks. The desire to consolidate these networks onto a single fabric is as old as the networks themselves. As network vendors continue to reengineer and ramp up production of 10G Ethernet equipment, the promise of unifying data, HPC and storage networks onto a common technology—Ethernet—increases. Network vendors have some significant technical and engineering hurdles to clear before they can simultaneously meet the opposing pulls of storage, which demands lossless reliability, and high performance applications, which demand very high throughput at very low latency.

Consolidation onto a single fabric—a DC over Ethernet—will reduce physical complexity, lower material costs and simplify operations. Ultimately, though, the most important benefit of a unified DC fabric will be increased enterprise IT agility deriving from the ability to rapidly and dynamically reprovision network resources across data, storage and HPC domains.

Read This Issue Paper

Clients: Data Center IO Consolidation 

Non Clients: Nemertes Issue Papers are available to clients only. If you're not a client and would like to receive a copy of the Issue Paper, please contact us.

Things to consider when leasing data center equipment

New Data Center Strategies Newsletter, By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 1/23/07

Many of the IT executives I speak with lease their servers from one of the big server vendors. With a bit of careful planning they can use the lease to manage technology refreshes on a two-year basis, thereby always staying one step ahead of technology obsolescence.

Daylight-savings rule changes are just one issue

New Data Center Strategies Newsletter, By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 1/9/07

As Microsoft launches Vista, many news organizations are speculating about how quickly (or slowly) companies will migrate to Vista. Back in the real world, however, there is no shortage of decades-old legacy systems that companies are either reluctant or unable to migrate to newer platforms and operating systems.

By John E. Burke, Principal Research Analyst, January 26, 2007.

Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) this week released the Oracle Management Pack for Linux, deepening its commitment to Linux not just as a supported platform but as a business line, applying further competitive pressure to Linux leader Red Hat (NYSE:RHT), and further raising Linux’s profile as a supported platform in the enterprise.

Oracle’s new offering will increase pressure on RedHat’s revenues, and will bolster Oracle’s Linux business. The real significance, though, is not in competition but cultivation. Oracle is significantly strengthening the overall Linux systems management market, both directly with its offering and through competitive pressure on leaders Novell (NASDAQ:NOVL) and RedHat. This, on top of pushing RedHat to lower its prices by offering a clone of RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and support for both original and clone, will increase the chances of enterprises deploying supported Linux servers for Oracle software. The primary benefit to Oracle of the entire Unbreakable Linux initiative is this cultivation of broader and deeper creation and/or maintenance of non-Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) landscapes in the datacenter.

New Data Center Strategies Newsletter, By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 11/28/06

Software distribution is taking an interesting turn with virtual appliances, which combine an application and underlying operating system.

If you have ever had the experience of trying out a new application, it can be daunting: hours of tweaking operating system settings and downloading libraries (dependency hell) to get to the point of even starting up the application. For demo or evaluation software it can be the kiss of death - no matter how good the installer, it is always challenging to tame a general-purpose operating system to get a smoothly running application.

Overview

The enterprise is in a strange new position when it comes to providing its employees with the tools they need to perform their duties.

On the one hand, the tools continue to become, or come to rely on, information systems. Companies and industries convert processes that were paper-based (such as medical records management) to be all-digital. Physical tools (like packaging machines on a factory floor) continue not only to be driven by ever more sophisticated automation, but also are increasingly tied into the rest of the IT infrastructure by supply-chain management or other software.

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, SVP and Founding Partner, Nemertes Research, 11/16/06

Three large vendors recently made announcements which boost support for open source software. Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) announced that it will begin providing support for the Linux OS for less money than RedHat (NASDAQ:RHAT). Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ:SUNW) announced that it is releasing several implementations of Java, including Java SE and Java ME under the GPL license. Finally, IBM (NYSE:IBM) announced that it will be shipping PAVE, a project to run x86 Linux software on its Power RISC based systems. All three announcements provide a boost to the adoption of Linux and open source more generally in the enterprise. The announced partnership between Microsoft and Novell is indirectly related and will be discussed in forthcoming research.

New Data Center Strategies Newsletter, Network World, By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 10/31/06

Scientists conducting experiments on addiction have shown that when mice are allowed to self-administer narcotics, such as cocaine, by pressing a lever, they will very quickly develop addictive behavior patterns - pressing that lever repeatedly, even until death by overdose. At a recent technology conference, an IT director described a very similar behavior that immediately reminded me of the addiction studies. In this case, however, the drug of choice was a virtual machine.

* Pendulum swinging in a new direction

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 07/19/05

Computing architectures seem to be attached to a pendulum, swinging every few decades from centralized to de-centralized and back again.

* Benefits of virtual directories

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 06/14/05

Virtual directory servers that aggregate identity information from a variety of sources promise to solve problems with directories and databases while creating an identity “layer” that can provide identity services to any application.

* Why you need automatic server provisioning - and why it needs to improve

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 05/03/05

Next-generation data centers are supposed to be hotbeds of automation with on-demand everything. In this ideal, system administrators are almost obsolete, and the data center runs “by itself.”

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos
Network World Data Center Newsletter, 04/05/05

Virtualization and clustering can be two faces of the same coin.

Computing virtualization is a very hot topic for data center managers. Whether the motivation is higher utilization, reduced management, or business agility, computing virtualization offers compelling possibilities.

September 9, 2004

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Principal Analyst, Nemertes Research

Last week’s announcement by IBM (NYSE:IBM) and Intel Corp (NASD:INTC) that they would release the specifications for blade servers on a royalty-free basis highlights the trend of commoditization of the blade-server market.