Does Cloud-Scaling Really Demand a New Ethernet Speed Standard?

Steven Hill

Summary Bullets:

• 10 Gigabit Ethernet has been around for over a decade, but sales of 10GbE ports are only beginning to move the needle seriously in terms of sales. This is, in part, because many server vendors are finally offering on-board 10GbE LoM ports.
• While this type of incremental Ethernet speed advancement might provide benefits at the mega-data center level, it is hard to imagine how the introduction of another set of “open” standards will be of value to the IT industry as a whole, especially given the length of time it takes for these standards to gain acceptance and wide-scale adoption.

On July 1, 2014, a quintet of technology companies – Arista, Broadcom, Google, Mellanox, and Microsoft – announced the formation of the 25G Ethernet Consortium to support a new 25GbE single-lane and 50GbE dual-lane standard targeted at server to top-of-rack switching. This interesting approach appears to circumvent the typical standards process of the IEEE, or even the IETF, by saying that this new standard will be “open” – a word I’m REALLY starting to dislike – “while leveraging many of the same fundamental technologies and behaviors already defined by the IEEE 802.3 standard,” without even bothering to submit it for comment. Well, I suppose close counts.

Wearable Computing Will Forever Alter Collaboration, But Not How You Might Think

Brad Shimmin

Summary Bullets:

• What does Google’s Android Wear mean for enterprise IT and for collaboration vendors?
• The surprising conjunction of wearable computing and predictive analytics foretells an interesting future where collaboration is driven not by the best interface but by the best intuition.

I’ll say it. I’m a certified, card carrying WIS, a “Watch Idiot Savant” to be specific. I wear a watch 24×7, usually a mainspring driven mechanical piece of what I consider to be wearable art. So it was by no means easy for me to set all of that mechanistic pomposity aside and don one of Google’s new and somewhat awkward Android Wear-based smart watches. But that’s exactly what I did and have done for the past five days, happily sticking with this homely, underpowered and sometimes demanding wrist adornment. What did I learn? First, I’ll most likely need to turn in my WIS card. Second, I’m no longer a slave to my mobile phone. And third, the future of collaboration in the enterprise will no longer be driven by the best interface, but instead it will be ruled by the best intuition.