Cisco Live! 2016: Partners, Bots and Spark, Oh My! – Cisco’s Yellow Brick Road to Magical Experiences

T. Banting

Summary Bullets:

• Cisco is partnering with IBM (enhancing e-mail social networking, collaborative team spaces, cognitive computing and analytics) to compete more effectively against competitors such as Microsoft.
• Cisco’s partnership with Apple will bring native dialing through iOS release 10 and integrate the iPhone within the Cisco infrastructure, thus improving business communications.

In L. Frank Baum’s first book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy follows the yellow brick road toward the Emerald City, where everyone wears green-tinted eyeglasses to protect their eyes from the “brightness and glory” of the city. What it actually does is make everything appear green when the Emerald City is, in fact, “no more green than any other city.” At Cisco Live! 2016 in Las Vegas, Cisco’s vision for the future appears crystal clear and in little need of eyewear.

IoT Security: Still a Work in Progress

K. Weldon

Summary Bullets:

• Security is still the top concern and often prevents companies from launching deployments that would otherwise provide benefits, according to a recent IoT survey conducted by Current Analysis among 1,000 businesses worldwide.
• Operators are finally addressing some of these fears with assorted services and technologies – either their own or through an assortment of partner solutions.

A survey conducted recently by Current Analysis among 1,000 enterprises on their investments in IoT technology disclosed a fact that should not surprise anyone who follows the IoT market: security is still a key concern. One-third of the businesses surveyed listed it as their top worry, and 17% of the companies surveyed that had evaluated but chosen not to implement an IoT project cited security concerns as the primary reason.

Cisco Live! 2016: Ladies and Gentleman, I Give You Self-Learning Networks

B. Shimmin

Summary Bullets:

• Engineers have been seeking for decades to instrument and monitor the data center in real time with varying, but always limited, degrees of success.

• With Cisco Tetration Analytics platform, the company hopes to take a leap forward with a witch’s brew of big data, machine learning and IoT-scale instrumentation that together promises to bury traditional network monitoring under a mountain of analytical insight.

I remember the ‘80s fondly, mostly because I’m a product of ‘the 80s, an era I think we can all agree was a lot more fun than our current epoch, the, ah, naughties. The clothes, the music, the art, the attitude, but mostly the hair, they all spelled out in big bold, color the idea of optimism. Optimism that we could do some seriously cool stuff. Take Robert Zemeckis’ 1985 pseudo-dystopian dose of frenetic energy, Back to the Future. As a kid, I just “knew” that time traveling cars could happen and that there was no reason at all why we couldn’t do just that — given enough plutonium of course.

Microservices to Dominate PaaS Offerings; Efforts Receive Boost from MicroProfile Project

 

C. Dunlap

Summary Bullets:

• PaaS offerings are beginning to include container/microservices options.
• The MicroProfile project seeks to ensure heterogeneous deployments of microservices apps.

Microservices efforts got a major boost during Red Hat’s recent annual conference, where the vendor presented its flagship PaaS OpenShift as a container platform while simultaneously launching a new community project, MicroProfile.io. The project acknowledges Java EE as the dominant standard for building next-generation, business-critical, distributed apps and aims to raise the bar among Java developers looking to move into microservices and container environments.

Vendors Are Doubling Down on Hyperconverged Offerings, but That’s No Promise of Long-Term Market Success

C. Drake

Summary Bullets:

• The market for hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is one of the data center industry’s fastest changing sub-segments, recently attracting new offerings from Cisco, HPE and Dell.
• The success of individual HCI solutions will be shaped by things such as cost, scalability, time to deploy, ease of use and flexibility.

The market for hyperconverged infrastructure is currently one of the data center industry’s most exciting and fastest changing sub-segments. Recent months have seen several developments that illustrate the opportunities solutions vendors believe HCI offers them. These include the launch of new HCI offerings by Cisco, HPE and Dell as well as the expansion and development of existing HCI solutions to support new features and capabilities. However, despite this recent rush of HCI activity, questions should be asked about the market’s future potential and the long-term success of individual solutions.

Brexit? Keep Calm and Carry On, But Guard Your Wallet

I. Grant

Summary Bullets:

• Brexit, if it happens, will take longer than anyone thinks, so don’t panic.

• UK users should prepare for price increases and slower network builds as hedged contracts mature and investment slows.

Two weeks on from the unprecedented decision to quit the EU, a couple of things are clear. As far as the regulatory regime that govern telco behaviour goes, it is business as usual – Brexit talks, if and when they start, will take two years, so regulations like Roam like at Home will come into force from June 2017. Enterprise users can simply carry on.

Dear Intel, Here’s Why Selling Intel Security Would be a Huge Mistake

Summary Bullets:
• A rumored sale of its security business would be a major mistake for Intel.

• Intel Security has strong legacy products, promising new ones, winning leadership and strategy, and presents synergistic opportunities key to Intel’s future.

I’m not sure what surprised me more: Sunday’s Financial Times report that Intel was exploring a sale of its security division, or that industry observers and partners alike seem to be either indifferent or actually in favor of such a dramatic move.

Current Analysis believes a sale of Intel Security or its assets would be a mistake, for a variety of reasons. Here’s a brief look at the value Intel Security provides its parent: