Category: Network

Agreement enables IBM System & Technology Group at the mark, label and sell Juniper EX 4200 switches and 8200 series Ethernet routers and MX series Ethernet. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

This agreement reflects the expansion of long-term relationship, standing between Juniper and IBM. In 2007, the Department of IBM Global Services Group has agreed to sell a technology product portfolio of Juniper, including routing, switching and platform security. This partnership agreement will continue, the company said.

During the past year, Juniper and IBM are working together on a project of Stratus, Juniper initiative to create a single converged fabric for data center environments and virtual data centers. The companies have collaborated to expand technology demonstrations clouds Private Datacenter; partner for customers in 10 laboratories, IBM Global Cloud, and calculate the load on the movement of private and public companies to manage cloud environments . The clouds and joint research computing security models to determine how customers can mitigate attacks on corporate data and computer systems.

IBM also provides managed services in the portfolio of Juniper. Juniper and IBM are also working on a technology solutions provider joint standards development, network management and management of security services.

IBM has signed an OEM agreement with Brocade earlier this year to resell Brocade’s Foundry switches. Although there appeared to overlap with the case Juniper, Juniper says Brocade switches are targeted for the IBM campus and the working environment while Juniper products will be sent directly to the data center.

IBM spokesman said that there is no overlap or conflict with much of Brocade, as the initiative of the company data center to offer the best in technology class network with leading suppliers plan. ”

OEM arrangement is deeper than just a commitment to resell the products, says Rob Whiteley, an analyst at Forrester Research.

“With the sale of IBM-branded products on the worksheet will be easier for IBM to work in his decision to sell. In addition, IBM is working to position itself as a market leader in cloud computing, it should be able to resolve the network infrastructure within the public and private cloud architectures.

Whiteley said that the agreement is in conflict with the OEM IBM Brocade / Foundry Agreement for switches and routers. But this proposal on the selection, “he said.

“It is not unusual for IBM to provide several options for networking,” says Whitely. “Their goal is to offer a choice and when customers are demanding greater integration and partnership, they’ll recover. I see this as a step forward for IBM to diversify its portfolio of networks.

The Brocade case was regarded as retaliation for IBM Data Capture Cisco blade server market centers, long a stronghold of the partners IBM and HP. However, IBM recently announced its OEM Cisco Nexus 5000 Data Center Switch, which indicates that the relationship between them may not be as bad as suggested.

But analysts recognize that both sources for OEM switches could mislead customers. But they show that IBM is increasingly integrating products that meet the interests of their clients – and himself – with the gradual development of their eggs in other baskets, but Cisco.

“My reading of what is happening is that IBM returned to become a true integrator and want to come out more actively in the best interests of their clients and their own interests,” said Mark Fabbi Gartner. “After a few alternatives to help in this. This will lead to a redistribution of their past thinking, which is a virtual network of Cisco. In this case IBM, when they are in control of the account – for example, a large data center consolidation project – you will choose what they consider to be the best solution for the customer and their own financial situation and it will not always be Cisco.

Fabbi said, IBM will continue to deal with Cisco – it is too big to fly – but will gradually restructure their business, where Cisco is not in fact the only option for networking.

And the extension of the current mechanism for the sale of Juniper Into OEM deal with IBM will demonstrate their commitment to the network – and can lead to a better field, Fabbi said.

“This is a closer relationship between the two companies,” he said. “For IBM, the difference is likely to lead to increased funding mechanism to be able to assist their growth capacity. There could therefore have reciprocal obligations, which are interesting for Juniper.

As it continues to work on a turnaround, Dell on Monday announced that it has named a former General Electric executive to serve as its new chief financial officer.

Brian Gladden, who had nearly 20 years of finance and management experience at GE, will join the computer maker on Tuesday as a senior vice president, assuming the role of chief financial officer on 13 June. Gladden is coming from Sabic Innovative Plastics, a GE Plastics spin-off where he has been serving as chief executive. Sabic is a unit of Saudi Basic Industries.

Prior to joining Sabic, Gladden held such posts as chief financial officer of GE Plastics and GE Medical Systems Healthcare IT.

“We look forward to welcoming Brian as an operationally focused CFO whose skills in running multibillion-dollar enterprises, and substantial experience with an industry leader, make him an ideal fit for the global economies in which we operate,” Michael Dell, chief executive of Dell, said in a statement.

Gladden is replacing Donald Carty, who is stepping down after roughly 15 months on the job.

Carty, who will remain a Dell director, took over the chief financial officer position in January 2007, as the computer maker tried to address a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into its accounting practices.

Carty, who was on Dell’s board at the time of his chief financial officer appointment, had been serving on the board’s audit committee, which initiated its own investigation into the company’s accounting practices.

“Don has played a key role in re-establishing transparency and integrity in our financial practices, and we are extremely grateful to have had his leadership,” said Michael Dell.

Juniper Networks and Polycom have teamed on a joint telepresence and video-conferencing offering that is designed to serve as a counterweight to Cisco and its recent acquisition of Tandberg.

In a statement on Monday, Juniper and Polycom said they will optimise their platforms so service providers can offer video and telepresence cheaply. The argument is that it is cheaper for enterprises to deploy telepresence as a service from their network providers instead of building out their own networks.

The deal with Juniper highlights Polycom’s partnership strategy. Polycom last week announced a global reseller agreement with Siemens. Polycom also highlighted a telepresence demo with IBM at CES 2010. The aim for Polycom is to forge partnerships that allow it to surround Cisco and its recent acquisition of Tandberg.

In the last newsletter, we have just discussed some of the longstanding policies underlying cloud computing. We also discussed some concepts a bit fresher, as the dynamic movement of virtual machines (VM). In this newsletter we will discuss how the concept of dynamically move virtual machines makes us lose sleep.

There is no doubt that the capacity is dynamically move virtual machines between physical servers with either a LAN or WAN extremely powerful because it allows the IT organization to:

Optimizing IT resources for maximum utilization, flexibility and availability.
Let’s Make It organizations hardware maintenance without scheduled downtime.
Improved performance by moving virtual machines from failing or underperforming servers.
There is no doubt that it is extremely difficult to dynamically move servers between physical servers, partly because it is not the virtual machine to move. As part of migrating a VM from one server to another, IT organizations to ensure that reservations VM migrates to the same security, storage, access and quality of service and political configurations as before. If some form of load balancing server is carried out is another challenge to ensure that the load balancer server for the fact that one or more virtual machines were moved account. If an application is the firewall virtual machine to protect against the move, a balanced application firewall should be in place to protect the virtual machine once it has migrated. If an organization is implementing specific logging and / or verification as a means of PCI compliance, so the feature to migrate along the VM that the application would be the host.

As already mentioned, which moves on a virtual machine from one physical server to another, all the necessary functions, it is extremely difficult to follow. The only way this will happen, if not all, is over the next few years, when IT organizations to keep the environment as simple as possible. This means that organizations need to choose a primary provider of their virtualized datacenter. This setting is in place for the choice of HP, IBM, and friends such as Juniper and Cisco, and friends such as VMware and EMC.

We believe that the benefits of a virtualized data center are convincing. But we also believe that the engagement between Cisco, HP and IBM choose to be a controversial decision for many organizations.

Go with what you know
When I speak of Cisco routers, I think think Cisco 2600 series and 3600 lines. For many years these lines as a standard Cisco router to a network of medium-sized businesses. “Serving In fact, most companies still use these models today, even though Cisco has recruited two more lines than last year.

But despite this fact, if I have a new website for my 70-point WAN, I would always choose a Cisco 3640. I can handle buying the used one for under $ 2000, it has everything I need, and I installed the same router with any other remote location.

It’s a way to select a product to an existing network running with what you know. Note that I did not even need to think really what provides the router for 70 sites, product selection is almost a cookie cutter process.

Of course, this approach has disadvantages. For example, select a discontinued product means you do not have many new features Cisco.

Do your homework
However, if you want to choose a router for a new network, or a function, we can not necessarily rely on the same old router. How do I know which router to choose? In my experience, evaluation and review of the eight following criteria can help you determine what best suits your needs router.

Performance
Cisco uses for its routers, how many packets per second, the router could forward. For example, a Cisco 2610 or 2612 Series Routers estimated 15,000 packets per second can be transmitted with fast switching on a Cisco 7500 Series routers can be estimated at 2 million packets per second transmitted.

But such information is not as easily available as in the past. This is because data are only estimates under the best conditions possible. When you begin, all functions such as QoS, firewalls or VoIP, change all the numbers.

Scalability
Router processors are often extended so that it relates mainly to the RAM and Flash.

Extensibility
He is the number of LAN and WAN interfaces supported by the router. The router is usually a predetermined number of interfaces, but some routers, like the 3600-series, no. So look for the number of interfaces you can add to the standard.

Supported Software Features
For example, you might need a router to support a particular interface or a VoIP function.

“Integrated Services”, supported by the router
This is the functionality supported by a router, which previously required separate boxes. For example, the denial of 16 – or 32-port switching module in a router, the need for an Ethernet switch, firewall, VPN servers, IDS / IPS sensor in a router, the need for barrier firewall, VPN concentrator and deny dedicated IDS / IPS device.

Manageability
How easy or difficult it is to manage the router? Does the router come with a GUI, or it is only command line? Is there an interface that helps you manage multiple routers to facilitate the administration is growing as the company who can?

Redundancy
Does the router provide the redundancy necessary to work at a critical point in the network? Some examples of redundant power supplies are hot-swappable or routing protocols, high availability such as HSRP or VRRP.

Support and reliability
Cisco routers have always been very reliable, and Cisco has always been a high level of support. When you buy a router, you have different levels of support options. Select the best value for your company.

Of course using these features in your decision process requires some research. You can go through the portfolio of Cisco products, scan the data and select the router itself.

Or you can also use the above criteria to work directly with a reseller Used Cisco to determine which routers offer the features you need. Cisco provides a well written, a router guide Detailed (PDF) that compares all of its current router. In all cases, you have to ask many questions, do your research and be able to justify your decision.