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Networking is no longer about product. It's about solutions. It's about strategy. It's about vision. For over six years, Network World Middle East has led the Middle East with a combination of forward-looking editorial, grounded in local reality. From details of cutting-edge technology to explanations of technical buzzwords in clear language, from demonstrations of networking advances in the region to details of solutions offered by key players, from case studies to exclusive interviews, Network World Middle East has provided strategic vision for senior management and tactical advice for networking professionals.
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www.networkworldme.com | Issue 149 | August 2011
PLUS: VIDEO CONFERENCING | WAN OPTIMISATION | VIRTUAL SERVERS | WIRELESS LAN
CollaborationCollaboration
NetworkingNetworking
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ON THE REBOUNDAN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT NETWORKING GIANT CISCO’S REVAMP STRATEGY
John Chambers, CEO, Cisco
ericsson-aug revised.pdf 1 7/26/11 9:08 AM
14
32
COVER STORY
contents COMMENT04 Back to the roots
BITS06 TRA launches NGN industry forum framework
07 Du launches first phase of optical
backbone network
08 Nexans kicks it up a notch
10 Alcatel-Lucent explores enterprise business
IN ACTION16 When service matters: Emirates Airlines
upgrades its customer call centre
18 Speeding toward WAN: Egyptian Elaraby
group deploys WAN optimisation solution
FEATURE20 SSD goes mainstream: Solid State Drives
offer a faster option for network storage
24 Heading to the cloud: WAN optimisation is
now helping data centres move to the cloud
28 Putting realism into network: Video-based
collaboration is becoming increasingly
popular
OPINION32 Rising threats from social media
TEST 42 Beam me up, Ruckus
NEW PRODUCTS44 A guide to some of the new products
in the market
LAYER 846 All the news that’s fit for nothing
On the rebound:An in-depth look at networking giant
Cisco’s revamp strategy
ISSUE 149 | AUGUST 2011
Quick FinderPage 6-26Mobily, Riverbed, Du, EMC, Huawei, Nexans, IBM, Polycom, Alcatel-Lucent, Dell, Ericsson, Citrix, VMware, Cisco, Emirates Airlines, Kingston, Western Digital, Intel, F5, Blue Coat
Page 26-48Sony Professional Solutions, Polycom, Cisco, LifeSize Communications, Blue Coat, Ruckus, Juniper, Sonicwall, Axis, F5, LG, R&M
16
ericsson-aug revised.pdf 1 7/26/11 9:08 AM
www.networkworldme.com4 Network World Middle East August 2011
EDITORIAL
Back to the roots
Jeevan ThankappanSenior Editorjeevan@cpidubai.com
PublisherDominic De Sousa
COONadeem Hood
Managing DirectorRichard Judd
richard@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9126
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Production ManagerJames P Tharian
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DesignerFroilan A. Cosgafa IV
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DIGITALwww.networkworldme.com
Digital Services ManagerTristan Troy Maagma
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Published by
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Massive layoffs. Lagging stock. Declining profits. Cisco has
never had it so bad since 2001 in the aftermath of the dot-com
bubble burst. The fact that Cisco is going to cut around 6,500
jobs across the board shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone
as many saw it coming when the company posted 11 percent
decline in profit in the third quarter. What really ails Cisco,
which was once thought to be invincible? I guess the number
one reason for the current rot is that Cisco has lost share and
profit in its core business – switching and routing. Though the
company still has an obscene market share in both these areas,
vendors such as HP and Brocade have been making steady
inroads, eating into the profits of Cisco. Adding to the woes was the consumer electronics
business, which has been hugely disappointing. Can Cisco bounce back? At its recent user
show, where it was business as usual, Cisco’s charismatic CEO John Chambers has pledged
to go back to the basics and make Cisco a leaner and faster organisation and make it an
easy company to do business with. Part of the revival strategy would be a renewed focus on
switching and routing, and some drastic measures such as shedding unproductive or non-
core businesses, as it did with the Flip video cam business. Chambers has admitted that
Cisco has a bloated management structure that has stalled decision making and he promised
customers to streamline its own internal structure to move a bit faster in future and be more
attentive to customers. This is especially interesting as Cisco has often come under fire for
being heavy handed in customer relations. In Chambers’ own words, Cisco’s commitment to
its customers is innovation. For a company that invests around $5.3 billion dollars in R&D,
that should be the easy part. What is really worth watching is whether Cisco can walk the
talk and become a customer-friendly organisation. Can it radically change once again and
get back on the track? Going by its track record and the steely resolve displayed at the user
show, Cisco likely to come back ‘stronger than ever.’
NOT YOUR COPY?If you’d like to receive your own copy of NWME every month. Just log on and request a subscription: www.networkworldme.com
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Video
www.networkworldme.com | Issue 149 | August 2011
PLUS: VIDEO CONFERENCING | WAN OPTIMISATION | VIRTUAL SERVERS | WIRELESS LAN
CollaborationCollaboration
NetworkingNetworking
C loud
PUBL
ICAT
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LIC
ENSE
D B
Y TH
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TERN
ATIO
NAL
MED
IA P
ROD
UCTI
ON
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DUB
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MED
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ON THE REBOUNDAN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT NETWORKING GIANT CISCO’S REVAMP STRATEGY
John Chambers, CEO, Cisco
www.networkworldme.com6 Network World Middle East August 2011
bits
The Telecommmunications Regulatory
Authority (TRA) of UAE has launched
the Next Generation Network (NGN)
Industry Forum in order to accelerate
the transition of the telecommunications
sector in the UAE to NGN.
Commenting on the importance of the
transition to NGN and the launch of the
Industry Forum, TRA’s Director General H.E.
Mohamed Nasser Al Ghanim said: “Technical
evolution in the last few years has brought
drastic changes to the telecommunications
industry throughout the world, which in
turn has led predominantly towards IP-based
NGNs. The convergences of telephony, data,
and internet technologies have provided
Riverbed is gearing up to take on F5
Networks and Citrix in speeding up
application delivery with the purchase
of Zeus Technology for $110 million.
The deal gives Riverbed software that
that offloads tasks from Web servers
and load balancers and that runs on off-
the-shelf servers.
Riverbed has also bought Aptimize,
which makes software that optimises
Web content. Eventually Riverbed hopes
to integrate the two technologies into
a single product that would speed up
Web applications and Web servers by
sitting between them and the Internet or
corporate WANs.
the licensees with the ability to offer their
customers many new services.”
He continued: “As the TRA’s intention
is to play a vital role in promoting the
TRUE FACT
$3.8 bILLION
Will be the combine revenues from the four major app stores – those run by Apple, Google, RIM and Nokia. Apple will reap more than three-fourths of all mobile app store revnues generated this year, but rival Google’s growth is climbing faster.Source: IHS iSuppli
Saudi Arabia’s mobile and data service
provider Mobily, has set up the first public
Cisco TelePresence Suites venue in the
Kingdom. The suite is centrally located in
Riyadh city at the Mobily headquarters
adjacent to Kingdom Tower.
Mobily’s Cisco TelePresence Suite will
connect 32 worldwide business cities
across five continents with its partner Tata
Communication and other partner networks.
The network reach makes Cisco TelePresence
technology a truly global collaboration tool.
Customers will be able to purchase
meeting slots in the Mobily TelePresence
room, in advance, on an hourly or daily
Mobily sets up Saudi’s first public telepresence suite
Riverbed acquires Zeus
basis through Mobily interactive 24-hour
online booking system with its partner
Tata Communication.
The rooms have been installed with a
Cisco TelePresence System 3010, which
allows up to six people to connect
simultaneously across a maximum of 48
locations. It comprises three 65-inch plasma
screens and a specially designed physical
table that sits six participants on each
side of the virtual table. It also features
an additional LCD display for sharing
rich-media content and other data using
simple collaboration functionality as well as
integrated cameras, lights and microphones
so that speakers use less power.
The Mobily suite in Riyadh will be
connected to a number of other rooms
around the globe as a Global Meeting
Exchange.
TRA launches NGN industry forum framework
H.E. Mohamed Nasser Al Ghanim, TRA’s Director General
migration to NGN and IMS infrastructure,
the TRA established the forum to discuss
and analyse issues pertaining to NGN
interconnection, interoperability and
other issues related to NGN Transition
with the purpose of creating an improved
framework for the industry and ensuring
that it is in accordance with the Telecom
Law Article 13.”
The TRA will take the lead in
establishing the forum, and the
membership of the forum will consist of
representatives from the TRA, Etisalat,
du and a some telecom equipment
vendors may get invited to the forum
for specific issues if deemed necessary.
August 2011 Network World Middle East 7
du has announced the completion of
the first phase of its Optical Transport
Network (OTN) expansion along with
its own Backbone Infrastructure. With
this, du is among the first few telecom
service providers in the Middle East to
establish OTN on a national scale across
the country, converging all its services.
The landmark venture is set to extend all
EMC has been selected to complete
a project for the consolidation and
virtualisation of Kingdom of Bahrain’s
Central Informatics Organization (CIO),
the starting point of its journey to
cloud computing. The implementation
is intended to result in a raft of
benefits including; the unification of
the government’s IT infrastructure,
scalability for future applications and
growth, enhanced security and the real
ability to offer IT as a service.
The new storage infrastructure,
built by EMC, is designed to provide
the CIO with efficient utilization
of storage using EMC’s latest
technologies, while dramatically
minimising immediate management,
capital cost and future investment.
The project comprises a new
EMC family of unified storage, with
improved capacity for each site to
meet application and Business SLA’s.
EMC VNX, the latest unified storage
technology from EMC—is fully
optimised for virtual applications,
designed with the latest Intel multi-
core processor technology.
Additionally, EMC RecoverPoint will
be implemented as a major replication
component between the CIO’s two
Data Centers (also including EMC
storage and provisioning software)
which will enable the CIO team to
manage this virtualised environment.
EMC Technical Services teams are
working closely with the CIO to help
transform their infrastructure and IT
operations into a strategic business
asset, converting IT into a provider of
services and laying the foundations
for private cloud, while deploying the
best practices to build their disaster
recovery site.
the way from Abu Dhabi to Dubai and the
northern emirates, ultimately reaching
du’s submarine cable landing station in
Fujairah. du has invested over $65 million
in this project, which has already reached
an advanced stage and will be completed
by mid-2012 to include Ajman, Ras Al
Khaimah and Umm Al Qwain.
Hatem Bamatraf, Senior VP , Network
Development, du, said: “Optical
Transport Network along with our own
Backbone Infrastructure using the latest
in Fibre Optic Cables will enhance the
capacity of the backbone and to the
end users, and also provide enhanced
network coverage to 2G and 3G mobile
users. Moreover, it will act as a core
network to connect the UAE to other
nearby countries through global and
submarine cables.”
Huawei Technologies has launched the
Huawei Authorised Learning Partner
(HALP) programme in partnership with
Stage 2 Learning Solutions, a certified
division under Al Khaleej Group,
currently one of the Middle East’s largest
leading independent education and
training centres.
The Huawei Authorised Learning Partner
(HALP) programme will provide training
and certification specifically in Internet
Protocol (IP) and Datacom technology. The
training aims to equip technical engineers
and experts with specific technical skills
including the application, installation,
configuration and troubleshooting of
datacom and IP technology.
From understanding network designs,
benchmarking and maintenance in IP
technology, the HALP programme will
Huawei Enterprise partners with Stage 2
Bahrain’s CIO moves to cloud with EMC
ensure that technical engineers and experts
in the enterprise market, channel sales
and services, as well as students studying
network technology related degrees achieve
the best value training in IP technology. The
programme is expected to enrol at least 500
students across the Middle East region by
the end of 2011.
Al Khaleej Group signed an agreement
with Huawei Enterprise earlier this year
in Saudi Arabia to establish a certification
system that allows for a more pragmatic
training programme in Datacoms and
Internet Protocol (IP) technology.
Du launches first phase of optical backbone network
Hatem Bamatraf, Senior VP , Network Development, du
www.networkworldme.com8 Network World Middle East August 2011
bits
Nexans’ Data Communications
Competence Centre (DCCC) has recently
challenged the performance boundaries
of Nexans pre-terminated optical
fibre assemblies, using a variety of test
configurations and platforms. The results
demonstrate that Nexans’ OM3 and OM4
cables consistently exceed the IEEE Standard
for both 40G and 100G Ethernet by a
substantial margin.
“The DCCC results are particularly
noteworthy, not only for the distances
achieved, but also due to the utilisation of
frame error rate testing instead of the more
commonly used bit error rate testing,” said
Baudouin Bareel, Director Nexans Cabling
Technical. “Our frame error tests run
hundreds of times longer than the industry
requirements and our cables continue
to exceed the industry standards. Using
multiple connection points is also important
because in real-world applications our
customers need to know that our cable can
perform reliably and dependably in a variety
of configurations.”
During the 40G frame error rate testing
using Avago 40G QSFP+ transceivers, the
LANmark-OF OM3 standard fibre achieved
202 meters, which is double the reach
specified by the IEEE standard. Even more
impressive were the results of the OM4
tests with a 9-connector channel where
the pre-terminated optical fibre assemblies
successfully transmitted beyond 600 meters,
more than four times the reach with more
than four times the connectors specified by
the IEEE. During the 100G frame testing with
a 7-connector channel, a distance reach of
500m was successfully achieved.
Commenting on the results, Tarek Helmy,
Region Director – Gulf & Middle East,
Nexans Cabling Solutions said, “We are very
happy with the results of these tests, which
proves that Nexans’ cables consistently
exceed the IEEE Standard for both 40G and
100G Ethernet by a huge margin. We plan
to share these results with our clients in
the Middle-East so they can be rest assured
that Nexans’ products not only exceed
Polycom has unveiled new video offerings
designed for small and medium-sized
businesses (SMBs) that make it easier than
ever to purchase, install, and operate high-
quality, business-grade video collaboration
solutions from Polycom. The company
has introduced Polycom RealPresence
Ready, its new open video collaboration
solution optimised for SMBs that delivers
the highest quality video collaboration
at the lowest total cost of ownership
(TCO). Polycom is also introducing with
its partners new cloud-based offerings
Polycom targets SMBs
powered by the Polycom UC Intelligent
Core software platform to deliver
affordable and secure video solutions on
demand. Tailored for the tighter budgets
and leaner staffs of emerging companies,
these cost-effective solutions are integral
to Polycom’s strategy to offer SMBs a
fast on-ramp to the benefits of video
collaboration and a flexible expansion path
in line with their business growth.
“Polycom has built a strong business
in the SMB market over many years with
tens of thousands of customers across
many industries that choose Polycom
for our commitment to interoperability,
highest quality and lowest TCO,” said
Nexans kicks it up a notch
Susan Hayden, executive vice president,
Polycom. “As the demand for affordable
and easy-to-use video solutions continues
to grow, we’re doubling down on our
SMB initiatives and accelerating the
pace at which we’ll bring innovative
software solutions to market—delivered
on premises or from the cloud to any
end point: room systems, desktops and
mobile, while ensuring the best video
experience at the most compelling price
point. When customers choose Polycom
open solutions, they can be assured that all
their communications systems will work
together seamlessly today and as their
businesses grow.”
IBM has announced the latest
successor to what it has called its
“business-class” system, the zEnterprise
114, with a starting price of $75,000 –
25% lower than the previous system in
this category.
That earlier system, the z10
Business Class, was released in 2008.
. This new mainframe has 25% more
performance than the earlier system,
said IBM , but also includes some of
the same capabilities of its top end
mainframe, the zEnterprise 196 ,
which was released last year.
The zEnterprise 114 is described
by IBM as the 196 equivalent but
for mid-size customers. Similar to
the high-end mainframe, the 114
includes the ability to manage and
share data and workloads running
on Power and x86 blades.
IBM plans to add Windows support
later in the year to this hybrid model.
IBM’s new $75000 mainframe
Tarek Helmy, Region Director – Gulf & Middle East, Nexans
expectations in terms of quality but also in
its reach capabilities as compared to other
competitive products in its range.”
August 2011 Network World Middle East 9
"To learn more about our new Network Analysis Tablet sign-up for the OptiView XG World Tour to see it live in a city near you (Dubai 15 September, Riyadh 4 October). Every attendee will be entered in our prize draw to win a Network Analysis Tablet or one of many other surprises."
www.networkworldme.com10 Network World Middle East August 2011
Aastra has won an HP AllianceONE
Partner of the Year Award. The award,
for the best technology partner in the
networking category, acknowledges
Aastra’s IP telephony and UC
applications that are fully integrated
with HP’s network infrastructure.
The integration of Aastra technology
into the HP network enables businesses
to benefit from a secure, reliable open-
standards-based foundation for Aastra’s
Voice over IP (VoIP) and Unified
Communications (UC) products. With
a lower total cost of ownership (TCO)
and easy deployment, the solution
allows IT managers to spend less time
maintaining the network and more time
on delivering strategic business value.
Alcatel-Lucent has confirmed it is
“exploring strategic options” for its Enterprise
business, a non-core asset that’s been reported
to be shopped around for a possible sale.
The company announced it was exploring
options to “enhance the future opportunities
of its Enterprise business.” All options are
being considered, including discussions with
third parties, Alcatel-Lucent said.
In April, reports surfaced that Alcatel-
Lucent was engaged in discussions with
several parties involving a sale of the business.
The unit could fetch up to $1.2 billion, the
Dell has acquired switch maker Force10
Networks for an undisclosed sum.
Dell said Force10’s data centre switches
will complement its own data centre server
and storage portfolio, and enable it to offer
customers a broader range of data centre
and enterprise products.
Dell, citing data from IDC, says it is the
leading x86 server provider in the United
States and No. 2 worldwide.
Force10 specialises in high-performance,
high-density switches for data centres and
high-performance computing environments,
such as those found in research labs, Web
hosting companies and financial trading
organisations. It has annual revenue of
just less than $200 million and about
Alcatel-Lucent explores enterprise business
Dell takes deeper dive into networking
reports stated, identifying potential buyers
as Cisco, HP, Avaya and private equity
firms such as the Gores Group - with the
frontrunner being Gores’ Siemens Enterprise
Communications business.
At that time, the company would not
confirm those reports.
Alcatel-Lucent is looking to turn around
flagging financials in the wake of a difficult
merger between France’s Alcatel and the
U.S. telecom equipment company Lucent in
2006. Since then, the value of the combined
company has decreased and Alcatel-Lucent
has struggled financially.
The Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise business
includes enterprise Ethernet switching, IP
telephony and contact centre operations.
The crown jewel, according to some
observers, is the Genesys contact centre
software business, which accounts for the
lion’s share of revenue from the unit.
But the business has been stagnant in
Ethernet switching and IP telephony for
many years. Alcatel-Lucent’s share of the $21
billion worldwide Ethernet switching market
has been less than 1.5% for three years,
bits
Aastra wins HP award
according to Dell’Oro Group, placing them as
the eighth or ninth leading vendor.
Cisco dominates that market with a 65%
share in the first quarter, while HP is second
with 11.2%.
Recently, Alcatel-Lucent has introduced
some enterprise and data centre switches that
have impressed analysts in that market. The
OmniSwitch 10000 is a 5Tbps core switch
designed for 40/100G Ethernet support, and
the OmniSwitch 6900 top-of-rack switch
plays a pivotal role in Alcatel-Lucent’s data
centre architecture.
In enterprise telephony, Alcatel-Lucent is
fourth with an 8.9% share of the $12 billion
market in 2010, according to Dell’Oro. But
that’s down from 9.9% in 2008, while leaders
Avaya and Cisco and No. 5 NEC have gained
share since then.
Siemens is No. 3 in telephony with a 10%
share in 2010, down from 11.4% in 2008,
according to Dell’Oro.
Analysts say Alcatel-Lucent should have
sold the business years ago.
80% of its business is in North America,
even though it operates in more than 60
countries worldwide.
Force10’s latest offerings include data
centre core and top-of-rack switches
designed to handle zettabytes of data with
40/100Gbps Ethernet interfaces.
Dell says Force10’s Open Cloud
Networking strategy, which stresses
automation and virtualisation based on
open standards, is consistent with its own
Virtual Era design philosophy. Virtual Era
is designed to reduce costs and streamline
data centre operations through adoption of
standards-based system for integrating data
centre servers, switches and storage, and
simplified deployment.
August 2011 Network World Middle East 11
www.networkworldme.com12 Network World Middle East August 2011 www.networkworldme.com
bitsGOOD BAD
Mobility drives hospitality IT spending
Fifty-six percent of hospitality enterprises plan to increase spending on mobile and wireless to transform
operations and keep up with customer demand, according to a recent Motorola Solutions study. The Motorola Solutions 2011 Hospitality Market Barometer reveals that 91 percent of hospitality decision makers realise the increasing importance of mobile and wireless technology, while 78 percent recognise the role mobility plays in ensuring a competitive advantage for their business. As a result, hospitality venues are investing in new technology, as well as powerful wireless networks to handle greater data volumes and increasing demands for high-speed access from the customer and mobile workforce.
Top vendors lose ground in security software market
Just 44 percent of the $16.5 billion world wide security software market in 2010 belonged to Symantec, McAfee,
Trend Micro, IBM and CA, according to Gartner. The combined market share for the top five vendors has dropped from 60 percent since 2006. Worldwide security software market revenue is forecast to reach $18.8 billion in 2011, up 13.7 percent from 2010.
Botnet called ‘practically indestructible’
A new and improved botnet that has infected 4.5 million Windows PCs is "practically indestructible," security
researchers say.TDL-4, the name for both the bot Trojan that infects machines and the ensuing collection of compromised computers, is "the most sophisticated threat today," reported Kaspersky Labs.
TDL-4 infects the master boot record of the PC with a rootkit, which makes it invisible to both the operating system and security software designed to sniff out malicious code. What makes the botnet indestructible is the combination of its advanced encryption and the use of a public peer-to-peer network for the instructions issued to the malware by command-and-control servers.
BAD
UGLY
GOOD
Jumping into the quickly growing
market of cloud software providers,
virtualisation software provider Citrix
has purchased open-source cloud software
provider Cloud.com.
“We view this acquisition as very
strategic and accelerating what we
are doing in the cloud infrastructure
marketplace,” said Sameer Dholakia,
Citrix moves into the clouda Citrix vice president of market
development.
“We believe that [cloud computing]
is a transformative trend that is
fundamentally changing the way IT
infrastructure is designed, built, delivered
and consumed,” Dholakia said. “We
believe that there will be thousands of
providers offering a vast array of new
cloud services.”
Cloud.com, formerly called VMOps,
offers an open-source stack of
orchestration and administrative software
for running multitenant Infrastructure-
as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud deployments,
called CloudStack.
Citrix plans to continue to market the
software for creating large-scale public
cloud deployments, for internal enterprise
use or as a basis of cloud computing
services. “Our focus is very much around
enabling organisations to build cloud-
scale architectures and infrastructure the
way that the largest clouds in the world
have been built,” Dholakia said.
UGLY
Android tablets could become more
appealing to the enterprise with
VMware’s View Client for Android.
VMware View lets people see their
Windows desktops and interact with
Windows applications from remote
devices, like tablets or laptops.
To use it, customers click on an icon
on their Android tablet that launches an
image of their Windows desktop. They
can open a virtual trackpad in order to
navigate around the screen. The Android
tablet controls remain at the bottom of
the screen so users can easily jump back
to the tablet software and applications.
The client, which VMware is calling
a tech preview, is available in the
Android Market and works on devices
running Honeycomb 3.0 and above.
The client is free to download but works
VMware releases client for Android tablets
in conjunction with VMware’s desktop
virtualisation software.
VMware started offering a similar
client for iPad users earlier this year
and the company said it initially was
the number-one free business app in the
Apple store.
ULTIMATE UC EXPERIENCEFROM THE ULTIMATE UC LEADER—POLYCOM. It’s the latest buzz. Polycom is the world leader in Unified Communications. That’s because only Polycom
offers a total communications solution—one that will work for you today and grow with you as your
business evolves. It’s because our products are best-in-class and backed by Polycom’s history as an
industry innovator. Oh, and we’re the only provider of collaboration solutions built on open, standards-
based architecture.
Increase your productivity even as you reduce your costs and lower your carbon footprint with Polycom.
Transform your business. theartofconversation.com
©2
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olycom, Inc.
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Polycom - Start UC.pdf 1 3/31/2011 11:54:29 AM
Distancing itself from consumer electronics business, Cisco is planning to shore up its sagging fortunes by narrowing its priorities into its five key product areas. Can the networking behemoth be leaner and faster, as its CEO pledged?
On the rebound
trend analysis | cisco
www.networkworldme.com14 Network World Middle East August 2011
Delivering the keynote address
at the Cisco Live event in Las
Vegas last month, which has
attracted 15,000 people physically and
40,000 virutally, the company CEO John
Chambers laid out plans to make Cisco
an easy company to do business with
and correct the mistakes of recent years.
Admitting that it’s time to radically
change again to keep pace with the
fast changing business environment,
Chambers sought to reassure customers
that Cisco will come through its rough
patch and promised to transform Cisco
into a leaner, stronger and more focused
organisation.
“The role of the network is going
to change dramatically over the next
few years and you will have to use the
network to achieve your business goals.
Intelligent networks will become the
most critical asset in IT,” said Chambers
during his keynote.
John Chambers, CEO, Cisco
August 2011 Network World Middle East 15
Industry analysts says most of Cisco’s
current woes stem from its ambitious
forays into 30 or so adjacent markets
over the two decades which diluted the
company’s focus on its core routing and
switching business. Another issue Cisco’s
bloated management structures that has
stalled decision making, delayed product
development and slowed the company’s
overall progress.
As part of the new revival strategy,
Cisco’s top five priorities include a
renewed focus on routing and switching,
an area where the networking giant is
facing intense competition. “We will
maintain our leadership in the core,
including routing, switching and services
that span mobility and security,” said
Chambers.
At the show, Cisco injected new life
into most successful switch – the Catalyst
6500. Cisco claims the 12-year old
Catalyst platform has an installed base
of nearly 700,000 systems/110 million
ports with more than 25,000 customers
worldwide. At the heart of the refresh
is the introduction of a new Supervisor
2T routing and switching engine which
doubles the switch’s per slow capacity to
80Gbps and 10G Ethernet line cards.
The new supervisor engine, claims the
company, can increase the throughput
capability of the Catalyst 6500 from 720
Gbps to 2 Tbps, a threefold increase.
It can also quadruple the number of
devices or users that can connect to a
network. For example, a single Catalyst
6500 can now support up to 10,000
mobile devices.
Cisco brushed aside rumours that
the new announcement was an attempt
by the company to backpedal on the
Catalyst/Nexus transition, which was
cited the primary reason for the erosion
in profits in the second fiscal quarter.
Cisco said it’s merely a case of the
market is “bifurcating” into separate
requirements for the enterprise campus
vs. the data centre
Cisco is also doubling down on video,
top among the five core areas, and
says video will account for 91% of the
Internet traffic by 2014. “Video will be
the next voice and the primary platform
for communication. It will be part of
everything we do architecturally,” said
Chambers.
Another area of focus for the
company is data centre/virtualisation/
cloud. “Cloud will be the next IT
architecture where everything is
virtual. Tradition IT vendors did
not move quickly into cloud or data
centre convergence for fear of losing
server and other IT product sales,”
said Chambers.
Cisco capitalised on that by releasing
its Unified Computing System,
which allowed it to quickly become
Video will be the next voice and the primary platform for communication. It will be part of everything we do architecturally.
the third leading vendor of blade
servers. At Cisco Live, the company
announced enhancements to its UCS
networking portfolio with new fabric
interconnects, virtual interface card,
a new chassis I/O module and version
2.0 of the UCS software.
Collaboration and architectures are
the other key products areas for the
company. “If you look at the data centre,
nobody really buys specific products
anymore. They look at a data centre
architecture that includes different
products and how they are put together.
It’s not just a switch for the data center,
but how applications fit and how does
a management stack work on that,”said
Padmasree Warrior, Cisco CTO,
explaining the focus on architectures.
Where will Cisco be in two or
three years from now? According
to Chambers, the leader in the
company’s top five priorities, faster
on innovations, simplified, leaner, and
trusted networking/IT business partners.
“We’re structuring Cisco to be leaner,
drive innovation faster. We’ve got to
be easier to do business with, include
you in driving our product direction,
share our roadmaps, have an easy-to-use
product portfolio. But innovation is the
buzzword on where we’re going to go.”
A week after the show, Cisco
announced plans to cut about 6,500
jobs as part of an effort to focus its
business and reduce operating expenses
by $1 billion per year. The layoffs will
eliminate about 9 percent of Cisco’s
regular, full-time workforce. In the
ranks of vice president and above, Cisco
said it will cut 15 percent of employees.
The cuts will be made across all
functions in the company. Of the
6,500 employees, 2,100 will take
early retirement under a voluntary
programme Cisco announced in April.
The networking giant seems to be
walking the talk at the moment.
Padmasree Warrior, CTO, Cisco
www.networkworldme.com16 Network World Middle East August 2011
Emirates Airlines is a regional success story of global proportions. However, its continued success relies on being able to scale adequately across all continents,
maintaining a consistent quality level and customer satisfaction. That’s why it has invested in upgrading its customer call centre, writes Dave Reeder
When service matters
Aquarter century ago, Dubai-
based Emirates Airlines
was launched with a $10m
investment, two-leased planes and a
single destination. Last financial year,
it posted a profit of $1.69b, served 111
destinations and was the world’s largest
customer of the A380.
It’s fair to say that coping with scale
successfully has been one of the main
components of its growth strategy.
“For a long time, we grew on a fairly
ad hoc basis,” explains Karen Bell-
Wright, VP Retail and Contact Centres.
“We started a new route, opened a local
sales office and local support, growing
as the business in that territory grew.”
However, longterm, that was not a
strategy that could work on a global
scale. “Now we have 57,000 employees
worldwide – 165 nationalities – and
service is central to our business.”
What that means for Emirates is
that its call centre business is not
seen as a cost centre, but as a high
profile element of its success. “That
gives us pressure, but we do have full
support at board level to make sure
we can deliver.”
As an example of the problem
that Bell-Wright and her team face is
this: new routes means the roll-out of
in action: emirates airlines
new aircraft, each of which requires
a significant number of new crew
members. “That’s the start – then we
have to think about customer numbers
and the support staff required, plus
in-country support.”
The speed of Emirates’ growth
meant that the traditional cycle of
upgrading regional and local call
centres just made no sense any more.
The airline opened one of the first call
centres in the Middle East and grew
that side of its business organically as
new destination after new destination
was opened up.
“The problem was,” recalls Bell-
Wright, “that serving nearly 70
countries gives an accessibility problem.
How does a global company stay close
to its customers? That’s the dilemma.
We also took a more holistic view of our
business – a crisis like the tsunami in
August 2011 Network World Middle East 17
Japan or volcanic ash in Europe doesn’t
just affect our customers in Japan or
Europe, but globally as we’re a joined-
up business that has to look at the globe
as a whole.”
And growth has been speeding up.
Last year, Emirates opened up six new
routes and, by mid-2011, it has already
announced another five for this year.
“We needed a strategy that would
allow us to grow globally but with a
consistency and quality of service.”
The answer? The so-called Global
Connect project, developed in
conjunction with Genesys and handled
as a managed service project by BT. “The
idea was simple: virtualise our call centre
activity globally, by linking our five
global regional centres (Dubai, Mumbai,
Melbourne, Manchester and New
York City). We will also be integrating
Guangzhou into the project.”
Emirates’ relationship with Genesys
started with Skywards, the airline’s
frequent flyer programme. Genesys
applications allowed the call centre
to easily handle the complexity of
multiple time zones and allowing
Bell-Wright and her team to work on
quality issues across the group. “I won’t
say we had problems but we wanted
all of our call centres operatives, no
matter where they were based, to offer
a consistency of service and so we
devoted a lot of time to setting base-
line standards and so on.”
Although she recalls some managed
services problems with the global roll-
out of Global Connect, she is pleased
“to have a relationship with a market
leader like Genesys”.
Now the global virtualised call
centre is working well. “I’m not saying
we’re perfect but we’re in a much
better position to have customer
knowledge, which is critical. A
customer’s key concerns are simple and
we have to address them: they want
instant accessibility and they want
the operator to know who they are.
To deliver that, we needed to give our
operators the best tools – knowledge
management is critical.”
Bell-Wright points to the importance
of senior management buy-in on
projects like this. “We’re lucky that
service is seen as central to our
business, but we
have to work at it.”
What has clearly
worked is achieving
the airline’s key
objective: how
to scale without
compromising
customer service.
“We’re a global 24/7
business where speed
to market is critical,”
Bell-Wright stresses.
“When we enter
new markets, we
have to deliver the
same level of service
our customers
expect throughout
our business. The
challenge is how
do we do that,
across multiple
territories and in
multiple languages.
Of course, that means a
very structured, detailed
training programme to
ensure that skills are
aligned. We also fine
tune what we do based on customer
response – what are the hold times?
How many times are customers
transferred and so on?”
And the result? “The outcome
has been great. We have a more
stable infrastructure. We have better
performance management. And
our operators have no excuse not
to perform to our high standards,
because they have every tool they
need. Our job now is managing
our people. What we’ve achieved is
critical to Emirates going forward:
we’ve matured our customer contact
environment and tools in order to
manage our business better.”
Genesys applications allowed the call centre to easily handle the complexity of multiple time zones.
Karen Bell-Wright, VP Retail and Contact Centres, Emirates Airlines
The Egyptian Elaraby group has deployed a WAN optimisation solution for a better experience for users
and a better bottom line for business
Speeding toward WAN
Most applications today are
designed for the LAN. They are
designed for high bandwidth
and low latency. But, with the user base
becoming completely dispersed, most of
these applications are breaking because
of the latency and bandwidth issues. Poor
application performance was one of the
issues faced by the Egyptian Elraby group
that is focused on manufacturing and
marketing of engineering products. The
group represents some of the prominent
names in the industry in Egypt including
Toshiba, Sharp, Hitachi, Seiko, NEC and
employs 18,500 people across the country.
As a modern growing business, Elaraby
found that each of its branches were using
multiple versions of applications to do the
same job and needed to integrate all its
applications in one place. It decided to build
a data centre that would ensure access to all
these applications by its employees across
its 19 branches. Elaraby was looking for a
solution that would not only consolidate and
automate its processes, but also optimise
connections between all its branches, making
its applications available through data centre.
The data centre, located at a co-location
facility, has around 40 blade servers, which
host applications such as SAP, SharePoint,
SQL Server, Exchange, to name a few. “ As one
of the leading players in the Egyptian market,
especially in technology and engineering,
we wanted to take advantage of the cost
savings and benefits that consolidation can
bring. However we needed to ensure that
our employees could access files and data
quickly and easily regardless of where they
were located. We were in a need of a wide
area network (WAN) optimisation solution
in order to speed up the communication
process between our major branches over
MPLS links,” says Walid Bakr, IT Manager at
Elaraby Group.
The group zeroed in on Riverbed’s
Steelhead appliances and Steelhead Mobile
Controller. The project was designed and
implemented by the value-added distributor
FVC and Network Vision, its authorised
partner in Egypt. The Steelhead appliances
were implemented in the data centre and
four main branches in Quesna, Bnha,
Heliopolis and Abbasia.
“The implementation was easy and stable
and helped us to resolve our bandwidth
utilisation problem as well as allow our team
to be able to access all the applications and
files centrally form the data centre over the
WAN with LAN like performance,” says Bakr.
“FVC’s team of engineers worked closely with
our team to fine-tune the solution to meet
our expectations in terms of application
acceleration.”
The implementation took three days to
deploy in the data centre and four remote
branches, and further fine-tuning took two
days to complete.
The boost in performance that Elaraby
gets out of its Riverbed Steelhead WAN
optimisation solutions has resulted in huge
bandwidth savings, though it was not the
primary objective for the company. “We
weren’t looking to reduce bandwidth-costs
but the aim was to optimise applications
and as a result, we have been able to add
more applications on the network. We
have been able to add Microsoft Lync for
unified communications, video conferencing
and VoIP thanks to the WAN optimisation
solution,” says Bakr. Communications
between branches have also improved with
a 70 percent increase in data throughput,
which has directly translated into increased
employee productivity.
Looking forward, Bakr says the plan
is to roll out Steelhead Mobile solution
to the remote workers in rest of the
branches for LAN-like access to corporate
files and applications.
www.networkworldme.com18 Network World Middle East August 2011
in action: elaraby
August 2011 Network World Middle East 19
www.networkworldme.com
Solid state drives (SSDs) offer a faster option for network storage
SSD goes mainstream
Solid-state disk, once considered
a niche technology for
ruggedised, industrial and
military applications, is on its way to the
mainstream. This is partly because of SSD
benefits, which include performance,
power efficiency, ruggedness and a
lightweight, compact size. But other
developments have also come into
play, including technology and market
developments that have begun to help this
technology overcome its pitfalls -- namely
capacity, reliability and price.
Because SSD is based on NAND flash
memory chip technology, it has no moving
parts, which makes it faster and less prone
to mechanical failure than hard disk
drives. Today, costs are shrinking faster
than ever, thanks to market growth, new
technology developments and vendors
working overtime to accelerate their SSD
development.
Solid state drives offer substantial
benefits over traditional hard drives – they
are faster, more reliable, use less energy
and are quieter. On the negative side, they
have lifespans that are limited to an
average number of writes per cell, and
they can cost up to 70 times as much
per gigabyte as standard hard drives.
“Performance, endurance
and rapid return on investment
are clear benefits of solid state
drives (SSDs). Boot and transfer
speeds are faster (boot times,
for example, are 60% faster),
the drives run cooler and
quieter and, with no moving
parts, SSDs are significantly
more durable than hard disk
drives (HDDs),” says Antoine
Harb, Business Development
Manager, Kingston.
First, some definitions:
There are two types of SSDs
– single-level cell (SLC) and
multi-level cell (MLC). SLC drives
www.networkworldme.com
feature | SSD
20 Network World Middle East August 2011
in association with
August 2011 Network World Middle East 21
are faster, have longer life spans (about
100,000 writes per cell) and cost more.
MLC drives are less expensive, but
have typical life spans of only about
10,000 writes per cell, making then
generally inappropriate for write-
intensive enterprise applications.
MLC drives can have a place in the
enterprise for read-intensive applications
such as serving videos or database lookups.
They can speed throughput and access
times at a lower cost than SLC drives. “MLC
drives have much better performance: up
to 15-16 times more IOPS than traditional
HDD’s under light workloads. They
also come at an average cost per GB.
However these are challenged by heavy
workloads depicting limitations when
handling sustained I/O coupled with a
relatively short life-time. We don’t believe
MLC technology is ready for enterprise
usage yet, and they still fit better in the
consumer device space,” says Zaher Haydar,
Regional Pre-Sales Manager, EMC.
SSDs are being used to replace
standard hard drives in servers, but this
is not typically the most effective way
to use the drives. SLC-based SSDs are so
much faster than standard hard drives
that more than a couple of drives can
overrun a standard storage controller.
Also, since SSDs typically are more
reliable as well as more expensive than
regular drives, using SSDs in a RAID
configuration may not be the best use of
the drives.
These issues are leading to new and
different applications for SSDs. Some
manufacturers are shipping PCI-X or
PCIe boards that can either have SSDs (or
discrete flash memory) directly mounted
on them or attached via standard SAS or
SATA cables.Other vendors have created
appliances that are placed between servers
and storage, operating as cache to speed up
access to the storage without having to add
SSDs to specific storage arrays.
And some vendors have added SSDs to
their existing SAN storage systems, either
as cache or as another storage tier (often
called tier 0).
So, where do SSDs fit in an enterprise
network? In servers? In storage systems?
Somewhere else?
“Data centre storage applications
are mission critical at every juncture,
requiring the highest performance
and reliability available. As the cost
per usable gigabyte decreases for
solid state storage, advanced SSDs are
becoming a high-performance option
in embedded data storage applications.
When fast access times, low power
consumption, improved heat dissipation
and long mean-time-between-failure are
requirements and cost is not a major
concern, SSDs are the right answer,” says
Khwaja Saifuddin, Senior Director of
Sales, Western Digital.
Nassir Nauthoa, GM of Intel
says upgrading to SSDs across the
enterprise network
brings about benefits
summarised in three
main characteristics that
embody the needs of the
enterprise: performance,
power, and reliability.
“Compared to 15K
RPM HDDs, SSDs use
less power this helps
reduce the overall
energy consumption
of the system. Couple
the reduced power
consumption with the
ability to reduce the
number of HDDs used
in a system. This can
lead to a reduction in
cooling and a reduction
in TCO of the system.
With Intel’s computing
platform knowledge,
proprietary controller and firmware, flash
expertise and rigorous testing, we have not
only raised the performance and reliability
factor for SSDs, but have also validated
these drives on Intel Architecture platforms
to ensure compatible operation and save
OEMs further design time,” he adds.
Why aren’t SSDs getting cheaper?
SSD proponents say the technology is
continuously gaining popularity and
prices are getting cheaper year over year.
EMC has reported on July 20th that more
flash solid-state capacity was shipped with
EMC’s VMAX and Unified storage systems
in the first half of 2011 than in all of 2010.
Based on IDC, over 500,000 Enterprise
SSDs (a mix of MLC and SLC) shipped
worldwide in 2010, and it’s forecasted that
over a million would ship by the end 2011.
“From a price perspective, SSDs were
around 20 times more expensive than
traditional HDDs back in 2009. Today, SSD
cost is hovering around $1 per GB, which
in association with
Nassir Nauthoa, GM, Intel
www.networkworldme.com22 Network World Middle East August 2011
is about 10 times higher than traditional
HDDs. That’s roughly a 50% drop in
price within the span of 18-24 months.
With more and more manufacturers
offering products based on SSD
technology (including the traditional
HDD manufacturers,) and with the rise in
demand visible from the total number of
SSD’s shipped, the downward price trend
is likely to continue,” says Haydar.
Harb agrees: “SSD is a ‘next
generation’ product, and like all new
technologies can cost more initially. SSD,
however, is at the tipping point, where
wider adoption is driving rapid cost
reductions. Older HDD technology has
offered advantages in price per GB, but
this is changing. SSD cost per GB is falling
by around 50% per year, and by now a
128GB drive is available for around $ 250.”
Keeping it cool
Perhaps, the biggest promise of SSD for
enterprise IT managers is the fact that it
can drastically reduce power consumption
in data centres. To determine the
potential of solid-state drives (SSDs) to
replace hard disk drives (HDDs) in the
enterprise, Intel IT has recently conducted
a proof of concept (PoC) that included
performance tests, measurement of power
consumption, and total-cost-of-ownership
(TCO) analysis.
“We found that using SSDs to
replace data HDDs in disk arrays could
increase I/O performance up to 8x for
comparable TCO, and that using them
as internal server OS disks reduced the
time required for common support
tasks such as installs and reboots by
up to 73 percent. We measured power
consumption and temperature of a
single SSD and a single HDD when
operating under load during our tests
and when idle. Under load, the SSD
consumed 0.9 W, 91 percent less than
the 10.1 W consumed by the HDD.
It also operated at a much lower
temperature of 94 degrees Fahrenheit (°
F) compared with 154° F for the HDD.
At idle, the SSD consumed 0.5 W, 93
percent less than the 6.88W consumed
by the HDD,” says Nauthoa.
OCZ RELEAsEs NEW CUsTOMIsAbLE
ENTERpRIsE-CLAss ssD
OCZ Technology has released a new enterprise-class solid-state drive (SSD), the Deneva 2, which comes
with SandForce’s latest controller technology, almost doubling the performance over its last iteration of the drive.
Like the original Deneva SSD, the Deneva 2 is a customizable product, coming in two series with multiple form factors, interfaces and NAND flash memory types, from high-end single-level cell (SLC) flash, and enterprise-class multi-level cell (MLC) flash to consumer-grade MLC.
The Deneva comes in the “R” or Reliability series and the “C” or Commercial series. The R series comes with SandForce’s 2582 controller, and sports a 10 million hours meantime between failure (MTBF) rating. The C series comes with a SandForce 2281 series controller and has an MTBF of 2 million hours.
The Deneva 2 SSD in a 2.5-in form factor.The SSD can also be purchased with SATA
3.0, SAS 2.0 or PCIe interfaces, and it can come in 1.8-in, 2.5-in and 3.5-in form factors as well as customizable casings, according to Alex Mei, OCZ’s chief marketing officer.
The Deneva 2 comes in capacities ranging from 64GB to 512GB and has a read speed of up to 550MB/sec, a write speed of up to 525MB/sec and, using 4K random writes, can generate up to 80,000 I/Os of throughput per second (IOPS).
The first version of the Deneva came with a SandForce 1500 controller , which offers I/O performance of up to 285MB/sec for reads, 275MB/sec for writes, and 4KB random writes up to 50,000 IOPS.
The Deneva 2 also comes with version 2.0 of OCZ’s Virtualized Controller Architecture firmware, which balances I/O across the drive’s multiple controller chips for better performance. The drive also supports ATA-TRIM command, which allows the operating system to erase data marked for deletion and consolidate existing data so it can be read sequentially instead of randomly.
feature | SSD
Zaher Haydar, Regional Pre-Sales Manager, EMC
in association with
Khwaja Saifuddin, Senior Director of Sales, Western Digital
Antoine Harb, Business Development Manager, Kingston
August 2011 Network World Middle East 23
Golf ad 207x270mm.ai 1 6/2/11 3:02 PM
WAN optimisation has grown from a way to squeeze more out of corporate bandwidth to an enabler of data-centre consolidation and
now is helping move those data centres into the cloud
Heading to the cloud
The technology continues its main
function – making response times
faster over WAN links – but now
through software that runs on virtual
machines it is becoming practical for
use in public and private clouds where
virtual environments rule. A few years
ago, WAN optimisation was locked
within hardware appliances, but that is
no longer the case.
Virtualised versions of the old
hardware appliances make it possible to
deploy optimisation within public cloud
provider networks, meaning cloud-based
applications respond better. It also means
data can be sent in less time to cloud
storage facilities where it occupies less
disk space (and so costs less) and is secure
because it is encrypted.
Most of the major WAN optimisation
vendors in the market now offer
virtual versions of their appliances. A
case in point is Riverbed which offers
a virtualised version of its Steelhead
appliance.
ability to scale quickly and support
applications as resources are needed,”
says Diego Arrabal, Regional Director of
F5 Networks.
Blue Coat Systems says the virtual
version of MACH5 enables companies
to get the full value of its turnkey
hardware appliances in software
form running in a virtual VMware
environment on an industry-standard
server. “Both our virtual appliance and
our turnkey hardware appliance provide
acceleration for remote access to email,
files and enterprise applications, as well
as optimisation for live and on-demand
video, one-sided acceleration for
applications in the public cloud and
acceleration for Web applications and
back-up/storage,” says Nigel Hawthorn,
VP of EMEA Marketing, Blue Coat.
Software only WAN optimisation
seems to be the growing trend, as
virtual optimisers are more flexible
than the hardware appliances that
are limited by the memory and
www.networkworldme.com24 Network World Middle East August 2011
feature | optimisation
“Virtual Steelhead is an important
product in our portfolio and is
deployed globally by many customers
who wish to implement Riverbed
WAN optimisation technology
on a hardware platform of their
choosing, rather than using the
highly optimised Steelhead appliance
hardware platforms. Typically
such customers would have highly
virtualised environments, space
limitations or specialised physical
hardware requirements,” says Paul
Sherry, Regional Director –Middle
East, Riverbed.
F5, another major vendor, has
recently announced virtual editions
of all of its appliances, except
WebAccelerator. “For F5, some the
benefits of our virtual editions lie in
their ability to extend the F5 platform
from proprietary data centres to
cloud environments. Using them in
conjunction with our BIG-IP hardware
platforms means customers have the
August 2011 Network World Middle East 25
www.networkworldme.com26 Network World Middle East August 2011
lost packets through forward error
correction. Acceleration also includes
application-specific optimisation for
chatty protocols such as CIFS, Hughes
says. But application optimisation isn’t
something Silver Peak focuses on.
Riverbed does, though, and boasts a
long list of applications and protocols
for which it has written specific
optimisation code. By understanding
an application, the WAN optimisation
software can anticipate what it will call
for next and pre-fetch, and can proxy
responses locally to keep chatty back-
and-forth off the WAN wire.
In addition to the focus on cloud,
WAN optimisation vendors are keen on
optimising traffic from mobile devices
– mainly laptops – back to corporate
sites and data centers that support WAN
optimisation controllers. Individual
users can speed up interactions with
applications and data without having to
visit a corporate site.
Vendors are looking
closely at extending
this capability to tablets
and smart phones, with
Circadence introducing
a client for Android
devices. Other vendors
have considered the possibility of such
clients but have reservations.
Most agree that phones and tablets
have the resources to support WAN
optimisation, but are less certain that
businesses want it – and if they do, what
operating system they would want it for.
“The market feasibility needs to be
resolved,” Hughes says. “It’s not clear
there is a sufficient critical mass of
critical applications on smart phones
and tablets.” If an optimisation client
were written for smart phones and
tablets, it’s unclear whether it would
have all the features of an appliance
or the current client for laptops, he
says. “That’s a good question that’s
yet to be resolved.”
He suggests that WAN optimisation
for mobile phones and other
handhelds be left to the makers of the
devices. “In that ecosystem there’s not
a lot of room for extra innovation to
be layered on top of them. It’s not an
attractive market.”
processing power of the hardware.
“The virtualisation of services provides
many benefits, not the least of which is
the ease and flexibility of deployment,
and use in private and public cloud
computing environments. Virtualisation
removes the dependency upon directly
associated hardware platforms and
provides users with flexible and scalable
options regarding the provision of
services,” says Sherry.
Hawthorn adds another perspective:
“Running the solution virtualised
enables companies to also run other
applications or services on the same
platform in a branch office or data
centre. For example, a company could
run our WAN optimisation solution
along with Windows Server to provide
print serving, authentication and file
services. In addition, companies can run
specialised applications needed for that
particular office or geographic region.
Companies can take advantage of the
best price/performance using industry-
standard servers.”
While most vendors agree that
virtual versions of their products are
important, the basic functions the
products perform to optimise traffic
are the vendors’ bread and butter.
Silver Peak’s CTO and founder David
Hughes divides WAN optimisation
techniques into three buckets: network
memory, network acceleration and loss.
Memory includes de-duplication and
compression of traffic, acceleration
minimises the effects of latency by
keeping WAN pipes full, and loss deals
with preventing retransmission of
In addition to the focus on cloud, WAN optimisation vendors are keen on optimising traffic from mobile devices – mainly
laptops – back to corporate sites and data centers that support WAN optimisation controllers.
Paul Sherry, Regional Director – Middle East, Riverbed
Diego Arrabal, Regional Director, F5 Networks
feature | optimisation
June 2011 Network World Middle East 27
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Putting realism into your network
Video-based collaboration is becoming increasingly popular, thanks to declining bandwidth costs and vendors sorting out all the technology constraints
Business video is expanding,
both from dedicated meeting
rooms out to small client devices
and from large enterprises down to
small businesses. It is somewhat of
an inconvenient truth that the global
financial crisis has been a bit of a boon to
the telepresence and video conferencing
industry. Faced with the indelible need
to cut costs and increase productivity,
enterprise began to explore alternate
methods of collaboration that don’t
involve getting in a car or on a plane. It
was a key part of the business case for
investing in high-definition (HD) video
conferencing systems that enable you
to see the nuances of facial expressions,
hand gestures and presentations, full-
size, clear and uninterrupted.
There are clear signs that video traffic
in the enterprise is growing as the new
breed of video conferencing technology
makes it possible for companies to go
for high level solutions without the high
level investment. Large organisations
prefer to go for high quality systems
as such as telepresence, which is
perhaps the pinnacle of virtual meeting
technology but requires significant
investment. It has, however, helped bring
video conferencing technology into the
parlance of enterprise.
There are a couple of factors driving
the adoption of HD video conferencing.
“In today’s harsh economic environment,
as companies face the challenge of
reducing costs, increasing productivity,
eliminating waste and maximising
resources, HD video conferencing is
providing a highly effective solution.
Many companies rely on teams in
different geographical locations, remote
28 Network World Middle East August 2011
Daniel Weisbeck, Vice President, Marketing EMEA, Polycom
Hidenori Taguchi, Head of B2B Marketing, Sony Professional Solutions MEA
feature | video
August 2011 Network World Middle East 29
www.networkworldme.com30 Network World Middle East August 2011
experts and instant access to data to
make decisions. HD video and HD voice
delivers life-like experiences which
allows teams to collaborate more easily
and make quick and accurate decisions
from virtually any remote location,”
says Daniel Weisbeck, Vice President,
Marketing EMEA, Polycom.
Hidenori Taguchi, Head of
B2B Marketing, Sony Professional
Solutions MEA, says business deals
today can be conducted using video
conferencing technologies and HD
adds to the effectiveness and intimacy
of communicating across geographical
distances. “There are numerous other
benefits to HD video conferencing,
including reduction in the cost of doing
business across borders, increasing
productivity and maximising working
time, cutting down on carbon footprints
as well as delivering a better work-life
balance for employees.”
Return on investment is another
key driver for implementation, says
Pradeep Angeveetil, Regional Manager,
LifeSize Communications. “Gone
are the days when deployment of
video conferencing was meant for
the Fortune 100 companies. Today,
people have realised the need to
achieve business objectives the most
efficient way with minimal costs.
Some of our customers in places like
Saudi Arabia actually face an issue in
getting air tickets for a relatively short
Riyadh -Dammam flight. The fact that
HD almost replicates a face to face
experience at attractive price points
from us makes it a tool that you today
cannot do without,” he says.
The challenge for HD adoption in
the region, though, is bandwidth. One
solution is for companies to consider
when they plan their IP networks
infrastructure is that video applications
can run on IP.
“Bandwidth availability has
significantly improved over the past
years, and bandwidth cost continues to
decrease. This has allowed companies
to have a relatively low cost of
operation for the network, resulting
in a reduced total cost of ownership.
The savings in travel cost and the
improvement in productivity that
comes with using HD video greatly
justifies any additional investment
in bandwidth,” says Munzer Aloush,
TelePresence & Video Area Sales
Manager, Cisco.
Weisbeck agrees that bandwidth
has been a concern, especially in small
and medium size enterprises. He says
Polycom uses coding and compression
technology that delivers quality video
experiences while consuming up to 50
percent less network bandwidth than
similar products.
Taguchi from Sony says bandwidth
requirement for a good HD quality
video conference system is from 2Mbps
to 4Mbps, which is realistic for most
connected businesses and homes today.
Another obstacle is an age-old IT issue
– interoperability – as vendors jockey to
establish their technologies as ‘industry
standard’. It may not be easy to make
Cisco telepresense talk to LifeSize or
Polycom. It is technically possible but
you need an exchange service in the
middle and that is normally provided by
a service provider, who charges for it.
The telepresence industry is beginning
to see partnerships, such as the deal
between BT and Tata Communication for
an inter-carrier exchange.
For any CIO looking to invest in
HD video conferencing systems, a key
question to ask is how does it impact on
the network?
“You have to assess your usage and
requirements and then decide to either
section off bandwidth from your existing
infrastructure or to set up a separate
network to support video conferencing.
If you have extra capacity, a dedicated
network for your telepresence solution
will not be necessary; however
having a separate network for video
conferencing provides added security,
call management capabilities and quality
of service,” says Weisbeck.
Taguchi says companies rarely
require a separate network for
video conference services, although
the option tends to depend on
the architecture of the individual
corporation’s data network. Where
companies choose to separate video
conferencing data from the common
data network, for example, to protect
bandwidth, segregation can be achieved
with separate VLAN or networks,
depending on the individual company’s
IT policies and demands.
Pradeep Angeveetil, Regional Manager, LifeSize Communications
Munzer Aloush, TelePresence & Video Area Sales Manager, Cisco
feature | video
August 2011 Network World Middle East 31
www.networkworldme.com
Social networking is fundamentally
shifting the way we interact,
communicate, organise, form
opinions, and even shop; it’s blurring
boundaries, increasing transparency and
creating fluidity in everything we do.
Linking a twelfth of society and growing
rapidly, companies, large and small, can
no longer ignore or try to block social
networking in their environment. It’s a
part of the fabric in which we now learn,
play and work.
opinion | security
Rising threats from social mediaNigel Hawthorn, VP of EMEA marketing at Blue Coat Systems, lists out four top social media security risks
and the ways to protect against them
minutes per month on Facebook alone,
making social networking sites and their
users ideal malware targets. According
to Sophos, 40% of users were infected
by malware from social networking
sites. Typical attacks draw on the trust
relationship established between users
and their connections. They try to trick
users into giving up information and
access that can be exploited for financial
gain. Some examples of malware
particularly successful in social media
are:
Phishing: With increasingly sophisticated
techniques, attackers pose as one of your
legitimate social networking connections
and try to lure you into providing
sensitive information, such as your login
credentials. They prey on the tendency of
most people to use the same passwords
for all their accounts, hoping that by
tricking you into giving one username
and password they can get access to
more profitable banking, financial and
other online accounts.
Most users have their radar on
concerning financial accounts, but
their daily login to a social networking
site is just a speed bump, creating an
opening for cybercriminals to steal
online assets. This is why more and more
phishing attacks are targeting seemingly
“nonrelevant” online user accounts.
Click-jacking: Attackers lure you into
clicking on a link, perhaps posting it
on your wall and then spamming your
friends to “check it out,” or “view my
photos.” When someone clicks on the
link, they unwittingly install malware
(code or script) that can be used to steal
information or take control over their
computer. Clickjacking uses the dynamic
nature of social networking and a
willingness to click on links from those
you know, and even those you don’t, to
quickly reach a large audience, cajole
you into revealing private information
(e.g. through surveys), collect hits for ad
revenue, and eventually allow access to
your entire social network.
All the things that make social
media so attractive to users – the
personalisation, the ease with which
information can be shared, and the
real-time nature of the medium – pose
significant risks to your business. The
following are the top four risks you face
when you use social networking:
1 Malware: In 2010, social
media became the preferred
communications vehicle for users,
who are spending more than 700 billion
32 Network World Middle East August 2011
Nigel Hawthorn, VP of EMEA marketing, Blue Coat Systems
August 2011 Network World Middle East 33
2 Data loss: Social networking
is about making connections
and sharing experiences and
information, however, sometimes that
information is not meant to be made
public. It’s not uncommon for people
to inadvertently post confidential
information – “hey, I just met with
xxx and I think I am about to make a
huge commission,” or “I’m pulling my
hair out, if we can’t fix this software
bug soon, I don’t know that I will ever
sleep again,” that provides “insider
knowledge.” There have also been cases
in which employees have unintentionally
posted proprietary software code
to social networking sites, exposing
sensitive intellectual property. These
actions, though unintentional, can
potentially violate industry specific
regulations, impact your reputation, or
put you at a competitive disadvantage.
3Bandwidth consumption: As
much as 40% of employees report
that they are on social networking
sites at work, creating a potential strain
on bandwidth to the detriment of other
business applications. Last year, when the
U.S. government mandated open access
to social networks, traffic on the network
increased by 25%. Video alone (think of
all the videos your friends share and you
link to through Facebook or Twitter),
can overwhelm many networks. A single
video stream usually consumes between
500k to 1.2 Mbps (and that’s not even
HD, which can be up to 4 to 7 Mbps),
and when you have tens or hundreds of
people accessing videos it’s easy to see
how overall performance can degrade.
4 Productivity loss: Social
networking sites are becoming
online destinations, enabling you
to post and read messages, date, shop,
upload or check out videos, and play
games. This makes them increasingly
convenient and engaging for users,
drawing them to spend more and more
time there, as well as increasingly
challenging for the business to
appropriately control. When unchecked,
the time spent on social networking
sites can affect productivity, as your
employees spend more and more time
(think back on the 700 billion minutes
on Facebook) playing Farmville during
business hours.
New requirements to keep your
business safe
There are ways to protect against
and mitigate the risks posed by social
networking. Specifically, your solution
needs to provide:
A real-time web defense – social
networking is constantly changing,
as are the tactics used by attackers to
exploit it. As a result, your solution
needs to analyse your web traffic on
the fly and uncover threats that may
be hidden there. Real-time analysis of
dynamically changing links provides
risk analysis and timely protection to
keep social media safe. So when you see
“hey you should take a look at this,” you
can either allow or deny based on the
potential risk it poses.
Selective social networking controls –
to protect against data loss and comply
with industry-specific regulations, you
need to be able to manage the actions
your employees can take within social
networking sites. For example, you
may want to prevent employees from
uploading attachments, photos or
video to social media sites, thereby
preventing risks of inadvertent
data loss or risks to your corporate
reputation. The key is to have granular
control over what can be done within
social networking. This requires a
solution that not only looks at where
the initial traffic is coming from (e.g.
Facebook, YouTube, etc.), but also
at what is being done within that
application (email, posting messages,
downloading attachments).
Caching – you can’t allow social media
to overrun your network and adversely
impact business critical applications,
however, because social networking is
becoming so integral to business, you
cannot simply block it. What you can
do is offset any potential performance
degradation with caching, which
allows you to locally store data and
video files after an initial download
and make them readily
available to users who
want to subsequently
access them. In this way,
you can enable access to
social networking without
compromising the performance of other
traffic on the network.
Policy flexibility – to manage
productivity, you need to be able to set
acceptable use policies within social
media. You may choose, for instance, to
block access to Farmville during work
hours; or if you allow it, you may want
to give it a lower priority, so it doesn’t
impact business critical applications.
With a flexible policy framework, you
can prioritise and manage the activities
that are allowed or disallowed, and
when. The ability to delineate between
social networking sites and specific
applications or content within those
sites is crucial to setting an effective
acceptable use policy. So, if you elect
to block games, you can block both
standalone games, as well as games
within social media sites
Realising the promise of social
networking no longer needs to be
a potential risk for the business.
Embracing social media only requires
the right security.
Real-time analysis of dynamically changing links provides risk analysis and timely protection to keep social media safe.
www.networkworldme.com34 Network World Middle East August 2011
Ideas for data centre energy saving
Forrester spells out tips for keeping your data centre cool this summer
to 10 percent, and 6 percent expect
it to grow by 10 percent or more.
And to reduce operating and capital
costs, improve disaster recovery, and
accelerate time-to-market for new
apps, organisations are turning to
server virtualisation.
But a new motivator
to expand and improve
the use of server
virtualisation is bubbling
to the surface: reducing
energy consumption.
Why? Forrester finds
that there are three
primary motivators:
Financial. The costs to
power and cool a server
over its life may actually
exceed its purchase
price. Virtualisation
reduces the overall
energy consumption of
your server footprint,
thereby allowing the
same workload to run on
fewer physical, energy-
consuming servers.
Resiliency. To ensure
that uptime and service-
level agreements
are maintained,
virtualisation alleviates
out-of-space, power, and
cooling constraints.
Green. Virtualisation reduces
the overall server footprint and
cuts energy-related carbon dioxide
emissions as well as the electronic
waste from purchasing and then
disposing server equipment in
the future.
feature | data centre
A s the global economy is
recovers, pent-up business
demand for new apps and
market initiatives is driving server
investments. Forrester finds that
25 percent of organisations expect
server spend to grow by 5 percent
August 2011 Network World Middle East 35
To cut server energy costs by up to
65 percent and exploit your energy
savings potential from virtualisation,
Forrester recommends three process
improvements:
1 Increase your overall virtual-to-
physical server footprint.
There are significant opportunities
for organisations to increase their
overall virtualisation footprint
across all server environments and
platforms. Forrester found that, while
approximately 90 percent of firms are
virtualising or planning to virtualise
their servers, only 37 percent of their
x86 operating system instances are
virtual servers. In two years time,
this is expected to increase to 65
percent.
Additionally, the extent of
virtualisation varies significantly
based on the server environment,
and the platform. The first step to
maximising energy savings is to
increase the overall virtualisation
footprint across all environments
and platforms. To ensure you’re
actually saving energy, be sure to
turn off or decommission servers
that are no longer running any
workloads. Forrester’s Green IT
maturity assessment methodology
prescribes the following
virtualisation targets to achieve one
of four levels of green IT maturity: 1)
Needs improvement (1 percent to 25
percent virtualised); 2) Improving (26
percent to 50 percent virtualised);
3) Robust (51 percent to 75 percent
virtualised); and 4) Best-in-class (76
percent to 100 percent virtualised).
2 Maximise your virtual machine to
physical host and utilisation ratios.
Virtualisation alone is not enough.
In addition to increasing the overall
server virtualisation footprint,
drive additional energy savings by
virtualising more efficiently. Server
virtualisation ratios are not keeping
pace with modern hardware and
virtualisation platform capabilities. It’s
common to break even on the purchase
of a new server with a 4-to-1 virtual
machine (VM)-to-physical host ratio, but
most servers can accommodate 15 VMs.
Virtualising more efficiently can help
you avoid three new server purchases,
not to mention the additional power,
cooling, and space expenses from this
new equipment.
A key ratio that administrators use
to determine the acceptable number
of VMs per physical host is server
CPU utilisation. There is a direct
relationship between CPU utilisation,
VMs per physical host, and energy
savings. A standalone unvirtualised
server might run at an average of
10 percent to 15 percent utilisation,
whereas virtualised servers could
theoretically approach 100 percent.
However, Forrester finds that most
administrators are hesitant to push
the utilisation of their physical host
servers beyond 25 percent to 50
percent - limiting both the number
of VMs per physical host and energy
savings potential. Underutilised
servers still consume considerable
amounts of energy.
If you increase the number
of VMs per physical host, you
can decrease the total number
of physical servers and reduce
energy consumption. As server
teams become more comfortable
with higher server virtualisation
utilisation ratios, they can safely
add more VMs per physical server
without diminishing service levels.
3 Source more energy-efficient
servers and architectures.
Sourcing more energy-efficient
servers and architectures may be
your only remaining option to
reduce energy consumption if you’ve
maxed out virtualisation ratios or
realised that youre going
to need higher-end server
infrastructure. Energy
consumption will be
higher on a per-server
basis - but total server
energy consumption
will be lower due to the
reduced number of overall servers. If
your risk tolerance doesn’t allow you
to push the limits of virtualisation
ratios, then these more efficient
server environments may be your
only viable option.
Forrester recommends seeking
newer models of the same servers
your organisation already purchases.
The simple act of server refresh will
reduce server energy consumption.
New server architectures, such
as blade systems and converged
infrastructure, are not only more
energy-efficient by nature but also
facilitate aggressive virtualisation.
The energy savings can be
impressive, as noted by a VP of an
online services company who said
about his converged architecture: “We
achieved 70 percent space savings,
25 percent operational expense
savings, 30 percent to 40 percent heat
dissipation improvements, and 40
percent power savings.”
There are significant opportunities for organisations to increase their overall virtualisation footprint across all server environments and platforms.
www.networkworldme.com36 Network World Middle East August 2011
T he result is several
network technologies,
including Single Root I/O
Virtualisation (SR-IOV). SR-IOV is a
PCI-SIG standard that allows a PCI
Express (PCIe) I/O device to appear
as multiple physical and virtual
Optimising virtualised serverServer virtualisation is being deployed on an almost universal basis to reduce costs and fully utilise data centre resources. With the progression to powerful multi-core servers, greater memory capacities and higher bandwidth network
pipes, it has become necessary to rethink I/O optimisation
devices. Conventional virtual server
hypervisors provide virtual machines
(VMs) with a set of resources that
emulate the functionality of a
physical server, allowing each VM
to run independently. For I/O, that
means each VM uses a virtual I/O
device that is presented by the
hypervisor. Although this works well
for virtualisation, it’s usually not
efficient. This is especially true for
received I/O.
With multi-core servers the
hypervisor performs the following
techupdate
August 2011 Network World Middle East 37
www.networkworldme.com38 Network World Middle East August 2011
techupdate
steps to process received I/O:
One of the CPU cores is
interrupted to inspect the packet
and determine which VM should
receive it.
The core that’s servicing the VM is
interrupted and processes the I/O.
The core that initially received
the packet returns to its normal
workload.
Each of these steps slows down
I/O and uses significant CPU
resources. SR-IOV streamlines this
process by introducing the concept
of physical and virtual functions:
Physical function (PF) – There is
at least one PF for each physical
port on an adapter. In some cases,
adapters can be partitioned into
as many as four ports per physical
port. In this example, there could
be four PFs per port, or a total of 8
PFs for an adapter with two physical
ports. The key differentiation is PFs
have full configuration capabilities.
They are associated with the
hypervisor and can be managed like
physical devices.
Virtual function (VF) – VFs are
associated with VMs and are limited
to processing I/O streams, basically
moving data. They don’t support
management of the physical device.
The number of supported VFs will
vary and will likely centre around 64
VFs per physical adapter.
Although the SR-IOV standard
applies to network and storage
I/O, the current and expected
implementations are for networking
only. Performance concerns for
virtual servers are focused on
Ethernet traffic that typically
creates the largest I/O demand and
uses the largest amount of server
resources. Storage I/O uses far less
overhead and usually achieves full
line speed.
Advanced management solutions
One of the conventional solutions to
improve VM performance is direct
I/O (or pass-through), which requires
an assignment of a unique physical
port to each VM, bypassing the
hypervisor. This method improves
performance, but is limited by the
number of physical ports that can be
attached to the server.
It also results in a complex and
costly collection of adapter ports,
switch ports and cables. The direct
I/O option is also not compatible
with migration of a running VM.
Migration requires a manual process
to shut down, move and restart the
VM. Clearly this is less than optimal.
With SR-IOV, VFs are assigned
to VMs. This allows one adapter
port, switch port and cable to
support direct I/O for many VMs.
If appropriate, multiple VFs can be
One of the conventional solutions to improve VM performance is direct I/O (or pass-through), which requires an assignment of a unique physical port to each VM, bypassing the hypervisor.
assigned to one VM. For example, a
VM could be assigned VFs from each
physical port of a two-port adapter
for high availability.
For received I/O, the server core that
is assigned to the VM and its associated
VFs executes all of the processing for
a packet. There’s no need to interrupt
cores that are assigned to other VMs.
To further enhance performance,
I/O’s between VFs on the same PF can
be processed by the adapter using an
internal Layer 2 switch,
eliminating routing
through a physical
switch.
Finally, SR-IOV
is compatible with
migration of running
VMs.
The ecosystem for SR-IOV is
in the process of bootstrapping
itself. It requires support by
suppliers of adapters, switches
and hypervisors. It also requires
support by server vendors that
will be adding management tools
to fully enable robust solutions.
SR-IOV is currently supported with
Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) in
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and
SUSE Enterprise Linux 11 (and
later). Other hypervisor providers
are expected to announce SR-IOV
support.
SR-IOV will be a key technology
to optimise I/O for virtualised
servers, enabling higher
virtualisation ratios for maximum
cost savings. SR-IOV will provide a
much more cost-effective solution
than multiple physical ports and
will be fully compatible with VM
migration.
August 2011 Network World Middle East 39
OptiView XG Network Analysis Tablet
Werner Heeren, Regional Sales Director at Fluke Networks, talks about some of the unique features of the dedicated tablet for
automated network and application analysis
Can you tell us a bit more about the new
OptiView Network Analysis Tablet?
Werner Heeren: It is a network engineer’s tablet with dedicated custom hardware for automated network and application analysis – the fastest way to root cause of performance problems. OptiView XG continues to strengthen Fluke Networks’ position in ‘Analysis and Troubleshooting’, by providing a simple to use, intuitive UI and by addressing new technologies. OptiView XG will also increase the product use by providing unique new views into how our customers can solve problems, anywhere in the network.
What are some of the key new features?
Werner Heeren: It comes in a tablet form factor with powerful consolidated functionalities. OptiView XG integrates the latest network technologies, multiple analysis ports (1 Gigabit dual copper, 1 Gigabit fiber, and 10 Gigabit fiber), multiple
radios (WiFi and spectrum analysis) and a larger, brighter touch display. OptiView XG runs Windows 7 64-bit on a 1.2 GHz dual core processor with 4Gb of RAM. It also has a larger 4Gb capture buffer and a removable 128Gbsolid state hard drive. The consolidated hardware enables the XG to quickly adapt to the dynamic network environment.
The user interface provides completely customizable dashboards
that provide an at-a-glance overview of the current status of your network, with critical metrics from routers, switches, firewalls, servers, services, applications, and other key devices.
We have also added 10 Gigabit analysis, which enables the OptiView XG to assess, deploy, validate and troubleshoot from the data center to the access Layer. It ensures that all packets are captured at 10 Gigabit line-rate when troubleshooting difficult application problems.
Does it provide a high level view of
the health of applications running on
a network?
Werner Heeren: Yes the device comes with Application Infrastructure Analysis that will monitor the application delivery infrastructure to eliminate any infrastructure related issues affecting application performance. It also includes Path Analysis with which users can quickly understand
the exact path taken by the application to quickly resolve application performance issues due to network infrastructure.
How about troubleshooting Wireless LANs?
Werner Heeren: Yes it can manage and troubleshoot 802.11 wireless networks with unique multiple radios. The OptiView XG can run AirMagnet WiFi Analyzer, Spectrum XT, Survey Pro, including Planner.
What is the significance of the
OptiView XG?
Werner Heeren: OptiView XG takes Analysis and Troubleshooting to a whole new level with the introduction of 10 Gigabit analysis in a portable form factor. There is no other competitive product that can perform ‘on-the-wire’ analysis 10 Gigabit networks and perform WiFi monitoring and analysis in one single tool. OptiView XG includes an Integrated ClearSight Analyzer, providing an application centric view to get to root cause faster without looking at packets. It also combines unique time-based analysis to better analyze larger capture files.
Increased automation for Application Infrastructure Analysis means that OptiView XG can diagnose application issues related to the network effortlessly and help further reduce the burden on already stressed IT resources to accomplish these important functions.
Customers agree that an NMS alone can’t always find the root cause of an issue and OptiView XG is THE tool for the fastest root cause analysis of network and application performance problems.
What are some of the business problems
addressed by OptiView XG key features?
Werner Heeren: OptiView XG’s many new features help reduce budgets by completing projects more timely, making IT staff more skilled, effective and efficient. OptiView XG can also help with growth initiatives by making the deployment of unified communications, Data centres, virtualization and WLAN projects quicker and more successful.
advertorial
For more info, contact; sales.eemea@flukenetworks.com or call +971-4-4465050
www.networkworldme.com40 Network World Middle East August 2011
Charting a new courseJuniper remains solely focused on networks and believes it can keep taking market share from
competitors by capitalising on architectural transitions. Trevor Dearing, Chief Network Strategist for EMEA,
reveals the growth plans
Juniper has recently launched
its new data centre architecture
called QFabric. Do you have any
products available around this?
Yes, we have started shipping our first
switch with QFabric architecture –
QFX3500, which is a top of the rack data
centre switch. What we are trying to do
with QFabric is to make the data centre
network look like a single logical switch
that connects the entire data centre rather
than tiers of multiple access aggregation
and core switches. What it does is reduce
the amount of hardware required, and
also getting rid of layers of switches
that automatically translated reduced
demand for space and power as well as
management and maintenance.
How do you plan to grow in the switching
market that is dominated by Cisco?
Cisco has been dominant for many years
but now they are losing ground to the likes
of HP and Brocade. People say switching
is a commodity market and we tend to
disagree. There are a couple of things we
are seeing. One is the growing adoption of
wireless devices in enterprises with people
bringing in tablets and smart phones.
We are also seeing a growing adoption of
802.11n, which means that you can’t plug
your access point into an existing Ethernet
switch because these require more power.
So you would require gigabit switches and
10G on the backbone and when users start
to shop around for gigabit switches things
interview | juniper
like warranty, support and financing also
become important. We have been doing a
lot of work around these soft, non-product
areas. Of course, it is also about technology
and we have been constantly coming out
with new products that aim to simplify
the network. The entry-level switching
might be a commodity market but the data
centre market is going to be much bigger.
Over the next few years, the volume of 10G
switches, consolidation and virtualisation
will drive the need for a new networking
infrastructure and that’s where QFabric
comes in. Then you will see us growing our
market share much faster.
You are relying heavily on IBM and Dell to
get into the data centre market. Are you
going to re-think your partner strategy?
Both IBM and Dell are over global
OEM partners. And if you look at their
competition, it is with networking
companies such as Cisco. They have to go
their customers with the best proposition
and we have to make sure that QFabric is
the best proposition they have. Equally, it
is also about making sure that you have a
wide selection of solutions to choose from
because not every customer out there is
not going to be a QFabric customer. If
you have just a server room, you wouldn’t
need QFabric. We are working with small
partners in the distribution value chain
who are also potentially the partners of
NetApp, Hitach Data Systems, etc.
Juniper seems to be focusing more on
software. Are you trying to encourage
third-party application development on
your Junos operating system?
Yes absolutely, and harnessing the power
of third parties is very important. We have
three different Junos platforms- Junos
which runs on routers, switches and
security systems within a network; Junos
Space for orchestrating, automating and
providing insight into network operations;
and Junos Pulse software for network
attached clients like smart phones and
laptops. We are trying to encourage
software writers to do their own thing with
these platforms and we would like get to a
point where this is more like an app store.
Can you emerge as an alternative to
Cisco in the enterprise edge router
market?
Our MX series of new routers borrow
technology from our powerful service
provider routers and will give customers
a new alternative to Cisco ASR gear.
Trevor Dearing, Chief Network Strategist for EMEA, Juniper
August 2011 Network World Middle East 41
Security watchNext-generation firewall vendor’s chief tell us why
apps security is crucial
What’s SonicWall’s general
approach to IT security?
There is still a substantial
amount of bad malware, viruses and
Trojans being written by sophisticated
software development teams that are
invading your networks at any moment,
and our primary service is stopping that
from happening. Second to that, it is our
fundamental belief that organisations need
to enable their networks and employees
to be more productive. Four years ago,
there were mostly really restricted policies
-- you know, don’t let things happen in
your network that you’re not in control
of. Forbid people from bringing their own
devices onto the network, using their own
interview | sonicwall
applications at home and even tapping into
the network unless they’re on the LAN. We
fundamentally believe very differently. We
have to unleash the power of the network.
We want to enable people to use any device
anywhere and use any type of application
that is business worthy on the network
and then give you the CIO, CFO or CEO
the power to mitigate how much time,
where, who and what has access to that
information, those applications and those
business processes that are important.
What sets SonicWall apart?
We provide the best firewall, which is
primarily focused on malware. We also
bring an integrated set of features that
complement the security aspects of your
network, but that enable you to maintain
your network in a far more productive way.
Instead of having a discrete device, we have
integrated features like gateway AV, IPS,
filtering and blocking, and there are now
application awareness features allowing you
to look at who’s utilising your network and
the way that they are utilising their network.
In addition, we’ve incorporated things like
SSL VPN, e-mail security/anti-spam.
Who’s the SonicWall customer?
Traditionally you’ve been more SMB
focused, but with the SuperMassive
firewall featuring more than 40Gbps of
throughput you’re moving way upscale.
About five years ago we made the decision
to move upscale and the reason why we
made that decision is because we not
only were providing security for small
businesses, we were also doing a lot of
distributed remote branch office work
primarily for corporate enterprises. They
came to us and said “Look, you guys are
doing a great job at the edge, at our remote
branch offices and we think you have an
opportunity to play here at the hub.” So we
developed a product road map that would
suggest we could do that. I’m pleased to
report that 45% of our revenue for the last
six months has come from enterprises --
anything above 1,000 employees.
A lot of people challenge us over “Well,
how are we going to get away from our
SMB roots?” But I have never seen a virus
or malware that is prejudicial. Sorry, you’re
a small company so you get a small virus
and you know what, you’re the big guy
so we’re sending you the big heavy load.
It just doesn’t work that way. So from our
perspective, we always had the technology.
What we needed to do is recognise it
was a completely different capacity level
at the hub of the data centre and there
were certain features that were going to
make a big difference in that data centre
environment that we didn’t necessarily have
to provide in an SMB environment.
Ruckus ZoneFlex WiFi system uses beam forming technology to deliver powerful, secure, flexible
enterprise-grade WLAN
Beam me up, Ruckus
portable devices, such as smartphones
and tablets that may be operated in a
variety of orientations. The ZoneFlex
access points are able to handle
extremely high speed connections on
802.11n, if they’re connected to the
network over Gigabit Ethernet.
Using the Ruckus System
When you unpack the Ruckus Wireless
gear, the first piece of equipment that
needs to be configured is the ZoneDirector.
You do this by connecting a computer
to the ZoneDirector using an Ethernet
cable, and then running the device’s setup
wizard. The primary goal of the initial
setup is to give the ZoneDirector a name
and to assign an IP address or tell it to
use DHCP. Once you’ve done that, you
can manage the ZoneDirector from any
computer on the network by browsing to
the device’s IP address.
Once you can reach the Web-based
management interface and set your user
name and password, you can configure
other settings, such as whether you want
the ZoneDirector to act as a DHCP server
on your wireless network. You can also
configure what Ruckus Wireless calls
two ZoneFlex 7962 and two ZoneFlex
7363 access points. The ZoneDirector and
the ZoneFlex 7962 access points were
connected to the lab network via Gigabit
Ethernet. The ZoneFlex 7363 access points
were tested both in direct-connect and
mesh modes.
One important capability of the Ruckus
WiFi APs is the ability to beam the WiFi
signal at clients, thus extending the range
of the WiFi signal over much longer
distances than standard access points.
The ZoneFlex 7962 will also adapt its
RF polarisation to improve reception for
The Ruckus Wireless ZoneFlex
Smart WiFi system is designed to
be a stable, easy to manage and
highly secure wireless networking solution
for the enterprise. The heart of the system
is the ZoneDirector controller, which can
communicate with up to 500 ZoneFlex
access points.
The controllers and the access points
are highly configurable, they can be
connected directly to your wired network
or they can work in a mesh configuration.
We tested the ZoneDirector 1100, which
will support up to 50 access points, with
test
www.networkworldme.com42 Network World Middle East August 2011
August 2011 Network World Middle East 43
Smart Redundancy, which allows you to
configure two ZoneDirectors so that one
device stays in a standby state to take over
if the other fails.
At this point, the ZoneDirector is
set up enough that you can add access
points if you wish. However there are a
wide number of other features that you
can turn on or configure if you choose,
including the type of security you want to
use, the method of finding system time,
telling it the country you’re in so that it
uses the correct WiFi channels, and telling
the ZoneDirector whether you’re going to
be using mesh networking.
Note that all of these settings can be
configured after the wireless network is up
and operating.
The level of flexibility dictates a fairly
complex management interface, but
Ruckus has mitigated the potential for
confusion by dividing up each of the areas
into tabs, and sections within tabs. This
means that if you want to configure access
points, you go to the configuration page
(it’s a tab on top) click on Access Points on
a menu on the side, and then look for the
section that contains the access point you
want to configure.
Adding the access points
The access points in this test were the
Ruckus ZoneFlex 7962, which the company
describes as its highest performance
access point. It’s designed to support
high definition IPTV, has extended
range, supports vertical and horizontal
polarization, and claims to provide up to
300MBps of user throughput. The ZoneFlex
7363 is a midrange access point and is
designed for video streaming and VoIP
fOR MORE PRODUCT REVIEWS, LOG ON TO:www.networkworldme.com
along with general data use. Both devices
are dual band and support dynamic
beam forming.
Adding the access points to the network
is basically a plug-and-play operation. All
you do is plug in an Ethernet cable that’s
on the same network as the ZoneDirector,
and plug in the power. The access point
will find the ZoneDirector, request an
IP address from the DHCP server (either
the one on the ZoneDirector or your
existing DHCP server depending on your
network configuration) and then check
for up to date firmware. If the firmware
on the access point needs updating, the
ZoneDirector will do that, and then the
ZoneFlex access point will be ready to use.
About the only thing you’re likely to
change is to set the IP address to a fixed
instead of dynamic address, and to give the
access point a name so that you can tell
which one you’re managing and where it’s
physically located. If you’re planning to use
the access point in a mesh configuration,
then you need to make sure that the “Mesh”
configuration check box is checked where it
says “enable.”
While most of the access point settings
are handled automatically to meet the needs
of most users, you can set a wide variety
of characteristics, ranging from adding
the GPS coordinates to the access point to
telling the access point how you want it to
handle the mesh environment. You should
note that if you plan to use the access points
in a mesh network, you must first connect
them to an Ethernet connection so that you
can set them up. Once that’s done, you can
disconnect the network cable, and take the
access point to its operational location, and
plug it into a power outlet. The access point
will locate the network and join, retaining
the IP address you assigned it initially.
Access points used in the mesh network
can connect directly to wired access points
or they can connect through other mesh
access points. Ruckus allows up to five hops
in the mesh. You should note that each hop
in the mesh reduces performance because
the access point in the middle must handle
traffic from its mesh partners, as well as any
clients that are connected to it.
The mesh backhaul in this test took
place on the 5GHz part of the 802.11n
network, with all of the access points
sharing the same channel for their internal
communications. One feature of the meshed
access points is that you can connect them
to a wired Ethernet device through an extra
Ethernet port on the access point. This
means that you can include non-wireless
capable devices or computers in your
wireless network. You could, for example,
plug an Ethernet cable into one of the
access points, attach an Ethernet switch,
and to that switch attach devices such
as UPS monitors that aren’t available in
wireless form.
One of the advanced features of the
Ruckus Wireless system is the ability
of the access points to engage in beam
forming. This means that once an access
point detects a wireless client, it can direct
the radio energy at the device to give it a
stronger signal.
In use, the Ruckus Wireless products
were impressive. They delivered solid
performance under difficult conditions
(including some added interference, a leaky
microwave oven, and a series of non-data
devices on conflicting frequencies), they
identified and worked around neighbouring
WiFi installations, and provided solid WiFi
connections. In addition, the ZoneDirector
was easy to manage, it does not create a
huge learning curve, and it was extremely
flexible. This may be close to the ideal WiFi
system for the enterprise.
Adding the access points to the network is basically a plug-and-play operation. All you do is plug in an Ethernet cable that’s on the same network as the ZoneDirector, and plug in the power.
www.networkworldme.com44 Network World Middle East August 2011
tools & gadgets
Axis rolls out 5-megapixel network cameras
toolshed
Axis has rolled out 5-megapixel fixed dome network cameras, with precise iris control for optimal image clarity and H.264 compression. The indoor AXIS P3367-V Network Camera and the outdoor-ready AXIS P3367-VE model, both vandal-resistant, are suitable for any application that requires video surveillance coverage of a large area or extremely high image detail in a limited area. Examples include airport halls, train stations, parking lots, city surveillance, school halls and campuses.
The day and night fixed domes deliver 5-megapixel resolution video at 12 frames per second and support HDTV 1080p video at 30 frames per second. To help minimize bandwidth and storage needs, AXIS P3367-V/-VE cameras feature H.264 video compression, powerful digital pan/tilt/zoom capabilities and multi-view streaming, which enables cropped areas of interest to be streamed simultaneously instead of the full view. AXIS P3367-V/-VE can be installed easily and quickly through the combination of smart features such as remote zoom for adjusting the angle of view
over the network and remote focus that eliminates the need for manual focusing. With Power over Ethernet support, only one network cable required to carry both power and data.
Two compact and discreetly designed variants will be available: the indoor vandal-resistant AXIS P3367-V and the outdoor-ready vandal-resistant AXIS P3367-VE. The latter model, that offers an impact-resistant IK10-, IP66- and NEMA 4X-rated casing, requires no additional protection for installation outdoors.
F5 releases two new storage virtualisation appliancesF5 Networks has released two new file virtualisation appliances, an entry-level offering and a midrange product that features 10-Gigabit Ethernet connectivity. F5’s new entry-level ARX1500 and midrange ARX2500 appliances are both 1U (1.75 in.) in height.
The follow-up to the ARX500, the ARX1500 costs about the same as its predecessor but comes with eight Gigabit Ethernet ports -- up from two ports on the ARX500. The ARX2500 is designed for higher end file-sharing environments, and comes with four Gigabit Ethernet ports and two 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports.
Appliances in the ARX line now range from the ARX VE, which has a single Gigabit Ethernet port and supports up to 500 users, to the ARX4000, a 4U box with 12 Gigabit Ethernet ports and two 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports that can accommodate up to 12,000 users.
All ARX appliances support the industry standard CIFS file system protocol for Windows devices and the NFS protocol for Unix and Linux devices. F5’s ARX products are compatible with nearly all NAS devices and file servers. Users who want to add storage capacity to a virtualized file server pool can simply plug an additional NAS or file server into the box in order for it to be aggregated and managed under a single user interface.
August 2011 Network World Middle East 45
The Swiss structured cabling vendor R&M has introduced its high-density (HD) patch panel for data centers. R&M’s latest product complements their completely modular data centre range including its raceways system, MPO module, raised floor solution, and pre-terminated cables.
The new HD panel packs 48 RJ45 ports into a single compact unit in the 19” cable rack. This helps data centers gain valuable space, translating into less room for cabling and more room for active components
R&M rolls out next-gen data centre solution
LG debuts N1A1
in the cabinet. The HD panel is extremely versatile, accommodating fiber optic and both unshielded and shielded copper cabling. With the HD Panel from R&M, data centres are able to pack 100% performance for 10 and 40/100 Gigabit Ethernet into a single unit.
The HD panels’ scalable design enables planners to start with a 24-port version and gradually retrofit as needed. As part of R&M’s security system, colored dust caps and plug locks from the R&M security system can be used for marking ports and locking the patch panels. The HD panel is available now in the Middle East and Africa as an addition to R&M’s data centre range.
LG Electronics (LG) has unveiled its N1A1 Network Storage, which delivers complete data security with efficient and stable performance. Meticulously designed to be user-friendly, the N1A1 is specifically tailored to meet the high standards and expectations of advanced home users.
The new N1A1 combines the features of an external hard drive and network storage device, raising the expectations for convenient home data management. It can be switched among these two modes using external controls. Ethernet and USB interfaces provide even greater flexibility.
The new N1A1 automatically runs back-ups from multiple computers, delivering reliable, distributed data recovery that is tailored to specific needs. Wherever there is an internet connection, the Real-time Back-up runs in the background.
Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) certification further enhances the N1A1’s networking capabilities, allowing supported audio and video devices to directly access multimedia saved on the network storage device. LG’s living room-friendly N1A1 can stream multimedia to a DLNA TV or any DLNA supported device on the same network.
www.networkworldme.com46 Network World Middle East August 2011
layer 8
Building the borg
This one sounds like it comes right out of a science-fiction writer’s nightmare. A US intelligence agency wants to develop
applications based on the way the human brain makes sense of large amounts of haphazard, partial information.
Raytheon BBN Technologies was awarded $3 million by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) group to explore new methods of modeling what it calls the brain’s sensemaking ability. The research could have commercial and military benefits, such as helping the intelligence community analyze fast-moving battlefield video, audio, and text data quickly and accurately, IARPA stated.
According to IARPA, which invests in long-range, high-risk/high-payoff research programs, sensemaking refers to the process by which humans are able to generate explanations for data that are otherwise sparse, noisy, and uncertain. It is a core cognitive ability that is central to the work of intelligence analysts, IARPA says.
NASA teams with Chevron for energy exploration
The European Space Agency says it has completed what it calls the largest digital camera ever built for a space mission
- a one billion pixel array camera that will help create a three-dimensional picture of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Set to be launched onboard the ESA’s galaxy-mapping Gaia mission in 2013, the digital camera was “mosaicked together from 106 separate electronic detectors.” ESA says that Gaia’s measurements will be so accurate that, if it were on Earth, it could measure the thumbnails of a person on the Moon.
According to the ESA, the camera was developed by e2v Technologies of Chelmsford, UK and uses rectangular detectors a little smaller than a credit card, each one measuring 4.7x6 cm but thinner than a human hair. The completed mosaic is arranged in seven rows of charge coupled devices (CCDs). The main array comprises 102 detectors dedicated to star detection. Four others check the image quality of each telescope and the stability of the 106.5º angle between the two telescopes that Gaia uses to obtain stereo views of stars.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Chevron today said they would partner to build a variety of energy sensing and drilling
technologies that could be used on Earth and in space.With the partnership known as Advanced Energy Technology
Development, JPL said it will assist in the demonstration, development and commercial deployment of a range of technologies that include: valves to selectively control oil and gas flow from different geological formations in a well; single-phase pumping motors for continuous operation at the bottom of deep wells;
sensors and electronics for drilling; and integrated management systems for monitoring temperature,
pressure and flow rates in deep wells and assessing the health of drilling operations. NASA said it
expects the collaboration could advance technologies that could
one day be used for exploring other planets.
Chevron said the alliance is an opportunity to bridge
public- and private-sector technology and research
to discover oil and natural gas volumes that are found in deep remote reservoirs.
Billion-pixel camera to take Milky Way shots
Astronomers spot huge space reservoir
Astronomers said they have spotted what they called the largest and most distant reservoir of water ever detected in
the universe. The water, equivalent to 140 trillion times all the water in the world’s oceans, surrounds a huge – 20 billion times more massive than the Sun – feeding black hole more than 12 billion light-years away.
Two teams of astronomers have been looking at the black hole or quasar called APM 08279+5255, one from the Caltech’s Submillimeter Observatory in Hawaii supported by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the other from and the Plateau de Bure Interferometer in the French Alps.
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