Network World Middle East

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www.networkworldme.com | Issue 149 | August 2011

PLUS: VIDEO CONFERENCING | WAN OPTIMISATION | VIRTUAL SERVERS | WIRELESS LAN

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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 [email protected]

PublisherDominic De Sousa

COONadeem Hood

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DIGITALwww.networkworldme.com

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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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www.networkworldme.com | Issue 149 | August 2011

PLUS: VIDEO CONFERENCING | WAN OPTIMISATION | VIRTUAL SERVERS | WIRELESS LAN

CollaborationCollaboration

NetworkingNetworking

C loud

PUBL

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LIC

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D B

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ON THE REBOUNDAN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT NETWORKING GIANT CISCO’S REVAMP STRATEGY



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


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.”


"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."


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.


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

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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


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.



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


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


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.


in action: elaraby


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


feature | SSD

20 Network World Middle East August 2011

in association with


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


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


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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


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



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


Daniel Weisbeck, Vice President, Marketing EMEA, Polycom

Hidenori Taguchi, Head of B2B Marketing, Sony Professional Solutions MEA

feature | video



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



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


Nigel Hawthorn, VP of EMEA marketing, Blue Coat Systems


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.


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


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.


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



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.


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; [email protected] or call +971-4-4465050


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


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



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

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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.


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.


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.


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.

Learn how www.arubanetworks.com/move

Where networks understand people and movement.

Where iPads® and Smartphones connect securely without intervention.

Where mobile voice and video are crystal clear.

Now imagine all of this in a single, cost effective solution.IntIntroducing MOVETM from Aruba Networks.

People Move, Networks Must Follow.

Imagine a world where the air is the Internet.

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