Stories by Jim Duffy

After Arista and before Cisco/Insieme, Huawei hikes 100G bar again

Huawei this week unveiled a high-end upgrade to its CloudEngine core switch, which debuted here at Interop a year ago.

The cloud's the limit for new Arista, Brocade and HP switches

Cloud scaling will be all the switching rage at this week’s Interop. Three major vendors last week took their platforms deeper into and then beyond the data center, outdueling each other on server access density and software programmability, two key attributes needed for the virtualized goldmine called the cloud. And in so doing, they have raised the bar and perhaps set the stage for one of the more anticipated announcements in SDN switching from Cisco spin-in Insieme.

Juniper closer to Cisco in shipping SDN brains

Juniper Networks this week will extend its SDN offerings with the release of its controller, roughly six months ahead of schedule.

Arista heading off Cisco/Insieme at 100G SDNs?

Arista is raising the ante in high-density programmable core switching and perhaps setting the stage for things to come.

Brocade unleashes a data center barrage

Brocade this week extended its data center networking portfolio with hardware and software enhancements designed to better integrate and align physical and virtual resources.

HP refreshes data center core and aggregation with SDN switches

HP this week refreshed its switch line and fortified its SDN portfolio with three new systems and a router, along with management and provisioning software extensions.

Extreme Networks replaces its CEO again

Charles W. Berger is the beleaguered company's new president and CEO.

Juniper switching boss talks technology challenges, Cisco Nexus 6000

Jonathan Davidson took over Juniper campus and data center switching when the two previously separate business units were combined following the departure of founding engineer R.K. Anand. Davidson has a service provider routing background at Juniper and Cisco, which is no coincidence -- after five years in switching, Juniper has been unable to mirror the success it had in its first five years in service provider routing. But it did start from zero and surpassed at least six other incumbent vendors to attain the No. 3 position in the market. The company has more than 20,000 switching customers cultivated through organic development, Davidson notes. And as Juniper moves forward amid a forklift upgrade facing its EX core switch base and after an initial misfire on the QFabric data center switch, it's focusing on customer demands for simplification, agility and automation. Davidson discussed some recent and future developments in Juniper enterprise switching.

IBM defends OpenDaylight from doubters

IBM is asking that people judge the OpenDaylight SDN project by its accomplishments, not by its roster.

Open Networking Foundation director details SDN directions, OpenDaylight impact

The third annual Open Networking Summit, an SDN conference organized by the Open Networking Foundation, convened this week just after ONF members Cisco and IBM unveiled a separate effort to define an open source SDN framework. Unlike the user-driven ONF, OpenDaylight is a vendor-driven project to cultivate a system of SDN applications, but it also raised suspicion of the group's real intent: Is it designed to stall SDN's momentum and the threat, real or perceived, it could pose to incumbent hardware vendors? ONF Executive Director Dan Pitt discussed some of these topics with Network World Managing Editor Jim Duffy at the Santa Clara, Calif., conference.

Cisco extends Microsoft support in datacentre portfolio

Cisco last week extended its datacentre product line to support Microsoft's Windows Server 2012 hypervisor and VM management features to more tightly align their respective datacentre and Cloud architectures for joint customers.

Startup aims SDN technology at Cisco WANs

SDNs aren't just for data center networks, despite the best-use-case-scenario arguments for network virtualization and flow management pervading the industry.

Extreme, Brocade bring fabrics to the enterprise edge

Extreme Networks and Brocade this week separately announced products and strategies to tightly integrate IT resources in the enterprise campus.

Former switching chief McCool leaves Cisco

Cisco Senior Vice President John McCool, CTO of the enterprise segment and instrumental in data center fabric initiatives, has left the company after 17 years.

Skeptcism follows Cisco-IBM led OpenDaylight SDN consortium

If you're skeptical about the intentions of the OpenDaylight SDN consortium, you're not alone.