Archive
#Cisco acquiring #Nutanix?
Well this is an interesting rumor… I’ve just waited until someone “big” would come and eat Nutanix which has set the scene around web-scale solutions!
Interesting article by Jared Rinderer, CFA, senior research analyst, Equity Capital Research Group.
Datacenter Wars: Cisco Prepares to Fire
Chambers’ Last Salvo. Cisco is actively surveying the battle landscape in the hyperconverged datacenter market. Mr. John Chambers, Cisco’s soon-to-be-retired CEO, will fire one last major barrage in the Datacenter Wars saga before retiring to be Cisco’s executive chairman and thus a battlefield overseer. Cisco’s interest in the hyperconverged market is fall out from VMware’s recent pressure on its parent company, EMC, to cease pushing Cisco’s software-defined networking (SDN) solution (Application Centric Infrastructure, ACI) inside of VCE for EMC and VMware-labeled customer accounts, EMC’s February 2015 launch of a midmarket converged system (VSPEX BLUE) that utilizes competitive x86 server (Foxconn) and networking (Brocade) products at the expense of Cisco’s gear, and EMC’s July 2013 acquisition of privately-held ScaleIO, a scale-out server-side storage software provider, for $250 million.
- The Weapon. Analyzing the hyperconverged systems market, Cisco would gain the most strategic value and long-term accretive revenue contribution with the acquisition of privately-held Nutanix, which is the clear market leader thus far. With a private company valuation exceeding $2 billion as of August 2014, Cisco’s purchase will come at a cost, but Mr. Chambers has always shown a willingness to pay to attain strategic datacenter infrastructure assets (enterprise value-to-trailing 12-month revenue multiple of 9.9x or $2.45 billion for Sourcefire in July 2013 and EV/Trevenue multiple of 12.0x or $1.2 billion for Meraki in November 2012). With only $3.2 billion of U.S.-based cash as of January 2015, Cisco will issue debt to complete the Nutanix purchase, which may be announced during Nutanix’s user/partner conference in Miami from June 8-10th.
From Allies to Enemies. VMware and Cisco were key allies enabling x86 server virtualization adoption, with VMware bringing its vSphere virtualization software platform and Cisco providing its UCS x86 servers and Nexus networking gear; however, this strong front began to erode when VMware outbid Cisco in its $1.25 billion acquisition of Nicira in July 2012. Nicira brought a viable software-defined networking platform (NSX) under VMware’s banner and which has now grown to be a formidable competitor in Cisco’s core networking market. Today, VMware and Cisco openly label each other as foes.
- Confederates. By acquiring Nutanix, Cisco gains a conspirator with a mutual adversary, VMware. For more-than a year now, VMware and Nutanix have been in numerous, highly-heated, public skirmishes. VMware is threatened by Nutanix’s one-stop shop for datacenter infrastructure and its potential to disrupt VMware’s objective of the complete automation of the datacenter. Nutanix dislikes VMware’s strategy tax (known as the “vTax”) and vendor lock-in agenda.
The Frontline. The integrated infrastructure software management and compute/server, storage, and networking systems market is bifurcated into two segments, converged and hyperconverged. The converged systems market was first to market and was trumpeted by Red Hat and VMware with various enterprise systems partners, including Cisco, Dell, EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM, NetApp, and Nimble Storage, for high-performance, large-scale datacenter workloads. Finding great interest and revenue generation…
Contiune reading here!
//Richard
#Gartner report – How to Choose Between #Hyper-V and #vSphere – #IaaS
The constant battle between the hypervisor and orchestration of IaaS etc. is of course continuing! But it is really fun I must say that Microsoft is getting more and more mature with it’s offerings in this space, great job!
One of the things that I tend to think most of is the cost, scalability and flexibility of the infrastructure that we build and how we build it, I often see that we tend to do what we’ve done for so many years now. We buy our SAN/NAS storage, we buy our servers but lean towards Blade servers though we think that’s the latest and coolest, and then we try to squeeze that into some sort of POD/FlexPods/UCS or whatever we like to call it to find our optimal “volume of Compute, Network and Storage” that we can scale. But is this scalable like the bigger cloud players like Google, Amazon etc.? Is this 2013 state of the art? I think that we’re just fooling ourselves a bit and build whatever we’ve done for all these years and don’t really provide the business with anything new… but that’s my view… I know what I’d look at and most of you that have read my earlier blog posts know that I love the way of scaling out and doing more like the big players using something like Nutanix and ensure that you choose the right IaaS components as a part of that stack, as well as the orchestration layer (OpenStack, System Center, CloudStack, Cloud Platform or whatever you prefer after you’ve done your homework).
Back to the topic a bit, I’d say that the hypervisor is of no importance anymore, that’s why everyone if giving it away for free or to the open source community! Vendors are after the more IaaS/PaaS orchestration layer and get into that because if they get that business then they have nested their way into your business processes, that’s where ultimately that will deliver the value as IT services in an automated way once you’ve got your business services and processes in place, and then it’s harder to make a change and they will live fat and happy on you for some years to come! 😉
#Citrix #XenMobile #MDM Integration With #Cisco ISE for #BYOD
Interesting and a good blog post by Sameer Mehta.
World of BYOD
Bring your own device (BYOD) initiatives are enabling employees to bring their own personal devices to work and allowing them corporate access to services such as Email. We did a recent audit using our ability to integrate with security incident and event management (SIEM) systems for a customer. The audit provided visibility into their ActiveSync traffic and found devices that belonged to executives that were not under IT management. Here’s a snapshot of their BYO devices.
There are several reasons to enable such access – for example, to boost employee productivity or convenience of accessing email from any device. Having said that, as Uncle Ben puts it, “with great power comes great responsibility”, and this responsibility is on the IT administrator from a security point of view. It’s IT’s responsibility to make sure that corporate data is not compromised or leaked in the following scenarios:
- What happens when this personal device is lost or stolen?
- What happens if this device is jailbroken or rooted?
- What happens if this device ends up outside an approved geofence. For example, outside of the US?
- What happens if the user inadvertently installs an application that has the ability and access to the entire device memory, thereby having unauthorized access to corporate data?
End User’s perspective on Enterprise Mobility
End users want access to corporate services such as email, intranet, ability to share and collaborate over documents, and also use 3rd party applications such as Evernote, Quick Office or GoodReader. With mobile solutions such as XenMobile MDM, CloudGateway, ShareFile and GoToAssist, Citrix provides ubiquity i.e. ‘access any app. from any device’, and a unified view for applications with an enterprise app store, documents via ShareFile. Having said that, since the user is accessing multiple applications; end user experience is a key component of mobility solutions. For example, bootstrap authentication and provide single sign on (SSO) to other applications.
Enterprise IT perspective on BYOD
As IT is providing access to corporate services, the main concern is around data loss prevention (DLP) and protecting corporate content on the mobile device. This means, encrypting data at rest for application data, and documents that are hosted either on Sharepoint, Network File share or Cloud storage. From a DLP perspective, for security conscious organizations, the mobile solutions bundle, which includes XenMobile MDM and CloudGateway…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
Are you, or wanna become a Mobility or Networking guru? – #EnvokeIT, #Citrix, #XenMobile, #BYOD
Then you might be the one that we’re looking for!!
EnvokeIT is expanding and are looking for people with the following areas of expertise:
Mobility
Are you currently working within the mobility area or with any of the major Mobile Device Management products out there (MDM, MAM, MIM etc.)? Then we’d love to talk to you! We strongly believe in this area and are focusing on it and would like to have you onboard on this journey! And of course we’re focusing on the Citrix product portfolio but are mainly looking for people with experience within the area and not exclusively on the Citrix XenMobile/Zenprise products. And Enterprise Mobility Management is here to stay, it’s the future work-/play-ground!
Networking
Wow, this is an area that is exploding! And I must agree that I’m not the expert within this area, but there are so many new capabilities being developed right now and we and our customers see the business value here. We’re talking about everything from traditional old school SSL VPN to supporting the latest mobility, application and cloud delivery solutions out there! So if you have experience on the Citrix NetScaler product or are a current Cisco, F5 or Riverbed person; contact us to hear more on what we have to offer!
Contact us – EnvokeIT (form page),or if you rather contact me or Mathias directly:
Richard Egenas – CTO
Email: richard-at-envokeit-.-com
Phone: +46 (0) 768 81 01 62
Mathias Törnblom – CEO
Email: mathias-at-envokeit-.-com
Phone: +46 (0) 8 587 633 10
Thanks for taking your time reading this and I hope that you will join us on this journey!! 🙂
//Richard
#Citrix #NetScaler VPX on the #Cisco 1110 Virtual Network Services platform – via @pigram86
Interesting!!! 🙂
This week at Cisco live! in London, Citrix is demonstrating the Citrix NetScaler VPX virtual application delivery controller (vADC) on the Nexus 1110 Cloud Services Platform . NetScaler VPX is the industry-leading vADC and is further testimony to the expanding ecosystem for the Cisco Nexus 1000V virtual networking portfolio and the Cloud Network Services platform. The integrated Cisco-Citrix solution follows on the heels of last year’s agreement by the two companies that Cisco would reference sell the Citrix NetScaler portfolio, and Cisco’s demonstration of its Nexus 1000V virtual networking portfolio on Citrix XenServer.
The Nexus 1110 is the latest generation of appliances that started with the Nexus 1010. The Nexus 1110 helps customers that are virtualizing more of their application and security services and want to run them on a dedicated platform. For example, virtual firewalls, like our Virtual Security Gateway (VSG), complement physical firewall appliances to support virtual application deployments and VM mobility requirements. The Nexus 1110 appliance serves that need, running a range of virtual services on a platform that the networking and security teams can more directly control than the other application servers.
With Citrix NetScaler VPX integrated into the Nexus 1110 Cloud Services Platform, enterprise IT admins can scale-out deployments by enabling additional virtual NetScaler instances (VM’s) directly from the Nexus 1110. NetScaler VPX also provides feature and management consistency across physical and virtual ADC’s, as well as consistency across physical and virtual workloads that are being managed. The NetScaler…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
OpenStack vs CloudStack: The Latest Score – #CloudStack, #OpenStack
A little update below from Joe Panettieri, good reading! And thanks Oded Nahum for sharing!
And I must agree that I would not count out CloudStack! 😉
OpenStack vs CloudStack: The Latest Score
OpenStack remains the largest and most active open source cloud computing project, Network World notes. But research from Chinese blogger Qingye “John” Jiangsuggests that momentum is building for CloudStack, and interest in Eucalyptus and OpenNebula remains strong. For cloud services providers (CSPs) and consultants, it’s critically important to track each of the four open source cloud platforms. Here’s why.
During Q4 2012, interest in CloudStack grew faster than rival open source cloud platforms. But Jiang’s data shows that:
- OpenStack has the largest total population, followed by Eucalyptus, CloudStack, and OpenNebula;
- OpenStack has the largest active population during the past quarter, followed by CloudStack, Eucalyptus, and OpenNebula;
- OpenStack has the largest active population during the past month, followed by CloudStack, Eucalyptus, and OpenNebula.
Partner Views
Those findings are important to CSPs and consultants that are selecting cloud platforms upon which to build services. OpenStack has been the poster child for open source cloud computing for more than a year now but the bandwagon has some challenges.
Dell, for one, says OpenStack lacks maturity and the hardware giant won’t launch its public cloud (based on OpenStack) for roughly a year. Dell also alleges that Hewlett-Packard’s own public cloud uses a “dramatically forked” version of OpenStack containing proprietary HP technology.
Still, OpenStack consulting opportunities seem to be emerging rapidly. Mirantis, for instance, has emeged as the largest OpenStack systems integrator. The company’s clientele apparently includes Cisco, Dell, GE, Agilent, NASA, HP, AT&T, The Gap, Axcient and Nexenta.
Moreover, Rackspace (NYSE: RAX) continues to see OpenStack progress. CTO John Engates recently offered his perspectives — including some OpenStack milestones — to ZDnet.
Here Comes CloudStack
Meanwhile, it has been awhile since I’ve heard from the CloudStack community. But the CloudStack chatter will likely grow very loud…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
Magic Quadrant for Application Delivery Controllers – #Citrix, #NetScaler, #F5
The application delivery controller has evolved into a key component of the data center architecture, and enterprises should evaluate ADCs based on how they integrate with this architecture and support more-advanced features, such as user and traffic control and monitoring.
Market Definition/Description
Application delivery controllers (ADCs) provide functions that optimize enterprise application environments. The market evolved from the load-balancing systems that were specifically developed to ensure the availability and scalability of websites. Enterprises use ADCs to optimize reliability, end-user performance, data center resource use and security for a variety of enterprise applications.
Magic Quadrant
Source: Gartner (October 2012)
Vendor Strengths and Cautions
A10 Networks
A10 continues to gain market share and brand awareness, especially in Asia, and it is aggressively targeting the North American market. Its product development has placed focus on developing a scalable high-performance platform with a strong feature set but a more limited focus on establishing a data center architectural vision. While strong in its product focus, A10 has demonstrated more limited innovation and still has a more narrow feature support than leading vendors. A10 is a good choice for enterprises seeking a cost-effective…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
#NetScaler – Join Live Webinar: Learn More about #Citrix/#Cisco Partnership and Program (AMP)
Ok, this is interesting! Have a look and join this seminar!
JOIN US for an exciting Master Class experience! At this live webinar,Wednesday November 7th, you will learn about the most critical elements of cloud infrastructures and enterprise datacenter architectures. Get details on the latest features of NetScaler, tips and tricks for easy configuration, and get a chance to consult with the experts.
Agenda:
• News and views – Cisco partnership and Ace Migration Program (AMP)
• NetScaler 101 – Responder, rewrite and URL transformation?
• In the spotlight – Innovative security strategies for protecting apps and data
• What’s new – NetScaler product updates?
• Master Class extra – Be heard and get the answers you’re looking for
Read more and register here.
//Richard
NetApp Virtual Storage Console for XenServer – #XenServer #CitrixSynergy #NetApp #VCS
This is looking really nice! Have a look at the capabilities of the NetApp VSC plugin for XenServer demo video;
Citrix Synergy 2012 demo: NetApp VSC 1.0 for Citrix XenServer – SR management
Virtual Storage Console reduce cost and complexity with integrated, end-to-end storage management for Citrix infrastructures. Improve administrative efficiency for both your Citrix and storage administrators.
So if you’re a NetApp shop why not try it out?
It’s really nice that you can do most of the config from the XenCenter console! I’m right now doing the Cisco UCS and XenDesktop lab here at Synergy and playing around with it and it’s neat! Once the plugin is installed you can interact directly with it from the XenCenter console.
Here you can configure the preferences in a simple way (even though the User Preference console/plugin isn’t the coolest looking tool)!
UCS and XenDesktop – Best Practises guide #Cisco #UCS #XenDesktop #VXI
I must admin that the Cisco, NetApp and Citrix story around providing a great offering around a complete server hardware, storage and networking solution!
I’m currently attending the 5h SYNBCN12-614W-Platform training on XenDesktop with Cisco Unified Computing System and NetApp session here and I must say that I like the offering due to the broad capabilities of the products included in the solution.
I think that one of the real added values that companies will like is that you have ONE (1) support contact (Cisco) for the whole solution, then Cisco wodk with the others to solve any potential issue etc.
And while playing around here the trainer also mentioned this best practise guide, and it looks good;
Additional info about the Cisco VXI – Desktop Virtualization can be found here.
Cheers!
//Richard
The IT Melting Pot! 