Andre Kindness

Principal Analyst

Author Insights

Blog

AWS Joins Google Cloud In Removing Egress Costs

Tracy Woo 5 days ago
Learn two key steps your IT org should take in light of this announcement from AWS.
Blog

AT&T Outage Shines A Spotlight On Network Dependability

Octavio Garcia Granados February 23, 2024
What are the key lessons telecommunications carriers and IT and technology leaders can learn from the recent AT&T outage? Find out in this summary of the outage and its impact on IT leaders.
Blog

HPE + Juniper Networks Creates A Cisco Doppelganger

Andre Kindness January 11, 2024
What does the HPE acquisition of Juniper Networks mean for technology leaders and the market overall? Find out in this detailed analysis of the deal.
Blog

Cisco Is Getting Back Into The Game

Andre Kindness December 21, 2023
Big changes have started to ripple through Cisco as it slims down one of the industry’s largest routing, switching, and wireless product portfolios. Learn more about its updated networking strategy.
Blog

What’s Behind The Strategy Axis In A Forrester Wave™ Evaluation?

Andre Kindness October 24, 2023
TL;DR: It gauges your vendor’s commitment. As some of you might have noticed, David Holmes and I released Forrester’s inaugural ZTE evaluation, The Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust Edge Solutions, Q3 2023. If you haven’t taken a look, please do. The research is the first in the industry to tackle the secure WAN space, with probably […]
Blog

A Deep Dive Into The Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust Edge Solutions, Q3 2023

David Holmes August 29, 2023
Get an inside look at the industry’s first evaluation of all-in-one Zero Trust Edge (ZTE) solutions, which some vendors call secure software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) and others call secure access service edge (SASE).
Blog

You Must Optimize Your IT Networks To Achieve Success In Your Digital Store Initiatives

Andre Kindness July 25, 2023
If you didn’t catch my last blog on business optimized networks … A business-optimized network (BON) embraces customer-centric principals and the five tenets of virtual network infrastructure within its design and operation. Most networks are not designed to be business differentiators but rather to enable IT connectivity. Adopting a business-optimized network gives businesses a leg […]
Blog

The Rise Of Business-Optimized Networks

Andre Kindness July 17, 2023
In late 2015, Forrester introduced a new networking concept called business-optimized network (BON), an idea that networks needed to be designed for the business you’re in. Among the Silicon Valley unicorns, this has been commonplace. For classic Fortune 500 companies, however, this is just emerging. You are probably saying, Andre, don’t be a silly rabbit […]
Blog

Uneven Innovation At AWS re:Invent 2022

Lee Sustar December 8, 2022
Some 14 Forrester analysts attended this year’s AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas. The conference was a mix of innovation in some areas — particularly compute and networking, along with a co-engineering approach to industry cloud — but plateaus in others, such as hybrid and edge. Efficiency and consolidation were underlying themes, from amping up AI/ML […]
Blog

SD-WAN Sunsets And ZTE Emerges

Andre Kindness September 16, 2022
Software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) has started to ride off into the sunset (which is long overdue). For some time, you might see some vendors wandering around aimlessly, hoping to sell you a SD-WAN solution, but for the most part, the networking market is moving on. It didn’t happen like I predicted. I thought the SD-WAN acronym […]
Blog

Remote Office In A Box (ROBO) Is Back, And It’s Called SD-WAN

Andre Kindness November 11, 2020
Over the last decade and a half, networking vendors have been using various methods to bundle wired, wireless, voice over IP, and security products into a solution sale. These companies tried various combinations of routers, WAN optimization, security, Wi-Fi, switching, and voice over IP (VoIP). No single hardware product had all the services, but most […]
Blog

Six Aspects To Palo Alto’s Acquisition Of CloudGenix

Andre Kindness April 15, 2020
On March 31, Palo Alto Networks announced the intent to acquire CloudGenix, a software-defined WAN appliance vendor. This was another announcement in a long list from the security and networking industries about merging together SDWAN and security. Such combinations are inevitable because: SDWAN adoption hasn’t matched the hype. Here is a dirty little secret: SDWAN […]
Blog

A Timeline Guide For Your 5G Strategy

Dan Bieler November 12, 2019
The rollout of 5G is much more evolutionary than the rollout scenarios of previous cellular standards.
Blog

The Old Axiom “No One Gets Fired For Buying [X]” Should Be Laid To Rest

Andre Kindness September 13, 2016
I just hung up the phone and can’t stop shaking my head. This was the second call this week from an organization looking for a workaround to deal with the shortcomings of a networking component. Taking inquiries and trying to help clients solve challenges is a common element of my job. This can be tough […]
Blog

Houston, We Have A Problem . . . In The Networking Community

Andre Kindness June 23, 2015
I noticed an interesting phenomenon at Interop, which sparked my theory on new network technologies. New network technology maturity and its adoption correlate directly to the five stages of loss: 1) denial; 2) anger; 3) bargaining; 4) depression; and 5) acceptance. For example, Interop break-out sessions on cloud and bring your own device (BYOD) now mostly […]
Blog

Take Investment Protection Off Your List Of Evaluation Criteria

Andre Kindness May 14, 2015
Historically I have not been a big fan of Interop for a variety of reasons. However Greg Ferro, George Stefanick, Ivan Pepelnjak, and Harvard Business Review IT Director Ken Griffin — to name a few — changed the breakout sessions experience for me. During Greg’s data center network session, he said something that was priceless. […]
Blog

What is the difference between white-box, bare-metal, branded bare-metal, and OEM network switches?

Andre Kindness February 23, 2015
I’m getting a lot calls from clients who are using “white box” and “bare metal” interchangeably when discussing network switches. It might not seem like a big deal, but it is when customers are trying to accomplish a certain task and are examining the wrong products or don’t see the full picture. This is especially […]
Blog

It Isn’t Over Till The Customer Sings (at ONUG)

Andre Kindness December 8, 2014
Wow. Certain networking vendors have started to declare they are winners, while others say software defined network (SDN) is over. All I have to say (in my best George Takei voice) is, “Oh, my!” I’m lucky enough to spend most of my day interacting with many end users to know that those statements clearly show how […]
Blog

White Box Mania Distracts Everyone And Wreaks Havoc On Investments

Andre Kindness December 3, 2014
I’m getting inundated with briefing requests from vendors either coming out with their own white box offerings or somehow supporting the white box market. While white box network solutions provide great value for some industries, more than likely, they are not for your infrastructure but for specific industries such as web scale or high-frequency trading […]
Blog

WLAN Vendors Differentiate By Business Value And Market Focus, Not Technology

Andre Kindness September 9, 2014
Forrester brought the wireless Forrester Wave™ back from the grave after an end-of-life announcement of it in 2007. Too many wireless innovations and changes in the vendor landscape have emerged not to dig it up and examine today’s solutions. The Forrester Wave: Wireless Local Area Network Solutions evaluated 10 wireless systems — Aerohive Solution, Aruba Mobility-Defined […]
More posts