Optimizing The Branch Part 3: Three Models For Consolidation

I've put together another video blog this time getting into the detail on the various models I see for branch office server and infrastructure consolidation, based on the findings of my recent TechRadar. 

Forrester IT Operations Blog Branch Office Consolidation

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Optimizing The Branch Part 2: Forrester's Take on Branch Office Consolidation

In the first IT Infrastructure & Operations video podcast, I discuss trends in branch office consolidation as presented at Forrester's recent IT Forum US event, with a lovely backdrop of the Las Vegas strip. Read the accompanying report here.

By Chris Silva

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Optimizing The Branch, Part 1: Mobilizing IT

Writing on technologies for the branch office often times places me across the domains of mobility and non-mobile network infrastructure. Increasingly, in client inquiry calls, the question of "how do I optimize my branch office infrastructure" comes up and takes many forms. I'll attempt to address the most common of these branch office optimization scenarios in a series of posts. This being the first of such posts, I'll tackle one of the more basic optimization questions; connectivity for the small branch office.

In many organizations, the pure issue of connectivity for the branch can be a headache for IT Ops. When 10 - 20 users, or even fewer in many small or remote offices, are in need of access many organizations seek the most flexible, least infrastructure-intensive solution. In many cases spectre of unmanaged Wi-Fi access points at these branches and the related on-site support they may require is a deal-breaker, outweighing the operational benefit of simple, pervasive Wi-Fi connectivity using commodity hardware. Controller-based solutions, however, can seem overkill from either an infrastructure expense standpoint or in terms of sheer infrastructure complexity when contrast to the lack of or need for reduction in branch office IT staff. So, what does an organization seeking to "light up" its small branch offices with little or no infrastructure do? They outsource connectivity, of course. 

Many firms seeking to replicate "wired equivalent" connectivity speed for users in a small branch have opted for mobile broadband solutions from GSM and CDMA carriers. Based on current offerings, HSPA and EVDO-based offerings provide users ~1Mbit of uplink throughput, and about half that downlink will serve users with roughly equivalent speed to that of a fragmented (read: shared) DSL connection provided by local wireline carriers. A fair solution, but at $50 - $60 per month for high-limit plans, cost quickly becomes a factor.

Enter Novatel Wireless. a vendor primarily known for USB, PCMCIA and Express Card dongles for connecting existing hardware such as laptops to carrier networks. Novatel has harnessed the power of 3G EVDO for backhaul and Wi-Fi for access distribution in one device. The Novatel MiFi 2200, announced yesterday by US CDMA carrier Sprint for availability in June and also announced this month by US CDMA carrier rival Verizon Wireless for availability next week changes the dynamic of 3G as a connectivity option for the branch. As many reviewers have expounded, the ability to share 3G signal using commodity Wi-Fi is a dynamic-changer for power users on the go, but the real benefit will be seen by small groups of users able to establish and share ad-hoc connectivity anywhere 3G signal is available. This solution can extend the reach of the 3G many organizations are already using to connect branch office workers to the WAN while cutting costs of maintaining multiple data subscriptions.

In the case of Sprint, the potential to support branches of 10+ users using a MiFi device becomes more intruiging as future device roadmaps show the next generation sporting a two chipsets (WiFi and WiMax) capable of connecting to the carrier's WiMax network (co-operated with Clearwire and other partners) which will allow the WiMax network (offering upwards of 6Mbit uplink) to provide backhaul for and entire branch office while still being priced at the cost of 1-2 of the aircards that it will replace.  

The promise of WiMax to solve connectivity ills has been long promised and, at present and in all fairness, the Sprint-Clearwire Clear network is limited to few geographic locations. If aggressive roadmaps are to be believed, though, cost-effective connectivity for branch sites is not far in the future. In the meantime, for small (sub 10-user) branch sites that are supporting multiple aircards for basic connectivity have a new, economy-friendly ally in the MiFi2200.

By Chris Silva

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Blue Coat: Creating An Economic Advantage For Users In 2009?

Last week, Blue Coat gathered analysts in New York City for its Application Delivery Network Briefing Event to showcase its newest offerings, some of which are not yet released, and give the analyst community an update on where things stand following the company’s acquisition of Packeteer, completed in June of 2008.

Long story short? The vendors’ roadmaps have merged and it seems Blue Coat is doing a solid job of integrating the visibility and deep traffic inspection messages of the PacketShaper products with its caching, optimization, and security messages. Prior to the Packeteer acquisition, while Blue Coat offered a solid secure gateway and caching story, the true level of traffic visibility and optimization it could provide was limited.

Interesting for IT Operations and Security Professionals, the two product lines remain separate, though branding will merge in the second half of 2009. This could create either a dilemma or an opportunity for Blue Coat in the current economy when companies are being forced to show faster ROI with less investment upfront. The PacketShaper/ProxySG product split means that an organization can adopt one element of the solution at a time, dialing up investment as need dictates. That said, we’d like to see a converged appliance, though the processing power such a box would require, not to mention OS rationalization across at least three product-based operating systems would be complex at best. We’ll have to see how it all plays out.

For Security and Risk Professionals, being able to create alliances with the IT OPS folks may allow exiting Blue Coat proxy customers expand their deployments beyond web content filtering and caching. The fact that the Mach 5 wan optimization features are built into ProxySG’s base OS means that both Security and OPS may be able to leverage the same hardware in these economic times. For companies just now looking at web proxy and wan op solutions, Blue Coat may have serendipitously timed the market just right.

We’re looking to the future to see whether Blue Coat moves more aggressively to offer virtual products aimed at networking infrastructure vendors that are looking to virtualize more services on fewer pieces of hardware – no word on this yet. Such a strategy, paired with a cloud-based offering, where companies can pay by the drink, especially for optimization services, would truly differentiate Blue Coat, who has seen its product line - already working to gain traction around the idea of an application delivery network, as a departure from pure WAN optimization, in the wake of other players in the market such as F5, Cisco and Citrix - gain competition from the recent Riverbed-Mazu acquisition.

By Chris Silva and John Kindervag

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Wi-Fi: The Only Network You Need?

CES, the showcase of all tech that is likely to make a splash over the next year, is upon us. While reserved primarily for, as the name implies, consumer technology, there are fundamental tools and technologies that will impact businesses as well.

News coming out of Las Vegas today is around chipmaker Intel's use of existing Wi-Fi radios for personal area network (PAN) connectivity. The release of the updated Wi-Fi driver software will allow the existing wireless 802.11 radios inside devices with the Centrino 2 chipset to use the radio as a means to connect to an IP-based network as well as local, Wi-Fi-enabled devices. The devices, ranging from cameras to network attached storage (NAS) will allow users to rely on the Wi-Fi radio in their Centrino-powered device to provide IP connectivity as well as file sharing and peripheral connectivity. Currently, the standard for most PAN applications and peripheral devices is Bluetooth, however Ozmo Devices, a firm partially funded by Intel, is out to change that.

While consumers may applaud the ability to connect to multiple resources while saving battery and not having to juggle dongles for various wireless accessories, the real appeal for making dual-use of the Wi-Fi radio in the device is its potential to advance the idea of the all-wireless workplace. Wireless infrastructure vendors have long talked about the future state of an all-wireless workplace where the LAN and resource connectivity is all wireless. Saving on the need for deploying wired network drops, the all-wireless story is appealing, if a suitable Wi-Fi network is already in place. Benefits can include a more flexible and more easily reconfigured workplace and the potential for lower power consumption due to having just wireless client devices to power in addition to printers and some access points - ideal for a branch office.

Intel has talked about the idea of its Cliffside technology - the ability to split the phsyical wireless radio in a client device into two separate, logical connectivity devices for the past year or more. Today, the ability to make this concept reality not only extends to new devices, but is backward-compatible with all 5100 and 5300 Intel WiFi Link chipsets.

What does this mean for an IT department contemplating an all-wireless deployment? Devices will not only to connect to the network using Wi-Fi, but can be connected to share peripherals and resources as they become available.  In addition to power consumption savings, the new multitasking features of the WLAN chipsets will allow for simpler standard configurations of mobile client devices, taking advantage of a newly multi-tasking 802.11 radio.

By Chris Silva

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Spending Alive And Well In The Network?

I'm in the process of reviewing data from the IT Plans and Priorities panel survey which I've mentioned before on the blog. In fact, the last post on the survey  was an invite I passed along to our readership and I hope that, as I churn through the data from the survey, I'll be reviewing some of your inputs.

One of the early findings that I'll be writing and publishing formal research on is the fact that, while some areas such as devices (computing clients and mobile devices) may see longer refresh cycles in light of the economy, and certainly when faced with actual budget cuts in 2009, areas such as networking are likely to remain relatively static with some small increases in spending. I attribute the latter to the continued build-out of services such as Wi-Fi networking. Formerly a convenience or "nice to have" element of the network, Wi-Fi is increasingly critical to connect mobile devices and mobile users to applications that house ever more critical, role-specific data.

Vendors in this space, for their part, have been doing quite a bit of marketing around the criticality of the WLAN; perhaps my earlier post bemoaning the state of Wi-Fi marketing was a bit premature.

Since that time, we've seen quite a bit of activity, including:

• HP and Colubris teams hit the road with a solid story just 45 days out from their merger.
• Meru begin marketing a fundamental level of control on the WLAN, required for it to replace wired.
• Proxim announcing today they've received orders for over 1k 802.11n APs

So, it's clear that the marketing is alive and well in WLAN and, in light of our recently collected data, we're likely to see some fruit borne from these initiatives. In some cases, this seems to already be the case, at least with some vendors. I see this as good news that IT Operations is also reaping the benefits of IT transitioning to BT, as evidenced by spending continuing to take place, even on newer networking technologies.

By Chris Silva

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What's He Building In There?

Tom Waits fans know the title of this post as one of his pieces and one that was used in the Enron documentary "The Smartest Guys In the Room." There's a YouTube video of the Waits piece here, if you're interested. Doing some research recently, the first couple lines of the song - if one can call it that - started playing in my head as I began contemplating what Cisco is planning for its upcoming, and much publicized 11/11/08 release. I've been piecing together some things I'm seeing in emails and Cisco blog posts and they're definitely building something "in there" in San Jose. The question is, "what is it?"

Teaser emails talking about a four year evolution toward a product that will be "summed up in a fraction of a second" started making their way into inboxes this week, paired with some mock "media attention" on one of Cisco's blogs, The Platform. 

I have to hand it to Cisco, while they may not generate the type of buzz or pre-release interest of a Steve Jobs speech at WWDC or even the more recent anticipation of the newest device coming from a carrier - this month the Blackberry Storm - but they've managed to create some intriguing speculation on what it is that they're planning to announce?

At Forrester, we decided we'd bite. We have no advanced knowledge of the announcement, but we're making the call that, given the relative scarceness of product announcements in Cisco's 10000 series router line, and the description of the to-be-announced product as:

"a revolutionary telecommunications product that will enable service providers to capitalize on a major market opportunity being created by the accelerating growth of both video and mobile data traffic."

...that it's going to be a revamp of service-provider, edge routers.

So, that's our guess, what's yours? I guess we'll all see in a couple of weeks, for sure.

By Chris Silva

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Where's The Wi-Fi Marketing?

I'm concerned about the state of WLAN vendor marketing. In the last year, a relatively precipitous drop-off of marketing driven "news" has occurred in my RSS reader, and a noticeable lack of "pitch decks" are finding their way into my inbox. That's not to say that I'm not still drowning in press releases (no, the fact that the Poughkeepsie School District is using your solution is not worthy of coverage) but I'm seeing less and less sizzle in a time where more would be better. A good thing for me, perhaps, but not a good thing for continuing to make the case for Wi-Fi.

Recently, Network World completed testing on 802.11n infrastructure posting the results in an online article dated this week. Results aside, look at the vendors participating in the survey: Aerohive, Bluesocket, Siemens and Motorola. Aside from Motorola, the vendors included are not market-share leaders in WLAN gear. Aerohive, which offers a controller-less architecture and, until recently, was considered a startup by many has not - to date - come close to many of the other WLAN players such as Aruba, Cisco, HP's ProCurve, and Meru in terms of building a marquee client roster. Similar can be reported of Bluesocket and, while Siemens made a splash with its energy sipping 802.11n products earlier in the year, not much has been widely reported on them since.

David Newman of Network World appropriately called out the non-participating vendors. An interesting lot of non-participants, here. I can give vendors like Trapeze and Colubris a pass given recent acquisition moves and the associated and inevitable management changes that make participating in a public, head-to-head evaluation a political hot potato. That leaves the larger vendors, though: Cisco, HP*, Meru? Where are you guys?

At this time of economic instability, I'd like to see more of the vendors trotting out the story of why Wi-Fi is a cost saving measure over wired Ethernet, but nobody's made a big splash on network-spend-marketing since Nortel at the last Interop, where it debuted the "Cisco Tax" strategy. Aruba is doing some interesting work on green via its Green Island project - launched yesterday- which can also double as cost-saving info. Is there anyone else I'm missing?

This is the time to be marketing, and getting dollars earmarked for cost-saving technology investments, but I'm not sure WLAN vendors are listening.

* As the acquirer of Colubris, perhaps the same bureaucratic delays apply here as well.

By Chris Silva

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NAC Results Make Waves

In early September, Forrester published its “The Forrester Wave™: Network Access Control, Q3 2008.” Forrester’s findings revealed that Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Bradford Networks, and Juniper Networks lead the pack because of their strong enforcement and policy, but that Microsoft’s NAP technology, despite being a newcomer, has become the de facto standard.

Any time you try and put some order to vendor solutions, you are bound to find people in agreement – and to raise ire in others. However, reaction in the blogosphere to a recent Network World article on the research has raised some questions about Forrester’s Wave methodology which I’ll aim to address:

• Security Incite writes, “The Forresters checked out a bunch of data sheets and decided Microsoft was “top of the NAC heap.”” If only it were that easy! More than 150 hours of analysis went into the Network Access Control (NAC) Wave, in which we analyzed more than 70 criteria (encompassing more than 200 attributes) for the 10 vendors that were included in the study. The criteria was based on more than 200 client inquiries I’ve fielded in my five-plus years covering the space.
  

• Our study was not based on the number of units sold or performance tests – it was based on real-world challenges faced by very large enterprises and not an academic exercise (for the record, the sky is blue in our real-world). Those common metrics are, for lack of a better word, useless. I know for a fact that several of the vendors in the study are giving their product away to gain market share, so how can unit volume equate to the quality of the product? Where does that fall on the BS-O-meter?

Performance tests are even less dependable because there are too many variables to consider and all too frequently are vendor-sponsored. Security Incite writes:

“…People that really buy products understand that a good RFP response gets you in the bake-off. That’s when things like “performance tests” start to matter.”

Since when is performance a critical factor in security? When’s the last time you heard a security pro say, “It doesn’t protect us, but boy does it scream with speed when it lets harmful users get by!”

Bottom line, I believe the NAC Wave was a fair, balanced and comprehensive study that looked at the products of 10 leading vendors in the space and concluded that Microsoft was the leader based on vendor strategy moving forward – even Security Insight and Security For All acknowledged it would be a standard in the future – and their presence in the market. While we may have to agree to disagree on the results, the methodology that helped us reach those conclusions should not be called into question.

By Robert Whiteley

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Who Is For Sale This Time?

It seems the WLAN acquisition rumor mill is hot again after a recent drop in Aruba Network (ARUN) shares nearly a week ago. Still not trading near its most recent trough of $4.29/share on July 14, according to Google Finance, I am not convinced that the next acquisition announcement will involve Aruba.

The company, publicly traded and still letting the ink dry on it's government go-to-market partnership with Foundry, still seems a formidable pill for any other networking powerhouse - Juniper being everyone's favorite contender - to swallow.

Since the Aruba IPO, I've viewed the vendor in a separate class from most others in the WLAN space. Since the time of their decision to go public, we've seen many others' marques give way to more familiar brand names as the Wi-Fi buying spree has heated up. With a market capitalization of over $400M today and 2007 revenues of $127.5M - a number they seem on track to hitting again based on their most recent quarter ended - it seems unlikely that a major vendor would be willing to fork over even 1/2 revenues for a business line extension into enterprise Wi-Fi.

Meru Networks is another vendor that's often viewed as an acquisition target, and one that I've looked at as an attractive target for at least one vendor, and seems a more likely target because:

• Meru is still a privately held company and, therefore, does not bear any value inflation from a public market
• The company has a solid, if somewhat unorthodox, architecture that appeals to resource strapped organizations such as those in education.

Meru seems a bit unlikely due to:

• The vendor's somewhat different "virtual cell"(PDF link) architecture - while not a requirement to use its gear - may seem a bit of a risky strategy to established and staid networking vendors.
• The company has had noting short of surprising success since they were first included in a Forrester Wave in 2007, which could make them a bit pricey, compared to the dwindling field of independent WLAN vendors.

So, there it is, I'm drawing a line in the sand that the acquisition target is not Aruba, perhaps Meru and potentially another, even smaller vendor. Nothing short of hedging on my part, I suppose, but I will say this: WLAN is a logical line extension for Juniper, and I'm not ruling out - but rather expecting - at least one more acuqisition before the year is out.

Check back to see if I'm eating my words or linking back to my sagacious prediction come December.

By Chris Silva

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