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ON THE REBOUND AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT NETWORKING GIANT CISCO’S REVAMP STRATEGY John Chambers, CEO, Cisco
PLUS:
VIDEO CONFERENCING | WAN OPTIMISATION | VIRTUAL SERVERS | WIRELESS LAN
ISSUE 149 | AUGUST 2011
contents COMMENT 04 Back to the roots BITS 06 TRA launches NGN industry forum framework 07 Du launches first phase of optical
backbone network
08 10
Nexans kicks it up a notch Alcatel-Lucent explores enterprise business
IN ACTION 16 When service matters: Emirates Airlines
upgrades its customer call centre
18
Speeding toward WAN: Egyptian Elaraby
group deploys WAN optimisation solution
14
FEATURE 20 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
OPINION 32 Rising threats from social media
COVER STORY
On the rebound: An in-depth look at networking giant Cisco’s revamp strategy
16
32
TEST 42 Beam me up, Ruckus
NEW PRODUCTS 44 A guide to some of the new products
in the market
LAYER 8 46 All the news that’s fit for nothing Quick Finder Page 6-26 Mobily, Riverbed, Du, EMC, Huawei, Nexans, IBM, Polycom, Alcatel-Lucent, Dell, Ericsson, Citrix, VMware, Cisco, Emirates Airlines, Kingston, Western Digital, Intel, F5, Blue Coat
Page 26-48 Sony Professional Solutions, Polycom, Cisco, LifeSize Communications, Blue Coat, Ruckus, Juniper, Sonicwall, Axis, F5, LG, R&M
EDITORIAL Publisher Dominic De Sousa
Back to the roots
COO Nadeem Hood
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 noncore 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.’
Managing Director Richard Judd richard@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9126 Sales Director Rajashree R Kumar raj@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9131 EDITORIAL Dave Reeder dave@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9106 Senior Editor Jeevan Thankappan jeevan@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9109 ADVERTISING Sales Manager Sean Rutherford sean@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9136 CIRCULATION Database and Circulation Manager Rajeesh M rajeesh@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9147 PRODUCTION AND DESIGN Production Manager James P Tharian james@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9146 Art Director Kamil Roxas kamil@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9112 Designer Froilan A. Cosgafa IV froilan@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9107 Photographer Cris Mejorada cris@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9108 DIGITAL www.networkworldme.com Digital Services Manager Tristan Troy Maagma
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ON THE REBOUND
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4 Network World Middle East August 2011
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bits
TRA launches NGN industry forum framework 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
Mobily sets up Saudi’s first public telepresence suite 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
TRUE FACT
$3.8 billion 6 Network World Middle East August 2011
H.E. Mohamed Nasser Al Ghanim, TRA’s Director General
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 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.
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.
Riverbed acquires Zeus 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 offthe-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.
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
www.networkworldme.com
Du launches first phase of optical backbone network
Hatem Bamatraf, Senior VP , Network Development, du
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
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 Enterprise partners with Stage 2 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
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.
Bahrain’s CIO moves to cloud with EMC 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 multicore 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. August 2011 Network World Middle East 7
bits
Nexans kicks it up a notch
IBM’s new $75000 mainframe
Nexans’ Data Communications Competence Centre (DCCC) has recently
IBM has announced the latest successor to what it has called its
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
Polycom targets SMBs 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 highquality, 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 8 Network World Middle East August 2011
Tarek Helmy, Region Director – Gulf & Middle East, Nexans
“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.
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
expectations in terms of quality but also in its reach capabilities as compared to other competitive products in its range.”
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
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.” www.networkworldme.com
"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." August 2011 Network World Middle East 9
bits Alcatel-Lucent explores enterprise business
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 AlcatelLucent was engaged in discussions with several parties involving a sale of the business. The unit could fetch up to $1.2 billion, the
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,
Dell takes deeper dive into networking 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
10 Network World Middle East August 2011
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.
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.
Aastra wins HP award 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 openstandards-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. www.networkworldme.com
August 2011 Network World Middle East 11
bits GOOD
BAD
UGLY
Mobility drives hospitality IT spending
Citrix moves into the cloud
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.
GOOD
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.
BAD
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-andcontrol servers.
UGLY
12 Network World Middle East August 2011
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,
a 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 Infrastructureas-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 cloudscale architectures and infrastructure the way that the largest clouds in the world have been built,” Dholakia said.
VMware releases client for Android tablets 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
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. www.networkworldme.com
ULTIMATE UC EXPERIENCE FROM 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 business evolves. It’s because our products are best-in-class and backed by Polycom’s history as an industry innovator. Oh, and we’re the only provider of collaboration solutions built on open, standardsbased architecture. Increase your productivity even as you reduce your costs and lower your carbon footprint with Polycom. Transform your business. theartofconversation.com
©2010 Polycom, Inc.
trend analysis | cisco
John Chambers, CEO, Cisco
On the rebound 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?
14 Network World Middle East August 2011
D
elivering 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. www.networkworldme.com
Video will be the next voice and the primary platform for communication. It will be part of everything we do architecturally. 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
Padmasree Warrior, CTO, Cisco
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
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. August 2011 Network World Middle East 15
in action: emirates airlines
When service matters 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
A
quarter century ago, Dubaibased 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 BellWright, 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
16 Network World Middle East August 2011
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 BellWright, “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 www.networkworldme.com
Japan or volcanic ash in Europe doesn’t just affect our customers in Japan or Europe, but globally as we’re a joinedup 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
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 Karen Bell-Wright, VP Retail and Contact Centres, Emirates Airlines territories and in multiple languages. Of course, that means a Genesys applications allowed the call centre to easily very structured, detailed handle the complexity of multiple time zones. training programme to ensure that skills are aligned. We also fine started with Skywards, the airline’s leader like Genesys”. tune what we do based on customer frequent flyer programme. Genesys Now the global virtualised call response – what are the hold times? applications allowed the call centre centre is working well. “I’m not saying How many times are customers to easily handle the complexity of we’re perfect but we’re in a much transferred and so on?” multiple time zones and allowing better position to have customer And the result? “The outcome Bell-Wright and her team to work on knowledge, which is critical. A has been great. We have a more quality issues across the group. “I won’t customer’s key concerns are simple and stable infrastructure. We have better say we had problems but we wanted we have to address them: they want performance management. And all of our call centres operatives, no instant accessibility and they want our operators have no excuse not matter where they were based, to offer the operator to know who they are. to perform to our high standards, a consistency of service and so we To deliver that, we needed to give our because they have every tool they devoted a lot of time to setting baseoperators the best tools – knowledge need. Our job now is managing line standards and so on.” management is critical.” our people. What we’ve achieved is Although she recalls some managed Bell-Wright points to the importance critical to Emirates going forward: services problems with the global rollof senior management buy-in on we’ve matured our customer contact out of Global Connect, she is pleased projects like this. “We’re lucky that environment and tools in order to “to have a relationship with a market service is seen as central to our manage our business better.” August 2011 Network World Middle East 17
in action: elaraby
Speeding toward WAN The Egyptian Elaraby group has deployed a WAN optimisation solution for a better experience for users and a better bottom line for business
M
ost 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 18 Network World Middle East August 2011
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. www.networkworldme.com
August 2011 Network World Middle East 19
feature | SSD in association with
SSD goes mainstream Solid state drives (SSDs) offer a faster option for network storage
20 Network World Middle East August 2011
S
olid-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 www.networkworldme.com
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 writeintensive 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.
Nassir Nauthoa, GM, Intel
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 August 2011 Network World Middle East 21
feature | SSD in association with
OCZ releases new customiSable enterprise-class SSD
O Khwaja Saifuddin, Senior Director of Sales, Western Digital
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. 22 Network World Middle East August 2011
Antoine Harb, Business Development Manager, Kingston
Zaher Haydar, Regional Pre-Sales Manager, EMC
“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.
CZ 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 enterpriseclass multi-level cell (MLC) flash to consumergrade 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 ATATRIM 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.
www.networkworldme.com
August 2011 Network World Middle East 23
feature | optimisation
Heading to the cloud 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
T
he 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. 24 Network World Middle East August 2011
“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
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 www.networkworldme.com
August 2011 Network World Middle East 25
feature | optimisation
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 backand-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 Paul Sherry, Regional Director – Middle East, Riverbed applications and data without having to visit a corporate site. Vendors are looking closely at extending In addition to the focus on cloud, WAN optimisation vendors this capability to tablets are keen on optimising traffic from mobile devices – mainly and smart phones, with laptops – back to corporate sites and data centers that support Circadence introducing WAN optimisation controllers. a client for Android devices. Other vendors have considered the possibility of such platform in a branch office or data clients but have reservations. centre. For example, a company could Most agree that phones and tablets run our WAN optimisation solution have the resources to support WAN along with Windows Server to provide optimisation, but are less certain that print serving, authentication and file businesses want it – and if they do, what services. In addition, companies can run operating system they would want it for. specialised applications needed for that “The market feasibility needs to be particular office or geographic region. resolved,” Hughes says. “It’s not clear Companies can take advantage of the there is a sufficient critical mass of best price/performance using industrycritical applications on smart phones standard servers.” and tablets.” If an optimisation client While most vendors agree that were written for smart phones and virtual versions of their products are tablets, it’s unclear whether it would important, the basic functions the have all the features of an appliance products perform to optimise traffic or the current client for laptops, he are the vendors’ bread and butter. Diego Arrabal, Regional Director, F5 Networks says. “That’s a good question that’s Silver Peak’s CTO and founder David lost packets through forward error yet to be resolved.” Hughes divides WAN optimisation correction. Acceleration also includes He suggests that WAN optimisation techniques into three buckets: network application-specific optimisation for for mobile phones and other memory, network acceleration and loss. chatty protocols such as CIFS, Hughes handhelds be left to the makers of the Memory includes de-duplication and says. But application optimisation isn’t devices. “In that ecosystem there’s not compression of traffic, acceleration something Silver Peak focuses on. a lot of room for extra innovation to minimises the effects of latency by Riverbed does, though, and boasts a be layered on top of them. It’s not an keeping WAN pipes full, and loss deals long list of applications and protocols attractive market.” with preventing retransmission of 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
26 Network World Middle East August 2011
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feature | video
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
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
B
usiness 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
28 Network World Middle East August 2011
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, fullsize, clear and uninterrupted. There are clear signs that video traffic in the enterprise is growing as the new breed of video conferencing technology
Daniel Weisbeck, Vice President, Marketing EMEA, Polycom
Hidenori Taguchi, Head of B2B Marketing, Sony Professional Solutions MEA
www.networkworldme.com
August 2011 Network World Middle East 29
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
Munzer Aloush, TelePresence & Video Area Sales Manager, Cisco
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. 30 Network World Middle East August 2011
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.
Pradeep Angeveetil, Regional Manager, LifeSize Communications
“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. www.networkworldme.com
August 2011 Network World Middle East 31
opinion | security
Rising threats from social media Nigel Hawthorn, VP of EMEA marketing at Blue Coat Systems, lists out four top social media security risks and the ways to protect against them
S
ocial 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.
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: Malware: In 2010, social media became the preferred communications vehicle for users, who are spending more than 700 billion
1
Nigel Hawthorn, VP of EMEA marketing, Blue Coat Systems
32 Network World Middle East August 2011
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.
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2
Data loss: Social networking
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.
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 New requirements to keep your do is offset any potential performance business safe degradation with caching, which There are ways to protect against allows you to locally store data and and mitigate the risks posed by social video files after an initial download and make them readily available to users who want to subsequently Real-time analysis of dynamically changing links provides access them. In this way, risk analysis and timely protection to keep social media safe. you can enable access to social networking without networking. Specifically, your solution potentially violate industry specific compromising the performance of other needs to provide: regulations, impact your reputation, or traffic on the network. A real-time web defense – social Policy flexibility – to manage put you at a competitive disadvantage. networking is constantly changing, productivity, you need to be able to set Bandwidth consumption: As as are the tactics used by attackers to acceptable use policies within social much as 40% of employees report exploit it. As a result, your solution media. You may choose, for instance, to that they are on social networking needs to analyse your web traffic on block access to Farmville during work sites at work, creating a potential strain the fly and uncover threats that may hours; or if you allow it, you may want on bandwidth to the detriment of other be hidden there. Real-time analysis of to give it a lower priority, so it doesn’t business applications. Last year, when the dynamically changing links provides impact business critical applications. U.S. government mandated open access risk analysis and timely protection to With a flexible policy framework, you to social networks, traffic on the network keep social media safe. So when you see can prioritise and manage the activities increased by 25%. Video alone (think of “hey you should take a look at this,” you that are allowed or disallowed, and all the videos your friends share and you can either allow or deny based on the when. The ability to delineate between link to through Facebook or Twitter), potential risk it poses. social networking sites and specific Selective social networking controls – can overwhelm many networks. A single applications or content within those to protect against data loss and comply video stream usually consumes between sites is crucial to setting an effective with industry-specific regulations, you 500k to 1.2 Mbps (and that’s not even acceptable use policy. So, if you elect need to be able to manage the actions HD, which can be up to 4 to 7 Mbps), to block games, you can block both your employees can take within social and when you have tens or hundreds of standalone games, as well as games networking sites. For example, you people accessing videos it’s easy to see within social media sites may want to prevent employees from how overall performance can degrade. Realising the promise of social uploading attachments, photos or networking no longer needs to be Productivity loss: Social video to social media sites, thereby a potential risk for the business. networking sites are becoming preventing risks of inadvertent Embracing social media only requires online destinations, enabling you data loss or risks to your corporate the right security. 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
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August 2011 Network World Middle East 33
feature | data centre
Ideas for data centre energy saving Forrester spells out tips for keeping your data centre cool this summer
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 34 Network World Middle East August 2011
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, energyconsuming servers. Resiliency. To ensure that uptime and servicelevel 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. www.networkworldme.com
To cut server energy costs by up to 65 percent and exploit your energy savings potential from virtualisation, Forrester recommends three process improvements: Increase your overall virtual-tophysical 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
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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,
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.
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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 There are significant opportunities for organisations to higher on a per-server increase their overall virtualisation footprint across all basis - but total server server environments and platforms. energy consumption will be lower due to the virtual servers. In two years time, not to mention the additional power, reduced number of overall servers. If this is expected to increase to 65 cooling, and space expenses from this your risk tolerance doesn’t allow you percent. new equipment. to push the limits of virtualisation Additionally, the extent of A key ratio that administrators use ratios, then these more efficient virtualisation varies significantly to determine the acceptable number server environments may be your based on the server environment, of VMs per physical host is server only viable option. and the platform. The first step to CPU utilisation. There is a direct Forrester recommends seeking maximising energy savings is to relationship between CPU utilisation, newer models of the same servers increase the overall virtualisation VMs per physical host, and energy your organisation already purchases. footprint across all environments savings. A standalone unvirtualised The simple act of server refresh will and platforms. To ensure you’re server might run at an average of reduce server energy consumption. actually saving energy, be sure to 10 percent to 15 percent utilisation, New server architectures, such turn off or decommission servers whereas virtualised servers could as blade systems and converged that are no longer running any theoretically approach 100 percent. infrastructure, are not only more workloads. Forrester’s Green IT However, Forrester finds that most energy-efficient by nature but also maturity assessment methodology administrators are hesitant to push facilitate aggressive virtualisation. prescribes the following the utilisation of their physical host The energy savings can be virtualisation targets to achieve one servers beyond 25 percent to 50 impressive, as noted by a VP of an of four levels of green IT maturity: 1) percent - limiting both the number online services company who said Needs improvement (1 percent to 25 of VMs per physical host and energy about his converged architecture: “We percent virtualised); 2) Improving (26 savings potential. Underutilised achieved 70 percent space savings, percent to 50 percent virtualised); servers still consume considerable 25 percent operational expense 3) Robust (51 percent to 75 percent amounts of energy. savings, 30 percent to 40 percent heat virtualised); and 4) Best-in-class (76 If you increase the number dissipation improvements, and 40 percent to 100 percent virtualised). of VMs per physical host, you percent power savings.” August 2011 Network World Middle East 35
techupdate
Optimising virtualised server Server 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
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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 36 Network World Middle East August 2011
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 www.networkworldme.com
August 2011 Network World Middle East 37
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
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 One of the conventional solutions to improve VM performance switch. Finally, SR-IOV is direct I/O (or pass-through), which requires an assignment is compatible with of a unique physical port to each VM, bypassing the hypervisor. migration of running VMs. resources. SR-IOV streamlines this The ecosystem for SR-IOV is Advanced management solutions process by introducing the concept in the process of bootstrapping One of the conventional solutions to of physical and virtual functions: itself. It requires support by Physical function (PF) – There is improve VM performance is direct suppliers of adapters, switches at least one PF for each physical I/O (or pass-through), which requires and hypervisors. It also requires port on an adapter. In some cases, an assignment of a unique physical support by server vendors that adapters can be partitioned into port to each VM, bypassing the will be adding management tools as many as four ports per physical hypervisor. This method improves to fully enable robust solutions. port. In this example, there could performance, but is limited by the SR-IOV is currently supported with be four PFs per port, or a total of 8 number of physical ports that can be Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) in PFs for an adapter with two physical attached to the server. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and ports. The key differentiation is PFs It also results in a complex and SUSE Enterprise Linux 11 (and have full configuration capabilities. costly collection of adapter ports, later). Other hypervisor providers They are associated with the switch ports and cables. The direct are expected to announce SR-IOV hypervisor and can be managed like I/O option is also not compatible support. physical devices. with migration of a running VM. SR-IOV will be a key technology Virtual function (VF) – VFs are Migration requires a manual process to optimise I/O for virtualised associated with VMs and are limited to shut down, move and restart the servers, enabling higher to processing I/O streams, basically VM. Clearly this is less than optimal. virtualisation ratios for maximum moving data. They don’t support With SR-IOV, VFs are assigned cost savings. SR-IOV will provide a management of the physical device. to VMs. This allows one adapter much more cost-effective solution The number of supported VFs will port, switch port and cable to than multiple physical ports and vary and will likely centre around 64 support direct I/O for many VMs. will be fully compatible with VM VFs per physical adapter. If appropriate, multiple VFs can be migration.
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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.
www.networkworldme.com
advertorial
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
For more info, contact; sales.eemea@flukenetworks.com or call +971-4-4465050
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. August 2011 Network World Middle East 39
interview | juniper
Charting a new course Juniper 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
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uniper 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 40 Network World Middle East August 2011
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
Trevor Dearing, Chief Network Strategist for EMEA, 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.
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. www.networkworldme.com
interview | sonicwall
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
Security watch Next-generation firewall vendor’s chief tell us why apps security is crucial
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hat’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
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
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. August 2011 Network World Middle East 41
test
Beam me up, Ruckus Ruckus ZoneFlex WiFi system uses beam forming technology to deliver powerful, secure, flexible enterprise-grade WLAN
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he 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
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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
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 www.networkworldme.com
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
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
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.
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
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. fOR MORE PRODUCT REVIEWS, LOG ON TO: www.networkworldme.com
August 2011 Network World Middle East 43
toolshed tools & gadgets
F5 releases two new storage virtualisation appliances F5 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.
Axis rolls out 5-megapixel network cameras 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 vandalresistant 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. 44 Network World Middle East August 2011
www.networkworldme.com
LG debuts N1A1 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.
R&M rolls out next-gen data centre solution 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
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.
August 2011 Network World Middle East 45
layer 8 NASA teams with Chevron for energy exploration
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ASA’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.
Building the borg
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his 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/highpayoff 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.
Billion-pixel camera to take Milky Way shots
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Astronomers spot huge space reservoir
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stronomers 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.
46 Network World Middle East August 2011
he 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 threedimensional 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.
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