Tech Field Day Coverage
Our delegate panel includes independent writers and thought leaders, and we collect their coverage of the event, Tech Field Day presentations, and sponsoring companies here.
My brain will be melting at Storage Field Day 18!
Storage Field Day is fast approaching in February, and we’ve already started to announce the presenting companies and invited delegates. We’re thrilled to have Jon Klaus returning to the event. He’s looking forward to what should prove to be a packed event, with stalwarts like Cohesity, WekaIO and Western Digital all making returns. We’ll be posting more delegates and companies as we get closer to the event. Stay tuned!
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My brain will be melting at Storage Field Day 18!
Aruba and the Need for WPA3 with OWE
At Security Field Day, Aruba did a deep dive into a key feature of WPA3. Aruba had a lot of input into the successor to the long in the tooth WPA2, and detailed the optional Opportunistic Wireless encryption in the standard. This provides encryption for open wireless networks for information passed in the clear outside of the application payload. Tom Hollingsworth makes the argument that this should be a mandatory part of the standard, providing true defense in depth for traffic that falls outside SSL/TLS.
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Aruba and the Need for WPA3 with OWE
Visual Networking At It’s Finest with Apstra
Apstra is no stranger to Networking Field Day, and it was great to see the company present at our most recent event in November. Tom Hollingsworth organized the event, and got a first hand look at the latest from this innovative company. What stood out for Tom this time was the key work Apstra is doing in network visualization. The advent of intent-based networking means that operators now have direct visibility into all devices in their control zones. Apstra not only innovates in their area of intent, but finding ways to visualize and break down this information into meaningful insights.
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Visual Networking At It’s Finest with Apstra
Enterprise Secrets + Privileged Account Management
It was great to have Jeff Wilson along as a delegate for our inaugural Security Field Day event this past December. He’s knows the pains associated with managing enterprise privileged accounts. Given the number of hacks in 2018, it’s definitely top of mind for any security professional. That’s why Jeff found CyberArk’s presentation so interesting. He found their Privileged Access Security Suite remarkably mature and refined, which is no surprise given their 20 year history in the space. They provide a solution for a key problem most IT teams don’t know they have: Security and technical debt from years of tactical, rather than strategic, IT investments.
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Enterprise Secrets + Privileged Account Management
New Year, New Post, NFDx!
John Herbert is back on the blogging path in early 2019 and he’s excited! He’ll be starting off the year with a Networking Field Day Exclusive from Cisco’s Service Provider group. You can watch the event along with John on January 15th, or check out his coverage of what he saw afterward. We’re looking forward to both!
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The Power of a Great Demo with Illumio
It’s one thing to have a great Tech Field Day presentation, filled with technical overviews, architectural deep dives, and a killer slide deck. But putting together a great demo is a different beast. Tom Hollingsworth got to see a demo from Illumio at Networking Field Day last year that definitely left an impression. They showed off their new PCE Supercluster, and simulated a truly impressive amount of real workloads to truly show off its capabilities.
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The Power of a Great Demo with Illumio
Security Field Day @San Jose
We were fortunate to have Enrico Sorge along as a delegate for our inaugural Security Field Day event. In this post, he previews some of his coverage to come about the individual presentation. The Field Day experience is definitely unique, as Enrico found as they hopped around Silicon Valley in a limo. But most importantly, he found the event to be a valuable melting pot of ideas from delegates and presenting companies alike. We can’t wait to read more of his impressions about the presenters!
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The Flux Reactor
Al Rasheed wrote up his thoughts on Kentik’s presentation from Networking Field Day late last year. The company offers full resolution of network traffic, with the goal of providing network administrators enriched data that’s easy to understand. They’ve found use cases with network performance, congestion, security, DDOS detection and forensics. Al was particularly impressed by some of the tools Kentik provides for service providers, which enriches data from multiple sources via API and pairs it with routing table data live.
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Illumio Launches Supercluster Technology
In this press release, Illumio announced the availability of their PCE Supercluster for real time a dependency mapping and micro-segmenetation. Of course, if you watched their presentation from Networking Field Day late last year, you would have seen a truly impressive demo from Illumio showing off the full capabilities of this new solution. This is designed to provide real time visibility across the data center and the cloud, giving you centralized security controls, all at scale.
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Illumio Launches Supercluster Technology
Should Cisco reinvent itself? Thoughts ahead of Cisco Live Europe 2019
Max Mortillaro will be attending Cisco Live Europe, and is looking forward to attending Tech Field Day Extra sessions at the event. In past years, he’s focused on Cisco Hyperflex, but this year he has a different focus. He’ll be looking to get more details on Cisco’s strategy this year, especially compared to some of the renewed competitors in their markets.
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Should Cisco reinvent itself? Thoughts ahead of Cisco Live Europe 2019
Cisco Champion 2019
We’re happy to see that Al Rasheed was accepted as a Cisco Champion for 2019. In this post, he directly sites the influence of attending Networking Field Day for this accomplishment. We’re just glad Al was able to attend the event, and we’re hoping to see him back in 2019.
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Building More Factors For Security with Cisco Duo
Cisco was one of the companies that presented at our inaugural Security Field Day event in December. Tom Hollingsworth breaks down what he saw at the event from Cisco Duo, their authentication platform. This provides intelligent multifactor authentication. It does this by not assuming endpoints are secure, enforcing the latest firmware, and supporting geofencing and time zone awareness. This allows you to build policy enforcement into your 2FA from the ground up.
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Building More Factors For Security with Cisco Duo
Will Cisco Viptela continue to be one of the Leaders in SD-WAN ?
Orhan Ergun looks at Cisco’s SD-WAN efforts, which since acquiring Viptela in 2017 have been recognized by Gartner as Leaders in their Magic Quadrant. For Orhan, the strength of Cisco’s approach to SD-WAN is allowing it to run directly on IOS-based devices, bringing in new features with software updates. He also digs deep into the feature parity with other SD-WAN solutions, and the overall value proposition for enterprises.
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Will Cisco Viptela continue to be one of the Leaders in SD-WAN ?
Why Innovation, Risk, and Curves make for the best careers
In this post, Justin Paul considers the fact that the rapid change of technology means that virtually no one in IT is going to be doing the same job for their entire careers. To that effect, he looks at how markets change from early adopters and innovators, and uses that to show when it might be time to look to change your career to catch the next way. Keeping up on new technology can be daunting, and he suggested Tech Field Day presentation videos as a great way to stay informed. We agree!
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Why Innovation, Risk, and Curves make for the best careers
2018 was a good and busy year ! Things I have done during the last year
Year in review posts are always a good time to take stock of accomplishments. Orhan Ergun took a look at 2018 and found he had a really busy year. For starters, he made the decision to open a company in Turkey. Other highlights included seeing students and friends pass their CCDE practical exam. In October, we were lucky to have Orhan attend Networking Field Day, where he got to hear from a variety of companies in the industry. We hope his 2019 is just as eventful!
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2018 was a good and busy year ! Things I have done during the last year
Packets Never Lie…
Al Rasheed heard from Riverbed during Networking Field Day late last year. The company had a wide ranging presentation showing what they now offer in their WAN optimization and SD-WAN portfolio. This included an extensive SD-WAN Q&A session, demos from Brandon Carroll, and a look at SteelCentral Aternity and Steelhead SD. It was a lot of information, so be sure to check out the video from the presentation.
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Stuck in Traffic – Micro-segmentation
It stinks that J Wolfgang Goerlich gets stuck in traffic so much, but the silver lining is that he creates more great IT videos. In this one, he’s discussing micro-segmentation, which is crucial for organizations that need more and more granular security controls. This effectively segments and firewalling around an individual hosts. At Security Field Day, he got to hear from VMware is approaching this with NSX.
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Stuck in Traffic - Micro-segmentation
Apstra in a whiteboard
Marina Ferreira got to hear from Apstra at Networking Field Day late last year. But what impressed her the most wasn’t what she heard, but what she saw, specifically the excellent whiteboard session by Carly Stoughton. She outlined how Apstra went from their reference AOS architecture and have expanded it to provide intent-based networking, analytics and more. Check out the whiteboard and the full presentation video to catch up yourself.
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Stuck in Traffic – Doug Engelbart
Even though J Wolfgang Goerlich is stuck in traffic, that doesn’t mean he can’t put together some great security content. In this video, he considers the influence of Doug Engelbart, and how we can use collective intelligence to augment cyber security practices, particularly with automation. At Security Field Day, he saw Cisco take this approach with Cisco Threat Response.
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Stuck in Traffic - Doug Engelbart
Operating your Network with Intent-Based Networking
Apstra has done a series of blog posts following up on their recent Networking Field Day presentation, digging in a little deeper and providing some further context. In this post, Raghavendra Rachamadugu focuses on the importance of intent-based analytics that Apstra offers through AOS. While getting shiny charts of your network are nice, as the sheer amount of data grows, having a general analytic view will often obscure small but critical problems. Raghavendra gives a very precise definition of intent-based analytics, and explains how Apstra implements it.
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