Tom Hollingsworth examines the recent acquisition of Ekahau by Ookla. We last heard from Ekahau at Wireless Field Day 2, and Tom outlines how the companies platform and solutions have remained focused on helping wireless professionals do their job. From there, he looks at how Ookla can make use of the assets from the acquisition.
ARM Servers and End Times | Gestalt IT Rundown: September 19, 2018
Rich Stroffolino and Tom Hollingsworth discuss the news coming out of Mobility Field Day last week on the latest Gestalt IT Rundown. This includes a look at what Arista Networks is doing with the assets from Mojo Networks, as well as NETSCOUT’s business divestment of their monitoring tools portfolio.
A Matter of Perspective
Tom Hollingsworth considers the importance of perspective, and how the delegates around a table can shape a Tech Field Day presentation. This first came to mind seeing Aviatrix present their Cloud Routing solutions, first at Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live US, then at Cloud Field Day. For the networking focused audience at the first event, Aviatrix was interesting, but seemed to largely align how they expected networking to work when moved from the data center to the cloud. For the Cloud Field Day delegates, the networking Aviatrix showed was met with acclaim. Tom further saw this in action from Arista Networks, who presented at Mobility Field Day for the first time, discussing how they were integrating the recently acquired Mojo Networks.
The Cargo Cult of Google Tools
Tom Hollingsworth was inspired by LightStep’s presentation at Cloud Field Day this month, specifically CEO Ben Sigelman. Tom builds off of his point that most companies shouldn’t try to emulate the process of Google. His argument is that their processes aren’t better, just more scalable. Most organizations would be better server with more feature rich architectures.
Arista Is Finding Their Mojo In Wireless
Tom Hollingsworth writes about Arista Networks’ acquisition of Mojo Networks, a presenting sponsor at Mobility Field Day in 2017. Tom sees this acquisition as mutually beneficial as Mojo Networks gains the muscle they need to compete against Cisco and Aruba and Arista gains the wireless piece they needed to be super competitive in the campus connectivity market.
Becoming a Wi-Fi Superhero with Cape Networks
Tom Hollingsworth discusses Cape Networks, a presenting sponsor for Mobility Field Day in 2017, and their recent acquisition by Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. Cape Networks manufactures and provides web-based services for client connection monitoring and in user experience giving you the ability to look at your network not from just the top down infrastructure view, but from the bottom up client perspective as well. Tom sees this acquisition as a step in the right direction for Aruba, and looks forward to what they have to offer in the future.
Arista Is Finding Their Mojo In Wireless
Tom Hollingsworth reports on the Arista Network’s acquisition of Mojo Networks. Mojo presented at Mobility Field Day 2 in July of 2017 about their products and innovating around security and software defined access points. This acquisition is looking to benefit both parties as well, as Mojo gains the muscle they need to compete against Cisco and Aruba and Arista gain the wireless piece they need to be competitive in the campus connectivity market.
Friday Musings on Network Analytics
While at Networking Field Day 18, Tom Hollingsworth noticed that the topic of network analytics kept popping up. Here, Tom shares his thoughts on the importance of network analytics as well as how easy it is to get started when analytics integrate into so many platforms you are likely already using.
Independence, Impartiality, and Perspective
Tom Hollingsworth gives his take on what it truly means to be independent in the IT world, but instead advocates for impartiality. He argues no one in the IT market can truly be independent, so we should instead all strive to find impartiality in order to be good judges of the world around us.
Cisco’s Container Journey to the Cloud
In this piece, Tom Hollingsworth looks at the announcements from Cisco Live US 2018. What stood out to him was the prominence of a non-networking specific topic, the cloud. He specifically examines how Cisco took pains to show how they are aligned with Google’s vision of the cloud, and integrate that across their product lines.
Accessing Security Insights with SolarWinds Network Insight For Cisco ASA
Tom Hollingsworth takes a look at SolarWinds Network Insight For Cisco ASA, which he saw at length at Tech Field Day earlier this year. He looks at how this enables admins to analyze complicated access lists and determine exactly what they are doing, without a bunch of manual configuration.
Unlocking VXLAN with Mellanox
After seeing Mellanox present at Networking Field Day earlier this year, Tom Hollingsworth looks at how their hardware support for VXLAN could make the dream of fast, extensible and inexpensive ethernet a reality.
Extreme Networks SLX Platform – Extremely Easy Analytics
Tom Hollingsworth heard from Extreme Networks at Networking Field Day earlier this year. This piece takes a look at their SLX Platform, which simplifies the process of getting analytic data out of switches.
Wireless Thoughts From Aruba Atmosphere
Tom Hollingsworth recently got back from Tech Field Day Extra at Aruba Atmosphere. In this post, he shares some initial thoughts from the event, including how the Rasa Networks assets showing up in Aruba NetInsights, interesting security applications, and awesome demos.
Orchestration From the Top Versus Automation From the Bottom
Extreme Networks and Juniper Networks made an impression with Tom Hollingsworth after Networking Field Day in January. For him, the Extreme Networks showed why they lead the way in their bottom-up approach to automation. He then breaks down how Juniper distinguishes themselves with their top-down orchestration tooling.
Is ACI Coming For The CLI?
Based on what Tom Hollingsworth saw at Tech Field Day Extra presentations from Cisco Live Europe, the Cisco-based CLI may be in trouble. Tom’s takeaway is that Cisco wants to use their Application-Centric Infrastructure to introduce a standard set of terms that can be used across device groups. This new standard lexicon, combined with alleviating the need to learn Python, make it an interesting approach to finally allow for the CLI to retire on Cisco gear.
Legacy IT Is Not A Monument
In this thoughful piece, Tom Hollingsworth breaks down why legacy IT is not in fact a monument to behold in all of its read-only grandeur, but rather a pain point for an organization. Tom takes an IT wrecking ball to these ersatz icons.
Going Faster with 400Gbps Ethernet and Andy Bechtolsheim
How will we get to the 400Gbps Ethernet future? Tom Hollingsworth heard a talk from Arista Networks’ Andy Bechtolsheim at Networking Field Day on the topic. The talk delved into the challenges, politics, and opportunities of 400Gbps.
Architecting Container Direction with Nirmata
Containers may have a lot of advantages. But when it comes to using Kubernetes to orchestrate them, complexity starts to become a substantial issue for organizations. Tom Hollingsworth looks at Nirmata’s presentation from Cloud Field Day as a way to address this. They offer an orchestration layer on top of Kubernetes, that lets organizations spent more time working on their business intent, and less time learning configuration.
Keeping An Eye On Containers with Ixia CloudLens
Containers have a number of benefits in modern IT, but monitoring them can quickly become problematic. Tom Hollingsworth takes a look at Ixia’s CloudLens solution, a container monitoring solution built into a container! This allows it to be highly portable and easily configured with other containers for monitoring.