Archivo de la categoría: Networking

Cisco Systems, Network virtualization, Networking, Nicira, US Venture Partners, Venture Funding, VMware

PLUMgrid Gets $10.7 Million for Software-Defined Networking

PLUMgrid, Inc. today announced that it has secured $10.7 million in Series A Funding from US Venture Partners (USVP) and Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. PLUMgrid, with nearly two years of development completed, is pioneering an ecosystem-driven network infrastructure built on software-defined networking (SDN) concepts. The company will deliver network virtualization solutions that will enable businesses to manage their physical, virtual and cloud datacenters with greater agility and efficiency.

In 2011, PLUMgrid raised an initial funding round of $2 million, and USVP partner Chris Rust joined the company’s Board of Directors. Hummer Winblad managing director Lars Leckie co-led the PLUMgrid series A and now joins Rust on the PLUMgrid Board of Directors.

PLUMgrid CEO Awais Nemat co-founded the company in early 2011, and has brought together an outstanding team of industry veterans with a proven track record of success in designing, developing and deploying some of the most important systems and services in the history of the networking industry. Nemat has assembled a group of highly decorated innovators from companies such as Cisco Systems, Marvell, Nicira, SUN, Vyatta and VMware. With a strong heritage in mission-critical enterprise network infrastructure, PLUMgrid’s engineers and software visionaries have contributed significantly to the emergence of network virtualization technology in the past five years.

“Network virtualization and the move to software-defined networking (SDN) is a strategically important focus area for the networking industry,” said Nemat. “PLUMgrid was started nearly two years ago with a vision of providing a better way for customers to address new networking application needs and reduce excessive costs and complexity. This $10.7 million financing round provides the resources for PLUMgrid to realize this vision and deliver a comprehensive SDN solution to our customers.”

“PLUMgrid has a compelling combination of large market opportunity, highly differentiated approach with deep IP, and an exceptional team with a track record of commercial success. USVP is delighted to be a founding investor in PLUMgrid, and to be joined by Hummer Winblad as our co-lead in what we believe to be the best-of-breed SDN solution in the marketplace,” said Chris Rust, partner, USVP.

“The networking industry is experiencing a major shift as infrastructure becomes software-driven,” said Lars Leckie, managing director, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. “We see tremendous potential in supporting a new, unified network infrastructure that delivers value to customers by building on networking best practices yet enabling the radical agility, simplicity and ease of management that software brings to the table.”


Android, Google, Google Chrome OS, Google Compute Engine, Google Drive, High Performance Computing, Internet Technology, Kansas City Missouri, Mobile, Motorola, Networking, Telecommunications Industry, Television, Video

Google Fiber Has Far-reaching Implications

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...

Reading this post on Google’s low-cost, super-fast fiber-to-the-home initiative (makes me sort of wish I lived in Kansas City) brought to mind all the other Google products and initiatives that might be empowered by it. Go read it, then come back here and consider:

Chrome OS: it takes a long time to make a new operating system and it looks trivial today, but with widely available gigabit internet at the household and small business level it begins to look like a realistic “the network is the computer” future.

Mobile OS: Google already has that covered with Android.

Add Google Drive: Ubiquitous very high speed connectivity at a low price makes Drive viable for more than backup, sharing and synch. Actually synch becomes easier if the only copy is on a server.

Add Google Compute Engine: A thin-client netbook running Chrome OS, or Android on tablets and handsets, become more appealing if you  can quickly access network-based computing resources for high-performance computing tasks like video transcoding.

Add Google Voice: consider all those hypothetical hotspots. Combine with Android and Voice. Can a Google competitor to cell phone providers be far behind, one that leverages the coming Google network? All it would take is a couple extra capabilities in the fiber/WiFi box that seems inevitable. And don’t forget they now own Motorola, a top-notch mobile phone company.

YouTube/Google TV: Already dipping its toe into original programming, and fast fiber means TV will change dramatically.

Living In the cloud would become a real option for everyday consumers. What about effects on professionals and small businesses?

And what about those other seemingly sci-fi projects, self driving cars and Glass? Hey, if the car drives itself my brain then has the bandwidth for augmented reality. How might they benefit from the ability to hop from fiber-connected WiFi hotspot to hotspot?

All this based on a good search engine algorithm, and then ads next to search results? Who’d a thunk it?


IT Management, Networking, PacketPortal, Partnerships

JDSU, NetSocket Partner on PacketPortal

NetSocket, the creator of the world’s first real-time cloud service assurance solutions, announces its relationship with JDSU as a PacketPortal™ application partner. PacketPortal is JDSU’s recently launched Smart Network Application Platform (SNAP) that allows communications service providers to more intelligently capture and analyze network data remotely to provide the highest-quality subscriber experience.

NetSocket delivers immediate insight into cloud networks, providing complete service visibility. It enables network managers to anticipate, isolate and remediate IP service issues before they become end-user problems. NetSocket’s solution automatically provides a comprehensive view of content, session and IP topology on a hop-by-hop basis. It captures and correlates network behavior in real time on any size network and across multiple vendors. NetSocket provides a trouble-free cloud experience, ensuring higher session quality and lower support costs.

PacketPortal enhances the capabilities and improves the efficiency of today’s network monitoring and troubleshooting software applications by extending visibility to the network edge while reducing complexity by focusing on only critical data. The partnering relationship announced today allows customers to use PacketPortal along with the NetSocket application to truly visualize the customer experience for IP cloud-based communications and collaboration services.

“Through our partnership with NetSocket, JDSU creates new opportunities for enterprises and service providers to derive value from the PacketPortal platform,” said Doug Fantuzzi, vice president in JDSU’s Communications Test and Measurement business segment.

“By integrating with PacketPortal, NetSocket can provide carriers and enterprises with immediate visibility into the location and causes of customer experience issues, especially in remote sites where previously it was difficult to obtain data,” said John White, CEO, NetSocket. “Now we can extend our correlation/isolation abilities to a broader market and reduce troubleshooting time and costs, minimize downtime, and improve productivity.”

JDSU will demonstrate the PacketPortal-enabled NetSocket solution this month at Interop 2012, May 8-10 in Las Vegas, Nev., at JDSU’s booth No. 2443. JDSU is also exhibiting at the DISA (Defense Information Systems Agency) Customer Partnership Conference in Tampa, May 7-9, booth No. 942.

To learn more about JDSU, please visit http://www.jdsu.com/.


Network Infrastructure, Networking, Virtualization, VoIP

Virtual Appliances and the Networking Team

Over the last few years there has been a lot of progress made towards virtualizing a decent amount of the traditional, network-centric appliances that used to be just hardware based. Why are some companies still resistant to this software-based approach?  Is it because that’s the way it has always been, or is it inherent to the networking geeks who may be less virtualization-savvy than some of their cohorts in the other technology silos?  It reminds me of the days when VoIP was first being introduced and the subsequent lack of acceptance that some of the old-school, traditional telephony engineers fueled.  Some of them accepted it and others retired.  The point is though that it makes sense and those who accept it will be much the better for it.

With the dynamic today moving towards private and public cloud offerings, the virtual appliance marketplace will most certainly continue to grow and mature.  There are many reasons why this makes a lot of sense.

Take a look at the time it takes to implement a physical network appliance.  Let’s use an application delivery controller – or load-balancer if you prefer that term.  How long does it take to implement a physical box into an existing environment?  Between ordering the unit(s) which usually come in pairs, shipping, and installing, it takes some time.  The cables need to be run, the box racked and stacked and then physically powered on and provisioned.  We have been doing this for years and this used to be standard operating procedure. Now that works well and good, kinda, in your own data center.  What about a public cloud offering?  Sorry, you don’t own that infrastructure. How about downloading a virtual appliance, spinning up a VM and you are off to the races. Again, this happens after provisioning the unit, but there is a lot less moving parts going that route.  Cloud or not – either way it still makes sense.  There will be less infrastructure requirements: power, rack space, cabling etc.

There are some other tangible benefits as well.  From a refresh perspective it just makes sense to upgrade a virtual appliance with a newer image – or adding memory –rather than a hardware-based forklift upgrade every five years (with potentially more downtime required).  The ability to shrink or grow a virtual appliance is one of the things that set it apart.  We don’t have to repurchase anything – other than license keys and annual service contracts.  Regrettably, those won’t go away.  But coupled all together with the flexibility to move your virtual appliances along with your data from one environment to another is key.  We will see more and more network-centric appliances become virtualized.  There will most assuredly always be some physical boxes that the network folks can get their hands on, but that will be for access purposes only.

The companies/manufacturers/network-engineers who don’t embrace this trend could quickly find themselves behind the eight ball. Analog phones anyone?

Cedexis, Network performance, Networking, Research, Tools

Cedexis Launches Internet Performance Reporting Tool

Cedexis has released a new data visualization interface available at www.cedexis.com/country-reports/ which provides statistics on the performance of IT providers (Hosting Companies, CDNs and Clouds) providing valuable information on the SOH (State Of Health) of their Internet services as end-users actually see them.

The performance measurements of each of the cloud/CDN providers is generated by the users themselves. This is achieved through the integration of a probe (JavaScript tag) on a Cedexis customers’ web, mobile or business application, which only becomes active only after a page has been fully loaded so that an end-users experience is not impacted.

Cedexis combines these quality and performance measurements with an additional service called OpenMix, which enables real-time traffic routing changes to maximize the end-user’s experience.  Thanks to this realtime decision making service, end-users are always sent to the best provider for them at that point in time, with content owners comfortable in the knowledge that 100% availability and optimal performance for each and every end-user is a reality.