Cisco

How can you continue to provide more and better services with limited budgets, without outgrowing limited data center space, power, and IT resources?

Two high-profile specifications winding their way through the IETF promise to boost data center switching and service provider routing, but advances from Cisco and Juniper Networks questions if they are even needed.


Virtualization has allowed many companies to reduce the number of their physical servers, but increased demand for compute power, I/O capacity and storage, according to IDC.

Advances from Cisco and Juniper raise questions about how much two high-profile specifications that promise to boost data center switching and service provider routing are needed.

Intel's first 32nm process technology-based chips integrate robust security to enhance data integrity and server virtualization. Claiming to deliver up to 60% more performance than previous-generation processors, it can replace 15 single-core servers with just one and achieve ROI in as little as 5 months.

Cisco's bevy of data center products ranging from servers to switches to SANs further broaden the company’s reach beyond networking and into IT infrastructure. The sum of the parts indicates Cisco’s intention to play in virtually every facet of data center IT – not just the network and not just virtualization, analysts say.

Unified computing and communications is helping Las Vegas gaming company Station Casinos implement innovative wagering systems. And the ROI has been "wildly" better than expected.

EMC chief executive, Joe Tucci, believes IT customers will have their choice from hundreds of viable cloud computing service, and that the cloud market will not be dominated by a small group of vendors. EMC is developing its own cloud service known as Atmos Online, which will offer both storage and server capacity over the Internet.

Bridgewater Systems, the mobile personalization company, has released its Policy Controller (PCRF) and Home Subscriber Server (HSS) on the Cisco UCS for 3G and 4G mobile packet core networks, enabling operators to obtain greater cost-performance from their mobile packet core.

Having data in silos makes storage complex. NetApp's software allows enterprises to manage different types of storage systems, such as network-attached storage (NAS) and fibre channel storage area networks (SANs), as a single infrastructure. NetApp bets that its approach will give it an edge as customers deploy virtual storage or move their data to cloud providers.