Sean Michael Kerner

Based on Avaya’s experiences delivering the 2010 Winter Olympics, CEO Kevin Kennedy is offering a number of lessons learned about what’s required for building out the advanced networks today required by similar events. Speaking at the Interop conference in Las Vegas, Kennedy outlined where he sees networks needing improvement. He also dropped a few hints […]

With the virtualization craze sweeping the data center and the CTO’s office, the question has emerged: What can’t be virtualized? That’s one topic of discussion this week at the Interop conference in Las Vegas, where a panel of experts from networking vendors discussed the limits of what virtualization can achieve and where the promise of […]

From the ‘Conference Floor Metal’ files: LAS VEGAS — What does heavy metal rock and networking carrier Qwest have in common? I don’t know — but Qwest is trying hard at Interop to make the connection with their show character Johnny Lee Ross. That’s the dude with the long hair and the guitar in the […]

HP always had a partial networking offering, but the purchase of 3Com made it possible for the company to create a complete networking products division. Like any good vendor, HP became its own customer and is using that gear internally to consolidate its own data centers. With the recent acquisitions of EDS and 3Com, HP […]

From the ‘Strange Things from the Show Floor‘ files: LAS VEGAS — When you come to an networking show you don’t expect a boxing match to break-out do you? Well that is unless you’re at Interop, where for the second year in a row wireless networking vendor Xirrus setup a real boxing ring – and […]

You’ve heard of a smog index? Cisco’s taking the same idea and applying it to network management. With its new Clean Air technology, Cisco is offering its customers the ability to monitor their wireless networks for sources of interference, providing visibility into the potential bottlenecks that are consuming their Wi-Fi spectrum. Wi-Fi Planet has the […]

Red Hat has its sights set on the clouds. With the rollout of Red Hat Cloud Access, the Linux vendor is offering its premium enterprise subscribers the option to migrate to Amazon’s public EC2 cloud. With the Amazon integration, Red Hat is aiming to harmonize the experience of its enterprise Linux subscribers that run the […]

Enterprise Wi-Fi networks can face interference from plenty of source. Now, networking vendor Cisco wants provide enterprises with better visibility into what’s using their Wi-Fi spectrum with its new Clean Air technology. With Clean Air visibility, Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is aiming to identify potential wireless LAN deployment issues with the goal of working around the […]

From the ‘Strange Things Seen in a Keynote‘ files: LAS VEGAS — I’ve seen some strange things used in demos for presentation. Today at Interop I saw another strange thing – a microwave. It was brought on stage by Cisco as part of their keynote demonstration for their new Clean Air wireless technology. The idea […]

The migration to the cloud isn’t just about content and services. It also extends to the core networking operations, F5 would have you know. The firm has unveiled what it describes as a virtual version of its BIG-IP networking platform. With the new application delivery controller, F5 sees itself blazing a trail toward the next […]

Eager to capitalize on the popularity of server virtualization in the enterprise, Brocade this week rolled out a new application resource broker that it says will give IT administrators great visibility into the performance of their disparate applications both in their virtualized data centers and in their private clouds. Central to the hardware’s design is […]

The NoSQL movement has caught on in computing circles, where people are likely quicker to “get” what it’s about, but in general, non-tech firms, adoption has gone a little slower. However, a new startup hopes to help spur mainstream business adoption by adding features to an Apache-sponsored NoSQL project that business users want. Or so […]