TheInfoPro

Written by Daniel Kennedy, Research Director for Information Security

When we review our technology roadmaps, with their dark-blue in use and dark-orange not in plan bars, we often look most closely at those technologies that show a robust planning band in the middle, with the preference of course going to those technologies in the short-term implementation plans of network engineering managers. When it comes to the voice and video category in our Wave 9 Networking Study preview data, Unified Communications (UC) solutions is showing the best ongoing integration year-over-year as well as a robust planning band in the next year and a half. Twenty-five percent (25%) of respondents have UC solutions in their short-term plans, and 14% mark it as on the horizon for implementation.

This robust planning band shows 39% of respondents moving toward solutions primarily provided by Cisco and Microsoft, with Avaya a distant third in our preview data.

A sampling of narratives around project initiatives supports this projected growth:

• “We decided to move unified communications to Microsoft.”
• “We are putting a huge amount of bandwidth to cover unified communications.”
• “People comment, it’s like, they access their files much faster, being driven by the unified communications, when we go in and put in unified communications you have to put in new switches, gig switches, everyone gets a gig port, everyone notices. It’s many times better accessing their files.”
• “Unified communications may result in the need for more bandwidth at satellite offices.”
• “HP just has a better vision than Cisco does. The downside, they are late to the game with unified communications.”
• “Avaya has some cool stuff around unified communications.”

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• Who Can Take On Cisco?

Written by Daniel Kennedy, Research Director for Information Security

In our interviews, network managers continue to cite managing costs, aging hardware, and managing network growth among their top concerns, and while these will likely remain top-of-mind concerns in the future, the continued growth of higher-capacity networking looks to ease some of this pain. With that in mind, the continued rollout of Intel’s more advanced platform next year allowing 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GigE) LAN on motherboard (LOM) connections should, combined with the normal network refresh cycle, allow 10GigE to become the default connection on rack-mounted servers.

This change further extends the benefits of 10 GigE, including network simplification, performance, and more efficient costs via the need for less equipment.

In the meantime, network budgets are recovering nicely in 2011 to help address these concerns, and the continued rollout of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GigE) even in advance of standardization of volume servers is poised to receive a piece of that investment. Implementations on the network core are passing 50% of respondents, with 33% having rollouts in plan. Not far behind is moving toward 10 Gigabit server connectivity, at 45% in use and 26% in plan, with Cisco as the primary vendor provider in both. HP and Dell, fresh off their acquisition of Force10, round out the top three vendors respondents cite for 10GigE on the core network; Juniper is second on the server side.

A sampling of narratives around project initiatives supports this projected growth:

• “..upgrading infrastructure (10Gig links)”
• “Yes, we’re changing our design. Bigger links between switches; we’ll start using 10Gig for communication between switches.”
• “Implementing UCS along with 10Gig networking and Nexus switches.”
• “Upgrading to 10Gb data center.”
• “Take fiber link to core to 10Gig.”
• “Increase in 10Gb capacity.”
• “Both backbone and systems connections for 10Gb.”
• “Core network refresh/moving to 10Gb.”
• “Capacity is growing – bigger and faster. 10Gb is the de facto standard.”
• “Want to go to 10Gb.”

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• Who Can Take On Cisco?

Written by Daniel Kennedy, Research Director for Information Security

Cisco is having an interesting year, attempting to shave $1 billion of expense through layoffs and asset sales while beating both its own and Wall Street’s predictions of earnings as announced Nov. 9. At halfway through our Wave 9 Networking Study of enterprise networking environments, it is clear that Cisco continues to retain its prominence. The company has already jumped out to a 25% lead among vendors that respondents are excited about, and has a healthy 37% of respondents planning to spend more on its products in 2012 than they did in 2011 (vs. 21% reporting decreased spending). In terms of vulnerability, 7% of respondents report that they are definitely considering a switch off Cisco, which ties with Juniper (also at 7%) and easily beats Hewlett-Packard, where 18% are working out a switch.

Reflecting on Cisco’s continued entrenchment in enterprise environments, as well as its prominence in in plan implementations over the next year and a half, the question arises: can anyone unseat Cisco as the dominent networking provider? TheInfoPro asks just that question in its latest study, and finds the answer is largely “no”:

Digging into the preview data, in a number of categories with significant growth potential, Cisco is the leading in use vendor. For example, with 10 Gigabit Ethernet rollouts, 33% have upgrades to their core network in their plans, and 26% report the same with server upgrades. In both cases Cisco is the lead in plan vendor. Similarly, with the hottest technology in the voice and video category, Unified Communications, which figures into 39% of respondents’ plans, Cisco maintains its leadership as the top in use vendor, but in this case has the possibility of being passed by Microsoft.

A sampling of narratives gathered thus far on Cisco reflects the mixed sentiment users have similarly expressed in the past:

• “We are a Cisco shop, but we will look at other vendors and even some appliances to address performance issues.”
• “Cisco is always cutting edge, in my opinion. They are capturing market share in addressing application performance in a distributed networking environment.”
• “Cisco is our vendor of choice. Overall, they continue to perform as we continue to grow. They have great technical support, especially when we hit complex issues. They are not as responsive to the competition as they could be. I would like to see Cisco in a more aggressive posture against some of the smaller emerging vendors.”
• “Cisco has a great technical staff, great support and sales. Cisco is the leader in this space, no doubt. Cisco has more ways to lose an order. If you get to the right person their knowledge base is extreme, it is just getting there.”
• “Cisco is ‘losing it’ right now. They have not done a good job in delivery, pricing and bill of materials. Cisco sold us the wrong licenses and they could not explain what happened. They are trying to go into too many directions at one time, they need to find the right path and get on it!!!! The products are solid and they work, at least at the router and switch level.”

Of course we’ll have a more complete picture of what’s happening with Cisco in the enterprise at the close of our Wave 9 Networking Study.

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2012 Information Security Forecasts – Who Will be the Winners & Losers?
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 2:00 PM – 2:45 PM EST

Replay Link: 2012 Information Security Forecasts

Some of the key trends we will be discussing from our Information Security study are:

Information Security spend is strong with many diverse drivers:

• Directionally for 2012, Information Security Professionals are not planning a slowdown. Thirty-seven percent are planning an increase in spend, with 16% planning a decrease.
• Thirty-nine percent are spending more in 2011 vs. 2010, and only 15% are spending less – showing the resiliency of the market in challenging economic times.
• In the one-on-one interviews, decision-makers detailed compliance, mobile devices and preventing data loss as the drivers for spending increases.

Data Leakage Prevention (DLP) and Application-Aware Firewalls are products on
the move:

• Data Leakage Prevention (DLP) resides in the top spot of TheInfoPro’s proprietary Information Security Technology Heat Index™, which gauges immediacy of planned implementation for 40 technologies, as the G2000 look to protect custodial and intellectual property data from leaking out of their environment.
• The traditional antivirus vendors, Symantec (SYMC) and Intel’s (INTC) McAfee, look to benefit with rollouts of both endpoint and network DLP on tap.
• Application-Aware Firewalls make a nice jump in the Heat Index, with Palo Alto and Check Point (CHKP) benefiting from the 28% of in-plan implementations.
• Palo Alto will be a vendor to watch as it is beginning to replace some of the major incumbent providers with its application-visibility-based approach.

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Written by Daniel Kennedy, Research Director for Information Security

WAN optimization solutions, methods for increasing the efficiency of data transfer within the network, continue to climb in terms of the immediacy of network managers’ needs as measured by TheInfoPro’s Technology Heat Index, climbing from 5th place in 2010 to 3rd in the most recently completed wave. From an enterprise solutions perspective, this has shown up as a two-horse race according to respondents between the offerings of two companies: Riverbed Technology and Cisco.

The chart below details current levels of, and projected growth for, WAN optimization solutions by vendor. This is a preview chart, through 78 completed interviews, 59 of which provided WAN optimization projections.

Digging into the preview data for our in-progress 9th networking study, we see little changing, as Riverbed maintains the lead in both completed implementations, and will maintain that lead based on new projects going into next year. Cisco shows a healthy of new customers planning implementations as shown in the roadmap above as well.

There are general forward trends that will benefit WAN optimization as a product space. For the first time in three studies, planned “network wide” implementations (65% of those implementing) outpaced those implementing WAN optimization as a point solution (35%). While solving specific application performance issues still dominated network managers’ reasoning (52% cited this as their primary driver for implementation), 20% believed WAN optimization is a critical component to infrastructure consolidation efforts, and 12% built it into their plans for facilitating a greater move towards virtualization.

Here are examples of user sentiments gathered thus far on key vendors in the WAN optimization space:

• “Riverbed allows us to optimize what we have without having to increase our bandwidth. It is a very robust product that works as advertised. No real weakness, potentially their tech support could be upgraded.”
• “Riverbed products are easy to deploy and work as advertised and they are innovative. We really like their support! No weakness I can think of. Everything with Riverbed is just fine!”
• “Because of the integration. We’re considering Cisco WAAS just because of the integration, built into routers.”

Of course we’ll have a fuller picture of the WAN optimization space at the close of our 9th Networking Study.

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• Unified Communications Solutions
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• The Ascent of 10GigE
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