Blog
The New Enterprise Requirement: Full Lifecycle Network Automation
Enterprise campus and access networks are growing increasingly complex at a pace far faster than companies can grow their available technical networking engineering support staff, who by the same token are becoming increasingly unaffordable. In this environment, automation is no longer an option:…
Come See Pica8 at Dell Technologies World – and Help Save a Real-Life Pika
Having been around the block a time or two, I’ve seen my share of trade show event booth giveaways and all manner of tchotchkes, most of which find their way to a trash can before the visitor gets home. For the upcoming Dell Technologies World 2019 in Las Vegas, we wanted to do something different –
No Time Like the Present for Network Automation
The time has come for IT to once again dive into the world of homegrown automation for running their networks. Network teams have a love/hate relationship with automation, and have had for decades. Time after time, they have tentatively extended the reach of automation, working with everything from…
Counting Up the Benefits that Leaf-Spine Architecture Brings to Enterprise Networks
If your network, like most, is growing in size and complexity, perhaps it’s time to consider whether the traditional three-tier network architecture has run its course. It’s becoming apparent that a flatter, two-tier leaf spine network topology can bring dramatic changes in the way we manage…
8 “Fake News” Items that Tried to Hold Back Open Networking
The parallels between the efforts of the various open networking communities to modernize the networking industry and a Saturday afternoon pee-wee soccer scrum are far too close for comfort. Both are characterized by loads of noisy, colorful – and mostly circular – movement – eventually followed by…
White Box Open Networking: A Cure for Your Regulatory Compliance Ills
Just about every major US regulatory requirement says companies must use software that’s fully supported by the vendor that sells it. Simply put, if you’re using software that is beyond its end of life, you’re not only posing a security risk to your company – you’re also out of regulatory…
50 Shades of Open Source: How to Determine What’s Suitable for Enterprise White Box Networking
To date, the open source community has been quite successful in terms of coming up with scalable and reliable implementations for enterprise servers, databases and more. Yet many enterprises remain skittish about implementing open source software, probably no more so than in the networking space.
Like Watching the Caveman Invent the Rock – Cisco “Discovers” Software
In truth, today’s legacy enterprise networks — many now decades overdue for replacement — were built to fight Cold Wars among the vendor powers. Cisco “big iron” battled Wellfleet “big iron” and, later, Juniper “big iron,” and the throughput/density contests are now the stuff of NetOps legend….
Thanks, Arista! We’ll Leave a Light on for You
Wow. Just, wow. Here we were at Pica8, ten days away from announcing a screamingly simplified white box switching architecture for enterprise campus networks – one that makes legacy switch stack and chassis switch replacement with disaggregated white box switches ridiculously easy — when Arista…