SonicWall has added a line of multi-gigabit switches to its software-defined (SD)-branch offering that unifies the management of wireless access points and firewalls that include software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) capabilities. Dmitriy Ayrapetov, vice president of platform architecture for SonicWall, said the switches will replace a series of switches that SonicWall had been reselling from […]
Cisco Moves ACI Strategy Forward
Cisco is advancing its hybrid cloud computing strategy with release of version 5.0 of Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), a software-defined networking (SDN) that can be deployed on cloud platforms or networking equipment deployed in an on-premises IT environment. The latest version of Cisco ACI adds support for a transit gateway between virtual private cloud […]
How SD-WAN Is Driving Business Continuity in a COVID World
The coronavirus outbreak has thrown the economy into flux, creating changes to entire industries that would have been unpredictable a few months ago. While demand for travel has decreased dramatically, other businesses such as grocery chains, financial services and retailers are under immense pressure to serve customers in new ways. Enterprises with thousands of employees […]
Managing a New Kind of Complexity in Software-Defined Networking
Software-defined networking (SDN) has moved up the enterprise IT agenda in recent years. And it’s easy to see why–in theory, SDNs are far quicker and easier to control and alter than traditional networks. By using open protocols to apply controls from the network edge, SDNs enable network engineers to shape traffic from a single centralized […]
Why SDN’s Hot Streak Continues in 2020
The software-defined networking (SDN) market is expected to grow by double-digits between now and 2023, driven by the increasing mainstream adoption of this technology. And for good reason: SDN gives IT the ability to make changes through software code instead of reconfiguring each device, and manage data traffic from a central console to move it […]
DevOps: Embracing the Telco Cloud
Ongoing developments in technology have led businesses to look to the cloud for greater flexibility, scalability and processing power. The telecoms industry is no different. Under growing pressure to meet the demands of the internet of things (IoT) and 5G, service providers are increasingly adopting cloud and virtualization technologies such as network functions virtualization (NFV) […]
APIs and DevOps
As always, there are interesting trends in DevOps, and I wanted to point out one that is starting to bother me: the “API economy,” and how it impacts DevOps decision-makers. Traditional infrastructure—SAN, LAN, physical systems, etc.—were generally controlled the best from the command line. While there are a million of them, Cisco IOS is probably […]
To Be Continuous Podcast: Category Creation featuring Martin Casado
In this episode of “To Be Continuous,” Paul and Edith are joined by Martin Casado, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. He previously was co-founder and chief technology officer at Nicira, which was acquired by VMware in 2012. While at VMware, Martin served as senior vice president and general manager of the Networking and Security Business Unit. […]
Why DevOps Should Care About SDN
Software-defined networking (SDN) and DevOps are not mutually exclusive. Actually, DevOps wants SDN, whether it knows it yet or not. Why? If software is going to eat the world, then SDN is going to eat networking. Networks are becoming more complex, and one way to manage them more effectively is through SDN. Also, organizations are […]
Infrastructure as Code is SDN for Ops
As we continue to recognize the importance of DevOps—particularly its automation and orchestration aspects—to achieve the agility necessary for continuous deployment of apps, the question of how the term “Infrastructure as Code” (IaC) applies to traditionally network-bound systems and services is bound to crop up more frequently. After all, in addition to core IP-based networking characteristics […]










