Embrane, which builds tools that will enable cloud providers to scale out networking services faster and with less complexity, has raised $18 million in second round funding. The networking sector is heating up as virtualization complicates communication between servers and data centers. Read more »
Web applications that are deployed in one or a few data centers can watch their bandwidth costs exceed their server and hosting costs as their applications scale up, according to a paper looking at what telecommunications companies can offer as cloud providers. Read more »
The shift in networking and the hype around the OpenFlow protocol has led to a a lot of confusion and overinflation of what OpenFlow can do. To get a bit more grounded in reality, I spoke with NEC about what its customers are doing. Read more »
OpenFlow may be one of the hotter buzzwords these days, but getting past the exuberance and down to brass tacks can be difficult because the technology can be applied many places. It also sprouts up in new contexts as the ecosystem around the technology expands. Read more »
[OpenStack] looks not only like an open-source alternative to Amazon Web Services and VMware vCloud in the public Infrastructure as a Service space, but also a democratizing force in the private-cloud software space. As my colleague Derrick Harris suggests, the open-source cloud-computing project OpenStack has come a […] Read more »
On Wednesday Dell said it would buy networking-gear-maker company Force10 Networks. The move was expected since Dell’s rivals in the server space have tied up their networking equipment buys after Cisco launched servers that combined computing and networking in one box. Read more »
Intel has purchased an Ethernet silicon company in a move that mimics the industry trend toward viewing the data center as the computer as computing becomes more distributed. Intel said on Tuesday it would buy Fulcrum Microsystems, a venture-backed company that’s 11 years old. Read more »
Big data and Platform-as-a-Service offerings highlighted the second quarter, suggesting that we can expect to see a shift in enterprise IT practices around application development and analytics very soon. On the PaaS front, we saw new projects like DotCloud and Cloud Foundry gain incredible momentum in just a few short months. The big-data activity ranged from major new Hadoop vendors to heavy investment in flash storage that will speed the serving of data to processing engines. In other areas, we saw an uptick in cloud-computing plans from large vendors, OpenStack continued to mature and pick up both contributors and users, and Facebook caught our eye by launching an open-source project around the designs for its specialized servers and data centers. Additional companies mentioned in this report include VMware, Salesforce.com, IBM, Heroku and Calxeda. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
BigSwitch was one of 10 companies launching at our Structure 2011 conference last week, but it’s also riding a sea change in the networking world. I chatted briefly with BigSwitch cofounders to learn a bit more about its goals and opportunities. Read more »
Networking is about to change. It is inevitable that an open-source hardware architecture for the large chassis switch gets released, likely driven by a consortium of large customers. When combined with the external software control enabled by OpenFlow, this will really shake things up. Read more »
Networking is getting sexy again, thanks to OpenFlow and other approaches to network virtualization. So what has prompted this movement towards smarter and more flexible networks? Blame it on the cloud, and the fact that the old ways of networking simply can’t keep up with it. Read more »
Health care and stock trading has led to a need for new forms of cloud networking, which are growing much quicker than good old enterprise networking. However, cloud networking needs to have low latencies, and it needs new forms of control, because speed alone doesn’t help. Read more »
BigSwitch Networks, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based network virtualization startup founded on the principles of the OpenFlow standard, has raised $13.75 million in a Series A financing, led by Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures. The company’s goal is to become the VMware of networking. Read more »
There are obvious opportunities stemming from Wi-Fi Direct and Apple’s Airplay technologies, but how does one look beyond point solutions and hardware products to find the larger opportunity? The answer came to me during a conversation with Urs Hoelzle, Google’s SVP of engineering at Google. Read more »
