Kurt Marko

Avaya SPB Fabric Put to the Test at Interop

June 03, 2013

Data center fabrics have been overshadowed by SDN, but vendors are still moving forward with fabrics. This year's Interop was a big, visible test for Avaya's implementation of the Shortest...

Google and VMware: A Contrast in Cloud Architectures

May 29, 2013

VMware's vCloud Hybrid is built for Virtualization 1.0. Google's new Compute and App Engine enhancements target apps that are built for the cloud from the start.

IT Vendors Need More Pricing Transparency

May 23, 2013

Compiling our SDN product comparison provided a vivid lesson in the difficulty of getting meaningful prices for enterprise IT equipment.

Software Hot, Hardware Not, At EMC World, Interop

May 13, 2013

The EMC World and Interop conferences showed technology forces reshaping the storage and networking ecosystems and the data center's future -- forces largely driven by software.

At EMC, Scale Out Storage Grows Up

May 08, 2013

EMC shows that scale-out storage systems aren't just for big pools of unstructured data.

EMC ViPR Goes All In on Software-Defined Storage

May 06, 2013

EMC's ViPR, a new software-defined storage platform, is a big bet on virtualized storage services. ViPR borrows from the SDN playbook with a controller and APIs.

Skype and Google: The Unified Communications Killers?

April 22, 2013

From Skype and Google Hangouts to integrated HD webcams and inexpensive video conference appliances, consumer technology is pushing aside 'enterprise-grade' products.

Merchant Silicon About to Get Smarter

April 18, 2013

The march to SDN designs has led many to think we're entering an era of dumb switches. Instead, look for the commodity silicon to get a lot smarter.

HP Moonshot: A Big Bet On Innovative Engineering

April 10, 2013

HP's Moonshot servers are a tour de force of engineering that aim to restore the company's innovation groove. Here are the details.

Cloud Infrastructure

Amazon EC2, Microsoft Connect Via Cloud Management Plug-In

April 04, 2013

Hybrid Express, software for managing hybrid clouds from startup Hotlink, has added an Amazon EC2 plugin to let IT manage cloud instances from Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine...

5 Steps To A Better Wireless LAN

March 20, 2013

How to keep up with reliability, security and the overwhelming performance demands on your wireless network.

Cloud Infrastructure

VMware Vs. Amazon? Try VMware Vs. OpenStack

March 20, 2013

Does VMware want to be a big player in Amazon's public cloud territory, or is the new vCloud service a defensive move to counter an OpenStack insurgency? I say the latter.

BYOD Security: Do You Really Need MDM?

March 11, 2013

IT is being stampeded into adopting MDM to protect mobile devices. But it's not a silver bullet, and it may be overkill for many needs where conventional wireless network security best...

Virtual SANs: Scale Out's Next Iteration

March 04, 2013

Shared, block storage SANs have been the exclusive domain of big, centralized storage arrays, but distributed systems are about to crash the party.

Cloud Storage and Sync: A Bubble Destined to Burst