Mike Fratto

Assessment: Brocade Network Subscription

August 31, 2011

Network Subscription is an acquisition model that lets companies pay for network ports when they are used. As monthly demand changes, the port count and costs rise and fall. This is a good...

Brocade Announces Network Subscription And VDX Switches At VMworld

August 30, 2011

Brocade’s Network Subscription, new switches and Network Advisor enhancements are all aimed at establishing Brocade as a data and storage player in cloud infrastructure. Network...

VMware Focuses On Cloud Services

August 29, 2011

While VMware is best known for virtualization technologies, the company is making a significant push into cloud services by enabling service providers to run VMware products and seamlessly...

Oracle's VM 3.0 Plays Catch-Up

August 25, 2011

Oracle's enhancements to its hypervisor, VM 3.0, are significant for current and potential Oracle VM customers but aren't likely to woo those using other hypervisors. The new features...

IPv6 Is Coming. Time To Get Prepared

August 24, 2011

IPv6 is coming. Sooner or later, you will be deploying IPv6 on your network, data center, or co-lo servers. It may be a few years off--longer if your ISP has a well thought out transition...

Raining On Cloud Bursting's Parade

August 09, 2011

Cloud bursting--the ability to dynamically move processing temporarily to a cloud provider in response to some excess demand--sounds like such a great idea. If successful, you can continue...

Data Centers

FCoE: Standards Don't Matter; Vendor Choice Does

July 27, 2011

During the last year or so, some Fibre Channel over Ethernet experts have been arguing nuances of FCoE and which protocols you need or don’t need. FCoE interswitch interoperability? I will...

Data Centers

Dell Acquires Force10, Solidifies Data Center Story

July 20, 2011

Rumors about which networking company Dell was going to acquire have been silenced today with the announcement of its intent to acquire Force10. What Dell gets from Force10 is an equipment...

Citrix's Cloud.com Acquisition Will Further Application Services

July 12, 2011

Citrix systems is acquiring Cloud.com, which brings some marquee customers and a well-regarded automation and orchestration platform for Citrix to build upon. Citrix has pledged to continue...

Proprietary Is Not A Four Letter Word

June 21, 2011

Proprietary technologies are not inherently bad, but you do have to watch for vendors that interchange standards-based features with proprietary features in a fanciful shell game.

Follow Amazon Example In User Account Management

Careers and Certifications

June 17, 2011

Organizations that manage sensitive customer information have largely done their users a disservice by using links in emails. While they are trying to be helpful by providing links, the...

Vint Cerf's Internet Safety

June 14, 2011

At the Internet Society INET conference, there was wide-ranging discussion on a variety of topics, from Net neutrality to privacy. A highlight was Vint Cerf's keynote in the afternoon. He...

Six Reasons It's Blame IPv6 Day

June 08, 2011

As far as I am concerned, it's not World IPv6 Day. It's Blame IPv6 Day. This is a good opportunity to take any new technology (OK, IPv6 is not new, but it might as well be) and use it as...

Single Point Of Failure: The Internet

Careers and Certifications

May 31, 2011

No matter how well you architect for redundancy and availability, there will certainly be single points of failure (SPOF) that you can't account for. The SPOF, in all of its forms, can make...

Interop Premieres New Technology; Everyone Wins