"We have enough to get the product out before we will need another round," Nayak says. "Hiring Jim was part of this process."
Kuenzel says he took the job at Maranti because its product is aimed squarely at the sweet spot for intelligent storage switching. When we asked him about this product, and whether there was room for another company in this space, given Brocade Communications Systems Inc.'s (Nasdaq: BRCD) acquisition of Rhapsody and Cisco Systems Inc.'s (Nasdaq: CSCO) entrance with Andiamo, he got a little bit annoyed (see Brocade Scoops Up Rhapsody, Cisco Buys Andiamo, and IBM Tells Cisco: 'Let's Go!').
"It's an early market. There's always opportunity," he grouched. (Apparently, we caught him before his first cup of coffee this morning, as he hung up pretty fast.)
Nayak says Maranti's product goes beyond what Rhapsody's or Cisco's MDS 9000 switches can do. "It's truly a Layer 3, application-aware switch," he says. In other words, it should be able to recognize data types and prioritize traffic accordingly. IT managers will be able to use the Maranti switch to assign different performance, scaleability, and security parameters to electronic resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), email, and workgroup applications.
Companies like InterSAN Inc. and CreekPath Systems Inc. are creating software that lets companies apply policies, which Maranti says can be enforced with its switch (see Maranti Makes a Monster).
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
