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Best of Interop Awards called out for product no-show

Cisco product was a no show at Interop
Submitted by Larry Chaffin on Thu, 05/10/12 - 10:03pm.

This blog below was sent to me in email. While I was not going to write about it, I am glad someone else called out the awards. The Best of Interop Awards are a great thing in Las Vegas and companies revel in winning or getting just nominated. But there are some problems with them that need to be fixed.

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Are they a contender or pretender? Can Huawei survive in North America?

Will enterprise customers take a chance on them?
Submitted by Larry Chaffin on Thu, 05/10/12 - 4:08pm.

 

As everyone knows Huawei tried to make a big splash at Interop with a booth to rival Cisco's booth, matter of fact they were side by side on the Interop floor. But the question was how did they do and will they make it in North America?

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The 2012 Best of Interop Award Winners

Interop Awards for 2012
Submitted by Larry Chaffin on Tue, 05/08/12 - 8:14pm.

The Best of Interop Award winners were announced this morning. Below is a list of the winners. I would like to extend my congratulations to all the award winners and look forward to seeing all of the products live on the Interop floor.

The 2012 Best of Interop Awards winners in each category are:

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We are 'LIVE' for 3 rounds at Interop Las Vegas

Interop Las Vegas 2012
Submitted by Larry Chaffin on Tue, 05/08/12 - 9:41am.

Its seems that the story of Interop so far from the press releases I have seen and the ones under embargo, it's about the cloud. If it's not about the cloud it's about bigger is better in the core, the race for speed and density.

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Interop is around the corner, where is Cisco?

Cisco lacking in innovation
Submitted by Larry Chaffin on Tue, 04/24/12 - 10:16pm.

With Interop Las Vegas just around the corner the yearly Best of Interop Award Finalists have been announced and are listed below by category. The one thing that made me look twice was the absence of Cisco in certain categories. I would expect Cisco to be in Collaboration every year as that is all the Cisco CTO seems to talk about with video, mobile and the cloud. But they were not in the Data Center & Storage or Networking categories either.

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Riverbed announces new Steelhead Platform in CX/EX and Product in Granite

The doom of Cisco WAAS is here, now. Who at Cisco is to blame?
Submitted by Larry Chaffin on Wed, 02/01/12 - 8:48am.

 

Today Riverbed is announcing what I think is their best product to date in Granite. They are also showing two other steelhead models today in the CX and EX. I had the chance to sit down and chat with Bob Gilbert of Riverbed to ask a few questions and learn a little more.

Please tell us about your background at Riverbed and what your current position entails.

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Cisco dumps the UMI Personal Telepresence very quietly.

Cisco get no where with consumers on over-priced products.
Submitted by Larry Chaffin on Fri, 12/30/11 - 11:17am.

Speaking with a friend who purchased the Cisco UMI Telepresence from Best Buy, I was made aware he cannot get service on the product. Also I was made aware that Best Buy had a fire sale on the product, selling them at a price of 2 for 1 not so long ago and then pulling the product from sale. 

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Vendor Inside Sales/Direct Sales vs. Partner/Reseller, who is getting the shaft?

Vendors taking more customers direct to make more money
Submitted by Larry Chaffin on Thu, 12/01/11 - 12:21am.

 

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A conversation with Bill Burns the CEO of Spirent Communications

Testing is moving to wifi and wireless carriers.
Submitted by Larry Chaffin on Mon, 10/31/11 - 5:40pm.

This week we are chatting with Bill Burns the CEO of Spirent Communications in our executive conversation. I would like to thank my most favorite Global Public Relations Manager for Spirent Communications Sailaja Tennati, for working on this interview for me over the last few months. 

 

Where is the market when it comes to your product technology and where do you still see growth?

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A conversation with the CEO of Ixia, Atul Bhatnagar

More testing is going on in the wi-fi sector than most though.
Submitted by Larry Chaffin on Fri, 10/21/11 - 10:56am.

I have started our CEO conversations back up again after a short break. Today we are going to talk to the CEO of Ixia Atul Bhatnagar. 


What is the state of the appliance testing market and do you still see growth? 

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The new Cisco WAAS Appliances, a game changer?

New appliances does not mean success for Cisco
Submitted by Larry Chaffin on Fri, 10/07/11 - 10:48am.

Everyone has been waiting to see my reaction to the next generation Cisco WAAS appliances that were announced at Interop. Could these be the game changers that Cisco needs to compete with Riverbed and also stop losing deals to Blue Coat and Certeon? Well they are really pretty boxes, they have a lot of memory and a very big WAN card. But they are not what the doctor called for, sorry Cisco.

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A conversations with Yuval Baron CEO of AlgoSec

Yuval talks about what makes his company different and a leader
Submitted by Larry Chaffin on Wed, 08/17/11 - 7:16am.

 

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A conversation with John McAdam of F5 Networks

Looking to the future and understanding the past in application delivery controllers
Submitted by Larry Chaffin on Tue, 08/09/11 - 8:26am.

I am going to continue my series of conversations with industry CEO’s and today we have John McAdam of F5 Networks. 

1. So why don't you tell us where you think the markets are at with [application delivery controllers] to start and then, do you still see growth? You can also include your other products.

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How is the Cisco 76% off Nexus sale going over with customers? Not well.

Purdue yet to answer how the Nexus won when it did not fill the rfp requirements.
Submitted by Larry Chaffin on Mon, 08/08/11 - 11:21am.

 

Over the last week I have received many emails about a story on the net. The story is all about Cisco giving Purdue University a 76% discount on the Nexus Product line. How they got to that number was a combination of Cisco math (discount, trade in on obsolete Cisco Switches) of which every customer by now is used to. The comments vary a great deal, I have listed them below and removed names.

"What does this say about Cisco list pricing if they give 76% off to a customer"

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A conversation with Vyatta CEO Kelly Herrell

Herrell discusses how Vyatt'as software approach fits in with the cloud, compares to hardware switches and why the company hasn't engaged in more head-to-head product testing.
Submitted by Larry Chaffin on Tue, 07/19/11 - 1:32pm.

Vyatta believes that networking hardware is old school and that its Layer-3 virtual networking stack can do it all while being cheaper and greener than traditional gear. In my ongoing series with industry CEOs, I talked with Vyatta CEO Kelly Herrell for his viewpoint on where his company fits into the market today.

Where is the market when it comes to network virtualization technology and where do you still see growth?

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A conversation with Jayshree Ullal CEO, Arista Networks

Ullal makes the cost/power savings case for Arista switches versus Cisco gear
Submitted by Larry Chaffin on Fri, 07/08/11 - 1:40pm.

I decided to reach out to a few CEOs beginning with Jayshree Ullal, CEO of Arista Networks. I appreciate that she took the time to answer my questions. I hope it provides some perspective on the market, company and the CEO herself.

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Cisco and routing: Who says you can’t go home?

Why I'm losing hope in Cisco again this month
Submitted by Larry Chaffin on Fri, 06/17/11 - 11:14am.

The last few weeks Cisco has been pressing their pitch that a network composed of a single vendor's network (Cisco's) is best for users. To me it looks like they are having to work very hard to come up with examples of happy users with nothing but Cisco, such as covered in this article: “Cisco again looks to debunk the multivendor network

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SpamCop disrupts millions of e-mail accounts by blocking Yahoo e-mail servers

Businesses using Yahoo cloud e-mail are up in arms with little recourse to make SpamCop change its blacklist policy on Yahoo mail.
Submitted by Larry Chaffin on Wed, 06/01/11 - 11:43am.

SpamCop has decided to block all e-mail coming from Yahoo servers, even if the e-mail is legit and part of Yahoo's business cloud services. On Monday I was replying to a email from a customer and a vendor, when I received the message below.

Remote host said: 554 5.7.1 Service unavailable; Client host [98.138.91.154] blocked using bl.spamcop.net; Blocked - see http://www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml?98.138.91.154 [RCPT_TO]

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Winners of the Larry Awards for Best Presentations at Interop

Eight companies claim the honors of the third annual Larry Awards
Submitted by Larry Chaffin on Mon, 05/23/11 - 3:27pm.

Well it is time again for the Larry Awards that recognize the best presentations at Interop. This is the third year for the awards and they have grown into a life of their own. I watched some of the presentations many times over the three days to see different presenters or see if the presentation had changed. As always, research for these awards was a lot of fun and a lot of work.

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About Putting Realism Into Your Network

Larry Chaffin Ph.D is the Chief Executive Officer/Chairman and founder of Pluto Networks, a Consulting and VAR partner specializing in WAN acceleration, VoIP, WLAN, telepresence and security.

Pluto Networks is a Riverbed reseller. Pluto was previously a Cisco reseller but in June, 2010, ended its reseller relationship with the company and is no longer a Cisco channel partner.

Pluto Networks specializes in the needs of small, large and enterprise companies by always giving them a great ROI on the products they sell. Pluto Networks has a presence in 23 countries around the world enabling all of its consultants to be virtual. Larry was a Judge at Interop for the Best of Interop Awards for 2009.

Larry has also co-authored all of the books listed below:

Managing Cisco Secure NetworksSkype MePractical VOIP SecurityConfiguring Check Point NGX VPN-1/Firewall-1,Configuring Juniper Networks NetScreen & SSG Firewalls,Essential Computer Security: Everyone's Guide to Email, Internet, and Wireless SecurityHow to Cheat at Microsoft Vista AdministrationMicrosoft Vista for IT Security ProfessionalsAsterisk Hacking2008 VoIP and Video ConferencingInfosecurity 2008 Threat Analysis and author of Building a VOIP Network with Nortel's MS5100, along with co-authoring/ghost writing eleven other technology books for VIOP, WLAN, security and optical technologies. Larry is currently working on a follow up to Building a VoIP network with Nortel's MCS 5100 Book as well as new books on Cisco Telepresence Networks, Practical VoIP case studies and WAN Acceleration with Riverbed.

Larry also has more than 29 vendor certifications and has been working on many others. Larry has been a principal architect around the world in 22 countries for many Fortune 100 companies designing VoIP, security, wireless and optical networks. He has expanded over time also to include application acceleration. Larry is working with worldwide company now out of Asia as a Special Assistant to the CEO and CIO as they go through organizational and network changes, helping them with strategic advice from his years of experience.

Pluto Networks is a channel partner of, LifeSize, Riverbed, Call Copy, Fastsoft and Symantec.

 

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