Ron Sege President and Chief Operating Officer of 3Com discusses its worldwide strategy, value proposition and how it plans to gain share and compete in the large enterprise market. 3Com has an entirely refreshed product line that spans switching, routing, security, wireless and unified communications that’s been tested in large enterprise customers. 3Com is differentiating this product with cost advantage, total cost of ownership and services. Ron explains how 3Com survived the crash and is positioned to lead in the recovery as IT leader’s buying patterns have shifted. It’s a fascinating discussion, enjoy. Nick

As businesses grow across borders, a new era in branch office IT is emerging born out of systemic business efficiency planning prompted by business leaders efforts to reduce corporate spending as revenues declined during the market crash of 2008. To assist business and IT leaders reduce operational spend, get closer to customers, automate new streamlined business processes and position their firms for the current economic recovery, Cisco has launched the second generation of Integrated Services Routers or ISR G2, their flagship branch office solution for Borderless Networks. Shashi Kiran Senior Manager Network Systems and Security of Cisco Systems discusses macro business trends and explores how these trends are creating a new era in Enterprise Networks.

We live in an ever-increasingly connected world where our workspace is with us constantly, independent of geographic location and user device. The days of boundaries or obstacles to access information that location, applications and devices would erect are limited and dwindling. These boundaries are being torn down by business necessity, personal preferences and technical innovations. Joel Conover, Senior Marketing Manager at Cisco Systems joins me to discuss a new Cisco network architecture that addresses today's most complex IT challenges called Borderless Networks.

Avaya Aura is being extended to the mid sized enterprise market by simplifying its packaging into a single server solution loaded with unified communications and contact center applications. The Mid Market is typically characterized as 100 to 250 employees with revenues of $50M to $1B dollars. These Line of Business (LoB) managers seek to increase revenue and improve customer experience while differentiating against larger competitors. Their IT issues include older and dead ended communication technologies, limited IT and contact center agent staff and the need to rapidly reduce cost. To make LoB and IT ends meet, the Avaya Aura solution for Mid-Size Enterprises is offered for businesses with up to 2,400 users and 250 locations. Bruce Mazza Director of Unified Communications Market Solutions for Avaya joins me to discuss the mid enterprise market challenge.

Zeus Kerravala of Yankee joins me to discuss the post Great Recession IT industry structure. Our industry has dramatically consolidated over the past year and as the economy improves a new concentrated order is emerging filled with winners, losers and dark horses. Layer on top of macro economic caused shifts is new IT buying patters plus a new technology wave of virtualization and cloud computing which promises to alter IT delivery. We discuss Cisco, Nortel, Avaya, 3Com, Siemens, HP, IBM, Juniper, Force 10, Brocade, Arista Networks, Alcatel Lucent, Ruckus Wireless, Enterasys the potentially new JV between Cisco and EMC plus many others in this jam packed extended edition podcast. You may want to load this onto your ipod and listen to you coming or going to work. Enjoy.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported over 182,166 laboratory-confirmed cases of 2009 H1N1 influenza virus with 1,799 deaths. In June, 2009 the WHO raised the pandemic alert level to six, signaling a pandemic of this influenza is underway. If the H1N1 virus, or swine flu, is in full pandemic force during the fall and winter months of the flu season then an estimated 40-to-50 percent of the workforce could be affected. To assist business and IT leaders develop strategies to mitigate the impact of pandemics and other natural or man made disasters I asked Samantha Ma Security Solutions Manager at Cisco Systems to be my guest as she’s an expert in business continuity preparation.

Mixed vendor network environments increase complexity and complexity is not reliability’s best friend. In the following 3-minute Lippis Report podcast, Nick Lippis discusses network complexity and the disruptive outcomes it creates via two examples; the US Customs and Border Protection Agency at Los Angeles Airport and global Skype VoIP service. Enjoy, Nick

The system that provides electricity transmission, commonly called the electrical grid is under intense scrutiny to make it smarter. Today’s electrical grid was designed decades ago without optimization and information flow of electricity consumption beyond local utilities leaving businesses, homeowners and utilities blind to how electricity is being consumed. The Smart Grid adds intelligence from energy source to consumption end points so that businesses and homeowners can view their consumption and control their usage while utilities can better manage electricity demand and delivery. The building of the smart grid is an estimated market of $20 B/yr over the next five years with governments passing legislation, mandates and partial funding to build it. For perspective, Smart Grid networks have the potential to be much larger then the internet! The building of highly scalable and secure IP networks is Cisco’s core competency, making them uniquely qualified to supply it. I talk with Inbar Lasser-Raab Senior Director, Network Systems and Smart Grid Solutions at Cisco about Cisco’s Smart Grid architecture and initiative. It’s the best down to earth discussion of Smart Grid on the plant. Enjoy

The word Gestalt means a structure or configuration of elements so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by the summation of its parts. IT can create greater security defenses by approaching security as an integrated system of its siloed security tools and appliances. The Gestalt approach is a way to make sure that every device is contributing to the security of the corporation by being able to share information and work collaboratively to defend against increasingly sophisticated exploits through increased visibility and control. The best example of the Gestalt approach is Cisco SAFE, a security architecture and framework to network existing security devices so they work in unison and thus deliver a higher level of IT defense. I talk with Bill McGee, of the Security Technology Marketing group at Cisco Systems about Cisco’s new SAFE security architecture.

Unique is the operator of Zurich Airport and offers a broad service portfolio to about 180 other companies, which also reside in the airport. Zurich Airport offers work for about 20,000 individuals and transports approximately 18 million passengers annually. Airport applications like air-traffic control and tower communications demand the highest uptime and need to be separated from operations like baggage distribution, business administration, video surveillance, and public WLAN traffic. Peter Zopfi, Head of Communication Engineering for Unique was confronted with building a network with tunable attributes that were as varied as the businesses that relied upon it. In this podcast Peter discusses what worked and didn’t and how a LAN based MPLS VPN Cisco Network Virtualization strategy was key to delivered business value to all businesses and operations at Zurich Airport. It’s a fascinating discussion that you don’t want to miss. Enjoy, Nick.

Zeus Kerravala, of Yankee joins me to discuss the many changes occurring in the industry including Nortel’s liquidation and Cisco’s huge influence over the industry as it reshapes to respond to its UCS and data center 3.0 initiatives. We discuss HP’s new relationships with MSFT and Alcatel-Lucent, Brocade, Enterasys, Extreme, Force10, IBM, Juniper, and much more. We talk winners and losers and provide insight into the major trends that are focusing new corporate IT buying behavior. Enjoy

The market crash of 2008 has modified business behavior & processes permanently. When capex resumes it will not fund follow-on pre crash IT projects but IT projects that are top down driven by executive mandate to streamline operations. IT project winners are Collaboration, Video Conferencing, OPEX reduction, virtualization, security. mobility and cloud computing. Zeus Kerravala, SVP at Yankee and Steve Garrison, VP Marketing at Force10 Networks are my guest as we discuss data center network design in a virtualization post crash era. It’s a great discussion, enjoy.

According to Frost and Sullivan’s July 2008 World Web Conferencing Services Forecast, the web collaboration market is expected to grow at 22.5% CAGR through 2013! That’s the good news. In larger organizations that use web conferencing for a mix of internal, external and a combination of sessions there is growing evidence that WAN bandwidth is being heavily consumed. To significantly reduce WAN bandwidth cost while Web conferencing load increases, Cisco has introducing a hybrid model by introducing the WebEx Node for the ASR 1000. Tere’ Bracco Senior Marketing Manager for Network Systems and Security at Cisco joins the program to discuss web conferencing trends and the new hybrid model for WebEx.

Today’s collaborative infrastructure and evolving security landscape brings an abundance of risk. Newly adopted IT tools and services, often untried and vulnerable, allow cybercriminals to exploit them to sabotage or gain financially. The newest wave of threats such as Conficker, McColo, Srizbi etc often target personal data propagating via multiple blended vehicles such as web, email, and USB keys to bypass legacy security tools. Even strong security technologies are often unable to keep up with today’s attacks: they are too nimble, specialized, and targeted. Cisco’s new Security Intelligence Operations or SIO offering identifies threats in real time via global correlation so that businesses can be more secure in their IT defenses. Ambika Gadre, Director Product Marketing in the Cisco Security Technology Business Unit discusses SIO, reputation scoring, global correlation and a powerful approach to mitigating blended exploits from infecting your corporation.

Marlowe Fenne, Cisco Systems Solutions Marketing Manager in the Network Systems group joins me to talk about the IT Innovations forum and Cisco’s spring announcements. We discuss the business results of exploiting WAN Advantage, Webex Node, Virtual Connect, Security, Unified Communications, AXP, Switching, H1N1’s reminder of the importance of telecommuting and much more. Marlowe provides a sneak preview of the May 7th IT innovations Form too which I present at and you can attendee for free at http://www.ciscoitinnovationsforum.com .

In late March of 2009 Siemens Enterprise Communication announced a UC cloud service where it has placed its OpenScape Voice and UC applications on Amazon’s EC2 cloud infrastructure. This is significant and important as it’s the first time that a UC application is available in the cloud and offered in a SaaS model. This represents a new and fundamentally different channel to address the SMB market. The hope is that UC delivered as a SaaS offers a radically different delivery and price model and may very well be the model enterprises have been waiting for to consume UC on a massive scale. Paul McMillan Director of UC Technical Vision & Strategy at Siemens Communications is my guest as we talk about UC in the cloud and offered as a SaaS.

Of the original 500 S&P companies just 82 remain. The pace of change and corporate flexibility required to keep up continues to dramatically accelerate. Both McKinsey & Company and Boston Consulting Group say one-third of companies in the top quarter of their industry failed to maintain their competitive position during the 2000 economic slowdown. Five years later, just 10% returned to their same competitive position. The Business Roundtable reports 45% of CEOs expect declining sales over the next six months. The bottom line is that company’s which excel figure out how to save money but also prepare for the rebound. Mark Straton, Senior Vice President of Strategic Marketing at Siemens Communications is my guest as we discuss three imperatives for communications management during a tough economy that will assure your company maintains its competitive position during and after the economic slowdown.

Force 10 Networks has introduced ExaScaleTM E-Series family of switch/routers to meet the stringent performance, management and cost requirements of today’s virtualized data center and cloud computing environments. As enterprises transition toward virtualized data centers and adopts cloud-based services, the network is increasingly required to be more dynamic and responsive to changing resource demands. Steve Garrison, VP Marketing for Force10 Networks is my guest as we discuss the new design options for data center networking in a virtualization era.

Along with a turbulent macro economic cycle comes business rationalization and in networking the wide area offers a unique opportunity to deliver value both in terms of operational efficiency and business initiative alignment. The branch WAN as been pieced together usually site by site without a comprehensive plan as branches are connected with inconsistent WAN Services. IT planners are being offered an opportunity to implement a common set of WAN Services embedded within routers such as UC, WAN optimization, security etc., which promise to lower operational spend, align business initiatives and policy while delivering Local Area Networks (LANs) like application performance over the WAN. Tere’ Bracco Senior Marketing Manager for Network Systems and Security at Cisco joins me to discuss Cisco’s new WAN Advantage initiative that delivers a common set of WAN Services between ASR and ISR routers.

Avaya has launched a new architecture for Unified Communications (UC) with its new software product Avaya Aura™. This enterprise-wide SIP architecture connects users, UC devices, disparate legacy voice and IP systems plus UC applications, creating a holistic UC services delivery system. That is, a centrally managed Avaya Aura™ can disseminate common UC services to every corner of the enterprise independent of locations and multivendor systems, across all kinds of SIP endpoint. Avaya Aura™ promises to significantly reduce communications and management costs, using a single multivendor dial-plan, common user profiles and by simplifying SIP trunking, while offering federated presence and application integration software to integrate UC into enterprise applications. To understand Avaya Aura™ and what’s next for UC, Lawrence Byrd, Director of Unified Communications Architecture for Avaya, is my guest.

There are over 1.5 billion people worldwide using the internet representing only 23.5 percent of world population and we are now entering an Internet population explosion as emerging internet countries go online and need address space. Experts predict that an IP address exhaustion date is coming between Nov 2010 and Feb 2011 or sooner as countries potentially rush to acquire the last available addresses to avoid being shut out of the internet. In addition the number of IP addresses per person is growing too as millions to billions of new devices have become IP aware such as Mobile internet IPhones, smart phones, etc plus new internet services on trains, plains and the home grow. So the question is, is the industry heading toward another Y2K event? Fred Wettling, a Bechtel Fellow plus Manager-of Architecture & Planning and coauthor of the book “Global IPv6 Strategies: From Business Analysis to Operational Planning� joins us to provide perspective and strategy on how IT leaders can manage IP addressing and avoid a Y2K event.

While world governments figure out how to save the banking system our industry is changing at a pace I haven’t seen since the mid 1990s. Nortel is bankrupt, Cisco is making a huge announcement the week of March 15th, Force10 and Turnin have merged, Cisco launched EnergyWise, HP ProCurve launched ProCurve One, Juniper announced its EX2500 and Stratus, Brocade extended its DCX backbone, Mallanox launched a converged fabric gateway. IBM is getting closer to Juniper while HP TSG fortifies its data center position with EDS services and a lot more etc. Zeus Kerravala. Senior VP, Global Enterprise Research for the Yankee Group joins me to discuss the blizzard of announcements and changes taking place in our industry and offer our opinions and guidance on how to make sense of an industry in fundamental change.

Clearly the economic news over the past five months has been disturbing and at many times scary. So the question we ask is why invest in Unified Communications (UC) now and not wait until the recovery? The answer is straightforward, as UC not only pays for itself with a rapid payback measured in months, and at times as short as six weeks, but most importantly it reduces corporate operational cost by streamlining business processes. Steve Hardy Director Global Product and Solutions Marketing for Avaya joins me to discuss investing in UC now during a challenging macro economic climate. For any executive seeking both IT and corporate cost cutting projects, you need to listen to this podcast.

The future of IT is a networked model. Value creation and innovation is found in content that flows freely throughout networks. Cloud computing, Web 2.0, mobile applications, unified communications, video on-demand, social networking, etc are the result of the networked IT model. But IT and networks can be more tightly integrated with an applications enablement layer offered by service providers, which provide Over the Top suppliers with reliability, privacy, billing and security services. To link and simplify IT and networks in the most complex environments the industry needs a Network Integrator. I talk with Avedis Menechian, Chief Marketing Officer for Alcatel-Lucent about Alcatel-Lucent’s role as the Network Integrator of Choice.

Data center investments and upgrades are a bright spot in this challenging economy because they cannot be postponed like PC upgrades since data centers are central to business operations and revenue generation. To address this market HP ProCurve now part of HP's Technology Solutions Group (TSG) is introducing the HP ProCurve Open Network Ecosystem called ProCurve ONE and unveiling a new set of data center networking solutions. Five new Gig and 10Gig data center switches and the ProCurve Data Center Connection Manager make up this introduction. HP is differentiating from other IT companies by offering a complete data center solution including servers, storage, applications and networking. The ProCurve ONE Ecosystem includes marquee partners such as Microsoft, Avaya, Riverbed, F5, McAfee and many others. Matt Zanner, Core & Data Center Category Business Manager of HP ProCurve Networking discusses the significance of this announcement in further detail. If you are investing in data center infrastructure then you need to listen to this podcast

IT suppliers are delivering products that consume less energy while offering new IT delivery approaches such as data center virtualization to reduce cooling and power demands. Cisco Systems has taken a broader approach to energy management by delivering a power command and control architecture called Cisco EnergyWise which seeks to provide business and IT leaders with the tools to measure, manage and control the power consumption of all devices connected to the corporate network. Further, EnergyWise seeks to connect facility heating, air conditioning, lighting and other non-IT systems—systems that consume the largest proportion of corporate energy—in an effort to provide IT leaders with the tools and means to manage their overall energy consumption. Berna Devrim, Sr. Manager, Access Switching Marketing at Cisco Systems is my guest as we discuss Cisco’s EnergyWise initiative and what it means to business and IT leaders who seek to control energy consumption.

Marie Hattar Vice President of Network Systems and Security Solution Marketing at Cisco Systems is my guest as we discuss the sustainable effect afforded by networks and communications. Networking has always contributed to Green initiatives by provided teleworking, collaboration, telepresence and other ways of organizing people and workflow independent of geographic location. But networking is now taking the role of power management and control for IT and non-IT systems offering one of the most powerful sustainability tools available. Find out how by listening to this podcast.

Zeus Kerravala of The Yankee Group and I make our annual IT predictions. This year we make ten predictions ranging from data center/cloud/virtualization, green IT, the fate of UC, the new IT organization design to which firms will be gone by the end of the year. Enjoy, Nick

While the global economy slows down, network security spending continues to be robust as business and IT leaders seek to protect corporate assets, thus avoiding a major distraction when market focus is needed most. Recent analyst numbers suggest that data loss can result from myriad corporate security vulnerabilities. It’s getting harder to protect a company's intellectual property as the modern concept of work is based upon anywhere and anytime electronic collaboration and the borderless enterprise. Nasrin Rezai, Senior Director of Information Security for Cisco Systems is my guest as we discuss PPT or People, Process and Technology as the strategy to mitigate data from being lost or stolen from your company. To understand best practices of data loss prevention, you need to listen to this podcast

Green initiatives, governmental requirements, work-home lifestyle changes, business expense controls, reduced real estate requirements, business continuity - all these concerns add up as strong motivation for business and IT leaders to drive enterprise-wide mobility initiatives. Now more than ever, the value gained through the mobile enterprise is being embraced as executive management seeks operational cost reduction and increased productivity. Joe Ghory, Marketing Manager at Riverbed Technology is my guest as we discuss best practices to deliver corporate value though a mobile workforce. If your firm's initiatives are cost reduction and increased productivity then listen to this podcast.

Over the last 20 years, business and IT leaders have been distributing IT infrastructure to the branch and mobile employee environment. However, the past decade has demonstrated a trend in the need to consolidate distributed IT infrastructure back to the data center in order to cut costs and gain more security and control. With data centers being consolidated and virtualized, central applications perform poorly when accessed via branch office or mobile networks. By adding application optimization and acceleration technology to branch and mobile users, IT leaders gain the economic efficiencies afforded by data center consolidation without the pain of poor branch and remote application performance. Bob Gilbert, Director of Marketing at Riverbed Technology is my guest as we discuss strategies to reduce corporate operational spend through data center, branch and mobile networking. If you’re centralizing branch and mobile users applications for then you need to listen to this podcast.

There are many facts that point to continuing growth in branch office deployments, and the realization that application delivery has become data-center and branch office focused. Delivering business innovation to branch office locations has always been challenging with few, if any, IT personal on site, in-consistent application and service delivery among branches and employee demands for higher levels of business services that are available at headquarter facilities. In the current difficult macro economic scenario managed services offers the favorable trade-off of capital plus salary cost for facilities cost; lowering operational spend. Joel Conover Sr. Manager, Network Systems Marketing at Cisco Systems joins me to discuss IT leader’s options to accelerate business innovation while lowering operational spend through managed services delivered by service providers harnessing the power of Cisco’s Empowered Branch solution. If you are looking for a new model to deliver branch office innovation and cut capital costs, then you have to listen to this podcast

Enterprise networks, especially branch office networks, have experienced a level of service integration over the past five years that has delivered lower acquisition and operational cost while increasing the number of services available to branch office employees. Branch office routers now include switching, WLANs, PoE, network security, WAN Optimization, VPN, unified communications and advanced routing which increase application performance over thin wide area network links. In this podcast we explain the next generation of branch office optimization, which is the integration of applications into the network fabric. The networking industry has started to open up its software in the form of SDKs and APIs. Cisco, Juniper, Extreme, 3Com and the open source routing initiatives are all allowing developers to write to defined router software interfaces. The concepts here are based upon research contained within an industry paper available for download at http://lippisreport.com/2008/09/increasing-corporate-value-through-integrated-networks-and-applications-a-new-approach-to-it-service-delivery-emerges-for-branch-office-operations/. We explain integrated networks and applications in this pdocast and provide business and IT leaders recommendations to exploit it for corporate advantage.

Avaya just hired Kevin Kennedy as its new CEO. Zeus Kerravala of The Yankee Group and I comment on Avaya’s pick and review the recent Avaya analyst conference with an eye toward which Enterprise Communication companies will survive the downturn. Enjoy, Nick

You can’t manage what you can’t measure and this could not be truer for virtualized data center infrastructure. Virtualized infrastructure reduces energy consumption, software license fees and provides a flexible data center that can spin up and down services as demand dictates. But the lack of network visibility to manage and optimize this infrastructure is giving many IT leaders pause. Virtual ports that support numerous logical flows to a single blade running across multiple virtual machines eliminate management, optimization and troubleshooting tools previous available. Stephen Garrison, VP of Marketing for Force10 Networks joins me to talk about strategies and tactics that deliver visibility into virtualized IT infrastructure. If you’re building or trying to manage a virtualized data center, then you need to listen to this podcast

Many business thought leaders are exploring strategies to leverage their branch assets to increase revenues and improve the branch office customer experience by mitigating branch office constraints. These thought leaders are collectively thinking in terms of Branch 2.0, which from a real estate and staffing point of view is a smaller footprint but rich in information technology (IT). Branch 2.0 offers a solution to the business challenges of staff skill levels, right here, right now customer transaction requirements, broad lack of loyalty thanks to increased competition and using the large branch office footprint to up- and cross-sell customers while gaining new ones. The communications industry is driving new value in branch offices with Branch 2.0, which leverages communications and IT to remove the above branch office constraints and improve corporate performance. The combination of business and communication technology trends is creating the next generation branch office. The Branch Office 2.0 concept and its associated business value are developed in white paper available for download at http://lippisreport.com/2008/08/business-value-creation-through-branch-20/ which contains industry recommendations so that business and IT leaders may exploit it for corporate advantage. We use retail and financial services as examples, but Branch 2.0 may be applied to any branch or store facility in any geographic theater.

Two major enterprise trends are combining to deliver greater communication options, that being unified communications and smart mobile endpoints such as Blackberrys Symbian, Iphones and Windows mobile devices. Enterprise mobility solutions are delivering greater value to dual mode smart mobile endpoints thanks to 802.11 WLANs, 3G, fixed mobile convergence and unified communications. In short a mobile endpoint is being equipped with the same services, features and functions that were once isolated and fixed upon a desktop phone. Luc Roy VP of Enterprise Mobility at Siemens joins me to discuss mobile unified communications.

Located just south of Vancouver, Delta School District includes 33 schools spread out over 60 miles. Having initially deployed consumer-grade Wi-Fi technology, Delta quickly realized that it needed industrial strength management and WLAN performance to meet the needs of educators, students and administrators. Its first enterprise WLAN provider offered central management improvements, but Delta was only able to sprinkle single access points (APs) in most of its schools, equipping some with several APs and a centralized controller. Adding more APs meant adding more controllers and backhauling traffic from each AP to a central site over a WAN connection. Then Delta switched to Ruckus Wireless and gained a professional-grade WLAN system that could be centrally managed, was quick to deploy and offered unique design attributes thanks to meshing. Paul Parsons of the Electronic and Computer Services (ECS) Group within Delta School District is my guest as we talk about Delta’s business requirements, motivation and experience with a new WLAN solution by Ruckus Wireless.

Unified Communications (UC) suppliers have been busy extending their software to work on mobile endpoints, such as the Apple Iphone, blackberry, smartphones etc. But there has been little focus on solutions that extend UC to address in-building roaming applications. This is a huge area that has been overlooked with requirements in nearly every industry such as gaming, education, retail, financial services, transportation, etc. Most business and IT leaders look toward a few technologies to solve the in-building UC roaming problem including Voice Over WLAN, IP DECT, Dual Mode endpoints, reliance on the cellular network and, in the extreme, deploying their own cellular antenna to improve coverage. To sort this all out, I invited Shane Yu Director of Unified Communications Consulting at Avaya where we’ll review these options and provide guidance as to which approach may work best for your corporation. If you’re looking to extend UC to in-building nomads, then you need to listen to this podcast

Mr. Michael Whaley, Network Engineering Specialist at American Century Investments is my quest as we discuss American Century Investment’s teleworking strategy and solution. American Century Investments was looking to reduce the operational burden of supporting a large teleworking population while delivering an office IT experience to those working from home. Mr. Whaley describes how American Century Investments paid for a new teleworking solution with wide area facilities cost savings while increasing security, employee productivity and reducing IT management’s operational spend. It’s a fascinating podcast, if you’re developing a teleworking plan, then you need to listen in.

Mindwave Research recently changed its operational model to reduce facilities cost, improve productivity, gain access to a broader labor pool, increase customer service and be a greener company. At the heart of this operational change was the shift toward teleworking. By deploying a teleworker solution, Mindwave reduced its facilities cost by over 80%. They are leveraging IM, video conferencing and other unified communication services to keep employees connected and working together while they telecommute. Jason Snook, IT Director at Mindwave is my quest as he discusses the realized increased productivity and drastic reduction in commute travel time and CO2 emissions its employees would otherwise emit into the atmosphere.

Working from home has always been a different IT experience then being in the office. Home connectivity was restricted to dial-in, VPN or client based solutions with voice service usually being the house phone. This poor experience dampened the growth of teleworking, which was good news for most IT leaders as their concerns were security vulnerabilities and management. But with advanced integration of networks and communications in a small appliance the gap between office and home IT experience is closing fast. A confluence of factors ranging from green initiatives, to governmental requirements, work-home life style changes, business expense controls and new teleworking solutions are giving business and IT leaders the motivation to embrace and massively deploy teleworking solutions. Mr. Calvin Chai, Senior Marketing Executive at Cisco is my guest as we discuss Cisco’s new Cisco Virtual Office offering; a teleworking solution that can be deployed in scale.

Teleworking with unified communications is now a major contributor to green initiatives. The thinking is simple, reduce the amount of cars commuting and carbon emissions will decline. On average there are 0.45 Tons of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere for every 1,000 miles driven while a typical commuter travels 7,000 miles per year. Assuming that in the US telecommuters work at home at least one day a week results is some 22.6 million Tons of CO2 that will not be emitted into the atmosphere. That’s just in the US and other countries are more aggressive in their telecommuting initiatives. But to make telecommuting realistic it needs to support multiple endpoints, communication services and all of the conveniences of enterprise communication systems including presence, directory, the corporate dial plan, etc. Combining unified communications with teleworking is delivering on this level of usefulness. Andrey Kuzyk, Senior Marketing Manager Unified Communications at Avaya joins me to discuss teleworking solutions, which helps to support a greener corporation.

Luis Suarez Director of IT at H.I.G. Capital is my guest as we talk about how H.I.G created value and optimized its remote office operations through a new Cisco business platform, which tightly links applications and networks. In previous Lippis Report podcasts we reviewed Cisco’s ISR-based Application eXtension Platform or AXP. Here Luis explains how HIG used AXP along with Sagem-Interstar’s XMediusFAX application to displace both an old world analog fax network plus web based fax services, while integrating fax services into UC extending it to all H.I.G endpoints and in the process speeding up business process and deal flow. If you are looking to reduce TCO and simplify fax services by integrating it into a UC environment, then you have to listen to this podcast.

Voice recording in branch offices and retail stores are becoming mandatory requirements as executive management seeks to capture customer interactions to better understand and optimize customer and market dynamics. Also new and stricter regulations for financial organizations are driving the need to record customer interactions at the branch level. NICE Systems has teamed up with Cisco Systems to deliver their Network Embedded VoIP logger on top of Cisco’s AXP or Application eXtension Platform, which resides within its Integrated Services Router (ISR). In this podcast I talk with Nadav Doron Director of Branch Solutions for NICE Systems about the AXP as a development platform, the business value it creates and branch optimization realized. If you have voice recording requirements in your branch offices, then you need to listen to this podcast.

Cisco is delivering a networked based application development platform within its Integrated Services Router (ISR) called AXP or Application eXtension Platform. Cisco created a technical and business architecture around AXP to foster an ecosystem of partners. The fact that there are millions of Cisco ISRs in production makes this approach compelling for partners. One Cisco partner is Sagem-Interstar, the global leader in advanced fax server solutions for IP networks. Sagem deploy its XMediusFAX FoIP technology on Cisco’s AXP to virtualize fax functions into the Cisco ISR VoIP gateway. Shashi Kiran Senior Manager Network Systems Solutions Marketing for Cisco Systems and Christian Larocque, Director for Sagem-Interstar are my guest as we discuss the AXP as a development platform; the business value it creates and branch optimization realized. If you’re looking to optimize your branch office network, then you need to listen to this podcast

Today’s knee jerk approach of stacking multiple vendor best-of-breed appliances to address specific threats increases security plus compliance vulnerabilities, operational cost and lowers application performance. Security appliances usually have their own management interfaces and performance parameters driving cost and complexity up. There’s another approach. Crossbeam transforms the way enterprises, service providers and government agencies architect and deliver security services. Its Next Generation Security Platform facilitates the consolidation, virtualization and simplification of security services delivery, while preserving the choice of best-of-breed security applications. Crossbeam’s security platform delivers quantifiable value on multiple fronts. In this podcast I talk with Pete Fiore, CEO of Crossbeam Systems about Crossbean’s approach to IT security threat mitigation. If you have a perimeter defense in place then you need to listen to this podcast

The NAC market is at a pivot point as a key piece of technology that offers a third deployment option is about to enter the market. This third option, based upon authentication and distribution of NAC functions across existing appliances and network infrastructure will enable NAC to scale across an enterprise from its early deployments of guest, wireless and remote access to headquarter and campus LAN environments. Most NAC appliances support two deployment options, in-band and out-of-band. In-band for small deployments and out-of -band for larger ones, but neither scale well for campus LANs. A new deployment option distributes device posture assessment, authentication and enforcement across NAC appliances, a radius 802.1x server and NAC enabled LAN infrastructure. This distribution of NAC tasks across NAC appliances and NAC infrastructure create scale to support large campus environments. Steven Song, Marketing Manager for Cisco Systems joins me to discuss NAC and how its maturing to the point that campus LANs are now being equipped with its defense mitigation protection capabilities. If you have requirements to implement NAC in your campus, then you need to listen to this podcast.

The networking industry has started to open up its software in the form of SDKs and APIs. Cisco, Juniper, Extreme, 3Com and the open source routing initiatives are allowing developers to write to well defined router software interfaces. This is an important development as it provides a venue for increased innovation in networking. But Cisco has taken this activity to a higher level by offering Linux and Windows platforms within its Integrated Services Router (ISR) and Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) products, delivering on the network as a platform concept. We focus on the ISR-based solution today as I talk with Shashi Kiran, Senior Manager Network Systems for Cisco Systems. We discuss this new trend in IT which takes integrated networking to the next level by integrating computing and applications in to the network fabric offering business and IT leaders a new approach to branch office value creation with the Application eXtension Platform. If you’re designing new applications for, or optimizing branch office operations then you need to listen to this podcast.

We all have multiple workspaces where we deliver value to our corporations. Workspaces span from your office to your home and every place in-between. The devices we use may be desktop and laptop computers, fixed, mobile and soft phones. The bottom line is that our communications conveniences that being directory, presence, messaging, call logs, click-to-call, click-to-conference, etc should be extended across all these workspaces. The question we ask in this podcast is can a workspace ready network be implemented with different network and communications suppliers or are their compelling attributes to build workspace ready network with a single vendor? Sanket Amberkar, Manager Solutions Marketing of Network Systems & Security for Cisco Systems is my guest as we discuss workspace ready networks and how they increase corporate value while simultaneously reducing IT operational cost. If you’re planning a UC deployment then you need to listen to this podcast.

aCerno is a company that serves online ads at sub-millisecond speeds. It uses anonymous shopping data from a group of over 450 multichannel retailers to predict which products of more than 140 million online consumers will be likely to purchase. aCerno reaches nearly all online shoppers and processes over a couple billion queries per day. From the time of the query to the time an ad is served has to be 150 milliseconds or less. Foundry Networks' equipment makes that possible. Wayne Earl, Director of Network Operations at aCerno is my guest as we explore aCerno's IT infrastructure that allows it to deliver a fantastic service to its customers with very strict time constraints. If you're looking to increase application performance then you need to listen to this podcast.

It’s a fact that the global economy has slowed prompting contact center managers and IT leaders to explore strategies for maintaining efficiency and meeting revenue targets with fewer resources and constrained budgets. But within a contact center environment, there are many opportunities, sometime hidden, to actually maximize efficiency and still control and possibly reduce costs. With an expert, holistic examination of operations and identification of areas of improvement, management can be proactive in identifying and implementing strategies that not only help their businesses navigate through a potential economic downturn, but accomplish business results that remain beneficial after the economy recovers. Eddie Jenkins, Vice President, Customer Service Practice for the Professional Services business at Avaya joins me to discuss leveraging contact centers for strategic corporate value, which means increasing revenues, corporate productivity and gaining market share during down markets. This is a very timely podcast chocked full of great ideas to be successful in a down market.

With the slow down in the global economy we ask the question; how is this business cycle impacting IT and communications? During down markets cost reduction initiatives are obviously important, but so too is service creation as corporations respond and react to new market realities. One major difference in this down cycle from others is the fact that many firms are in the middle of a communications infrastructure upgrade cycle. Traditional TDM PBXs are reaching the end of their economic and reliability lifecycles. Most enterprises are either in the middle of or have migration plans to move to IP telephony platforms, implementation of Unified Communication applications, and the upgrading of Call Centers to Contact Centers. Given the state of this communications technology migration, IT organizations will find it even more difficult to manage the inevitable downturn in spending and tightening of resources to accomplish their missions. Ajay Kapoor, Director of Consulting and Systems Integration for Enterprise Communications for Avaya is my guest as we offer several actions that IT leaders can take immediately that help IT increase efficiency while reducing costs within 12 months. This is a great IT management podcast that business and IT leaders will find valuable and timely.

According to industry sources “The average corporation under budgets PCI (Payment Card Industry Compliance) by 40%. Any company, mom and pop shops to fortune 50 corporation that processes credit card information need to be PCI compliant. Penalties for non-compliance are severe and are enforced by the banks such as Visa, MasterCard, American Express and others through fees plus increases in transaction cost. For the mid market, a doubling of the transaction fee charge will have a much larger impact on its cost to productivity. Terry Quinn-Andry, Compliance Solutions Manager for Cisco Systems joins me to discuss PCI requirements for mid market corporation. We’ll explain PCI benefits, exposure of non-compliance and how to avoid penalties. If you’re responsible for PCI compliance, then you need to listen to this podcast

Data centers are the largest single IT investment CIOs and business leaders appropriate. Data center networking is leading edge by default and where high-speed links and new approaches are first deployed. While data centers are consolidating and becoming increasingly virtualized, networking requirements are fundamentally changing. High performance end-of-row and top-of-rack network switches are uniquely positioned to increase network throughput and reduce operational spend. I talk with Doug Murray VP/GM of Extreme Networks about new data center design options thanks to its Summit X650 high end Ethernet switch. If you’re designing a data center network, then you need to listen to this podcast

The conventional wisdom in IT threat mitigation is to build a layered defense with security technology such as firewalls, IPS, network access control, anti-x client software, alarm aggregation and event correlation, etc. Conventional wisdom is starting to shift toward a systems approach to protecting IT assets. The layered approach was built upon deploying best of breed products, which were best of breed only until other products emerged and relegated them to either standalone appliances and/or loosely coupled silos such as the linking between IPS and firewalls. The systems approach builds upon IT security investment by wrapping it with System Management for policy, reputation and identity that transcending endpoints, networks, content and application security. Fred Kost, Cisco’s Director Security Marketing is my guest as we explain the new IT security model and provide IT leaders with guidance on building a more secure IT infrastructure. To understand the systems approach to IT security then listens to this podcast:

Scott Lucas, Senior Director of Solutions Marketing for Extreme Networks is my guest as we discuss Extreme Networks major product portfolio expansion and the launch of its widget central. Extreme launched its new Summit X350 fixed configuration switch for network edge applications plus 802.11n access points and controllers. A new version of ExtremeXOS with enhanced automation capabilities to help IT leaders reduce operational spend is now available too. Extending the usefulness of its flagship BlackDiamond 8800, it launched the C Series of core switch interface and management blades for increased scalability and density of 1GbE and 10GbE ports plus PoE support. Extreme has created an ecosystem around the development of application Widgets by exposing features and providing software developers access to its ExtremeXOS. This ecosystem is called Widget Central. I talk with Scott about the new design options and widgets available to network architects afforded by this launch.

TCO or total cost of ownership is always a difficult metric to measure. So many business and IT leaders focus on purchase price or product acquisition without giving full attention to operational and facilities cost, which dominate network TCO. Conventional wisdom is that for LAN and WLAN switching acquisition cost represents between 20 to 25% of TCO with operational and facilities spend represents between 75 to 80% over a 3-year period. So the question is what can IT leaders do to optimize TCO and bring balance to network acquisition and operations. Scott Lucas, Senior Director of Solutions Marketing for Extreme Networks is my guest as we discuss best practices to balance TCO.

Marcus Bost, Chief Information Officer, Adena Health System is my guest as we discuss how Adena is using IP Video to provide neonatal care to its patients in southern Ohio linked to the largest US Neonatology center at Nationwide Children’s Hospital 70 miles away. Adena pediatricians are now able to collaborate with Nationwide Children’s neonatology experts in full high definition real time IP video to assess and diagnose infants, review CT scans, X-rays and consult with Adena pediatricians on treatment plans. Mr. Bost discusses the above project from both a human condition improvement and economic perspective. We end the talk with a discussion on network readiness and future IP video plans at Adena Health System. If you’re developing an IP Video plan then you need to listen to this podcast.

Many IT leaders have build private application delivery networks while outsourcing content delivery network needs to improve the performance of video, music downloads, and rich media. These two separate networks are now converging into one physical but logically separate networks with unique attributes for the traffic, which flows through them. Two experts in the field from Internap; Phil Kaplan Chief Strategy Officer and Tim Sullivan Chief Technology Officer join me to discuss how these two network clouds are beginning to drift together and what this will mean to IT operations and business. Internap’s approach to service delivery is software based and relies upon backbone router vendors such as Foundry Network’s NetIron XMR and its ServerIron to deliver the services it offers. If you have built an application delivery network and outsource content delivery to a service provider then you need to listen to this podcast.

IP video is being massively consumed in the consumer and corporate markets. In 2007 IP video exceeded the total sum of 2000 internet traffic which was nearly 25 Petabytes/month while IDC estimates that corporate video traffic will more then double in the next two years with greater then half of all corporations currently using some form of IP video. IP video is either deployed from the bottom up or top down. Click-to-conference plus enterprise based Web 2.0 social networking and collaboration initiatives are deployed from the bottom up while video surveillance, digital signage, TelePresence, and one-to-many for training and executive-to-employee briefings broadcast are top down. In short, business and IT leaders will not have total control over IP video deployments and are advised to prepare your networks for IP video. Kumar Srikantan Senior Director of Cisco’s Campus Switching Systems Technology Group joins me to discuss best practices to guide IT leaders to prepare their networks in support of IP video services. If your corporation is using IP video, then you need to listen to this podcast.

With every IT paradigm transition comes not only increased bandwidth requirements, but an increased reliance on network services such as security, remote VPN access, QoS, and application classification to support a wide variety of corporate applications. Also new WAN services such as Metro Ethernet and 3G wireless are redefining WAN design. Between these demanding new applications and WAN options, lies the aggregation router, which has been primarily a narrowband device connecting sites via Frame Relay and MPLS, and thus has presented a bottleneck to new real-time collaboration technologies. This is all about to change, because a new era of WAN design has emerged. New router platforms are rare as their life-cycle is usually greater then a decade. So when one is announced it’s the beginning of a long industry cycle and when it’s Cisco who’s making the announcement you know that it’s an industry-changing event. Cisco has announced its Aggregation Services Router, or ASR, 1000 Series, which is focused on the high-end enterprise WAN and service provider edges. The ASR value proposition is rooted in a reduction of appliance hardware, lower WAN cost through aggregation and lower operational spend thanks to management break-throughs. Marie Hattar, Senior Director of Network Systems and Security solutions marketing at Cisco Systems is my guest as we dive into the ASR and new WAN design options it enables. To get the cost out and performance into your WAN, listen to this podcast

The Kent School District is the fourth largest school district in the state of Washington comprised of four high schools, six middle schools, 28 elementary schools and two academies with nearly 27,000 students and 3200 employees. Kent’s IT staff were challenged to support a doubling of networked computers, new IT service requirements including virtualized desktops, smart boards, video surveillance and unified communications all while keeping their operational budget constant. Kent under went a district-wide network refresh, where the IT team sought to replace the current edge network that included products from ProCurve Networking by HP and 3Com for Cisco. I talk with Thuan Nguyen, Director of IT at Kent School District about his options, decisions and results. It’s a fascinating case of what can be done in IT today.

802.11n offers impressive improvements in rate, range, and price/ performance thanks to significantly higher processing and power consumption than older WLAN Access Points (APs). A key question in the decision to deploy 802.11n APs is whether there is enough power delivered over 802.3af Power over Ethernet (PoE) switch ports or compliant power injectors to run these APs as 802.11n’s increased bandwidth and processing may require more then the 12.95 Watts provided in 802.3af switch ports. I interview Craig Mathias, a Principal at Farpoint Group and author of the recent report “802.11n Access Points and Power over Ethernet: Key Considerations� and Luc Roy VP of Enterprise Mobility at Siemens Enterprise Communications which is shipping an 802.11n AP that operates with 802.3af PoE. Craig tested the Siemens AP3620 802.11n APs and shares its results. If you’re planning on deploying 802.11n then you need to listen to this podcast.

Wiring closet switches are undergoing a renaissance of sorts. Once thought of as simple network connectivity devices, they are now central to network security, mobility, PoE distribution, IP phone and UC connection devices etc. Wiring closet switches are pervasive as they connect all end points into an enterprise network distributing network services throughout a corporation. TCO of these switches breakdown as 20/80% capital/operational spend resulting in switch design, network management plus reliability and serviceability features possessing a demonstrable effect toward lowering TCO. I talk with Ish Limkakeng Senior Director of Marketing for the Desktop Switching unit at Cisco Systems about wiring closet switches and the new basis of competition and buying criteria that has emerged.

Retail business executives are measured on customer experience, revenue and productivity. Retail IT executives are expected to lower TCO while being integral to addressing the most pressing retail issues; that being customer brand loyalty and creating an environment which delivers an excellent experience. The communications industry is driving new value in retail stores with what I call Retail Store 2.0 (RS 2.0). RS 2.0 addresses retail executive concerns including creating brand loyalty, delivering good to excellent service, lowing TCO, simplifying communications, and delivering improved visibility, security and control of communications. Bruce Mazza, Director of Branch Solutions and Leslie Levy, Senior Manager of Retail Solutions both from Avaya discuss value creation in retail and multi-site environments through Intelligent Store Architecture. If you’re seeking to deliver a better retail store experience and drive revenue up then you have to listen to this podcast.

Customers demand personalized and relevant brand interaction at every touch point be it on the web, call centers, online and particularly in-branch. The brand experience must flow consistently across these channels. Smart multi-channel retailers – especially those with traditional branch marketers like department stores, home improvement, retail banking services - even branch-delivered healthcare are realizing the value creation possible by investing in communications innovation of their core brick and mortar investments. This alignment of the customer experience across channels ensures consistently good customer interaction, increased productivity and ultimately - brand loyalty and increased revenues. Avaya’s Craig Wilson, Principle Business Communications consultant and Bruce Mazza, Intelligent Branch Solutions Manager join me to discuss discuss value creation within Branch Offices though intelligent communication solutions.

This is the year of the Branch Office. Business and IT leaders are re-distributing corporate assets and allocating significant investments in data center and branch office assets. There is strong business, economic, demographic and technical drivers’ shaping this trend. The IT industry has responded by offering many new network design options to business and IT leaders who seek to add value to their branch offices. In this podcast I discuss this global trend with Inbar Lasser-Raab Senior Director of Marketing for Enterprise Routing and Switching at Cisco as we dive into the details of Cisco’s latest branch office innovations. If adding value to your branch offices is a corporate initiative, then you need to listen to this podcast

Many business thought leaders in financial services and retail are exploring how best to leverage their branch assets to up and cross sell customers while improving the branch office experience. These thought leaders are collectively thinking in terms of Intelligent Branch solutons, which from a real estate and staffing point of view is a smaller footprint but rich in IT. Bruce Mazza, Director of Branch Solutions and Tony Kleckner Practice Leader for Financial Services both of Avaya join me to discuss what I call Branch 2.0 and how it addresses and solves the main concerns of retail and banking executives.

Kim Niederman, CEO at Anagran, a developer of intelligent flow-based products for next generation networks joins the Lippis Report podcast. Network traffic such as P2P, IP video and VoIP traffic is increasing exponentially creating congestion and poor application performance. Flow management is a congestion management/avoidance scheme that groups’ different traffic classes by flows to assure application performance. In this podcast we discuss Anagran and its value proposition.

On Jan 28th Cisco announced its Nexus data center high performance switch while the day after Juniper announced its long awaited arrival into the LAN switching market with its EX-Series of Ethernet switches internally called Hurricane. Zeus Kerravala, of The Yankee Group and I analyze Juniper’s LAN switches and Cisco’s new Nexus 7000 data center switch. It’s a 20 minute podcast, but its worth the time. Enjoy Nick

Energy used by the nation’s servers and data centers is about 61 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2006, costing about $4.5 billion. This consumption is up by a factor of 2 since the year 2000 and is projected to double again by 2011 unless efficiencies are implemented. Bill Ryan, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Foundry Networks joins me to discuss best practices in Green Data Center Networking that can result in network power consumption efficiencies in the 80-to-90% range. If you’re looking to build a Green data center, then you need to listen to this podcast

2007 was the year that enterprise communication vendors restructured with Avaya going private, Shortel going public, Microsoft and Nortel joining forces, Siemens Communications being spun off from Siemens AG, while InterTel and Mitel merged. 2008 is the year of Unified Communications (UC).  I asked Grace Tiscareno-Sato, Senior Global Marketing Manager for UC at Siemens Communications to join the program to provide a view of what’s ahead from the enterprise communication supplier perspective.  Grace lays out her top 8 UC events to watch for in 2008.
 
Download the "Measuring the Pain: What is Fragmented Communication Costing Your Enterprise?" white paper discussed in this podcast here

Selina Lo the CEO of Ruckus Wireless joins me to discuss the emerging mid-tier enterprise WLAN market that Ruckus Wireless finds itself in the envious position of being alone within. Ruckus Wireless is the expert on RF and antennas for high performance and stable WLANs. Radio communications are subject to unpredictable behavior due to environmental dependencies and various flavors of interference. Yet it’s possible to effectively mitigate many of these impairments through continuous intelligent selection of system operating parameters and a sufficiently agile antenna system. WLAN reliability has plagued enterprise WLAN deployments since their inception. Ruckus has invested into engineering solutions to these problems developed over the past three years supplying service providers with over 1 million WLAN solutions for IPTV services around the world. Their intellectual property and mid-tier market requirements could not be more aligned. If you are in the hospitality, retail, education or just a mid-tier enterprise company that needs a stable and easy to deploy WLAN solution, then you need to listen to this podcast.

Jeff Kaplan, Managing Director of THINKstrategies, and founder of the Managed Service Showplace® www.thinkmsp.com and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Showplace® www.thinksaas.com joins the Lippis Report podcast to discuss Managed Services. The general trend is that Managed Service providers are adding IP communication into their service portfolio to differentiate and grow. We discuss MS 3.0 and in particular Cisco’s managed services 3.0 initiative.

Jeff Kaplan, Managing Director of THINKstrategies, and founder of the Managed Service Showplace® www.thinkmsp.com and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Showplace® www.thinksaas.com, joins me to discuss how communications is being added to Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings and in particular how Cisco may use SaaS as part of its unified communications strategy. Cisco offers unified communications, WebEx and arguably the best video conferencing systems on the market, that being its Telepresence system. Will Cisco integrate these services or let customers pick and choose which communication services they want? Jeff and I explore what impact SaaS may have on Cisco’s unified software strategy.

Zeus Kerravala, SVP, of The Yankee Group joins me to discuss important 2007 industry developments, what 2008 will bring and what the industry may look like 2012. Zeus and I compare notes and debate the future of our industry. It longer then our typical podcast, 27 minutes, so enjoy and relax while you listen to it in the car, on a bike, walking the dog or during a coffee break. It’s a great way to start off your year. Happy Holidays Everyone!!

The new trend in application delivery switches is an expansion beyond load balancing toward specific application support of firms like Oracle, BEA, SAP, Microsoft et al. With enterprise spending on application acceleration equipment expected to reach $3.7 billion by the end of 2008, we identify the five issues IT leaders need to consider before they procure and deploy these switches in their data centers and server farms. I discuss this with Gary Hemminger, Director of Product Marketing for Application Delivery Products at Foundry Networks. No matter where you are on the buying cycle, you need to listen to this podcast before you act.

Bill Kish, Chief Technical Officer of Ruckus Wireless, talks with Nick Lippis about enterprise Wireless LANs and the new 802.11n standard. With the increase in bandwidth, spectrum and power of 802.11n many IT leaders are now starting to think through how to incorporate 802.11n into their network architecture. Backbone link speeds, access point and WLAN controller placement, security, power over Ethernet, wireless bandwidth and spectrum power are all factors which plug into the calculus of next generation WLAN deployments. Bill Kish is uniquely qualified to talk on 802.11n as he is an active participant on IEEE project 802.11, the organization creating the standard. He is also a co-founder of Ruckus Wireless, and their CTO. Bill offers a vision for how the industry will progress that I buy into. Here’s a hint, think of 802.11n as a platform not just a product.

Charles Kolodgy Research Director, Security Products for IDC and Jim Doherty Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President for CipherOptics join the Lippis Report Podcast to discuss network defenses and threat mitigation strategies that are effective in protecting IT assets. Charles Kolodgy believes that “protecting the network� has reached a point of diminished returns. He believes that the biggest vulnerability that exists in most of today’s networks is “protecting data�. Charles acknowledges that there are two aspects of data protection: “data at rest� and “data in motion�. While many companies are currently engaged in projects that provide protection for “data at rest�, most are neglecting the “data in motion� aspect of protection altogether. I talk with Charles and Jim about this and all agree that its time pervasively encrypt data in motion. Find out why by listening to this podcast

Ben Goldman, Director, Network Systems and Tere Bracco, Senior Manager, Network Systems both from Cisco Systems join the Lippis Report Podcast to discuss its Campus Communications Fabric 2 announcement. This is one of the most significant network infrastructure announcements from Cisco in recent years which launches two significant new products. The first is the Catalyst 6500 Virtual Switching System 1440, bringing simplified operations and improved network availability and utilization to the Catalyst 6500 through network system virtualization. The second is a technology extension of the Catalyst 4500, an extended line of modular switches called the Catalyst 4500-E Series, delivering greater performance and service flexibility. No company knows network infrastructure like Cisco Systems or listens to customers like Cisco does. While Cisco competitors try to leap frog technology to gain an edge, Cisco delivers solutions that are based upon customer demand and feedback and extend the investment they already made. The result is innovation on top of next generation technology. If you have a dual backbone network or are in the market for modular switching, you have to listen to this podcast.

Evan Jafa, Chief Technical Officer of The First American Corporation is a thought leader and visionary. He joins the Lippis Report podcast to talk about virtualization and the value it brings to First American’s operations. Network virtualization represents a new IT paradigm, which challenges existing assumptions and IT deployment models. Evan shares his thoughts, experiences and network virtualization strategies for First American. With a long-term goal of a dynamic and flexible First American IT infrastructure, which ramps applications up and down based upon demand, Evan discusses pragmatic steps, which are bringing First American toward this goal. If you have a network virtualization project in progress or are just planning one, then you have to listen to this podcast.

Richard Wood, Global Vice President of Portfolio Marketing, and Shayna Kaneshiro, Global Product Marketing Manager, both from Siemens Communications, join the Lippis Report Podcast to discuss Siemens’ unified communication solution for Small-to-Medium sized Businesses or SMB called HiPath OpenOffice ME. The OpenOffice ME appliance integrates messaging, mobility, presence plus voice communications and conferencing into one box, simplifying the deployment of these rich services to a market with little IT support allowing SMBs to be more productive and responsive to their customers. I was impressed with OpenOffice ME’s integration with outlook and its visual voicemail and I’m sure you will too.

Inbar Lasser-Raab Director of Marketing for Network Systems at Cisco joins me to discuss the recently announced Empowered Branch 3. The Wall Street Journal noted correctly that Cisco is providing branch offices with the same level of networking services as headquarter offices with its large Empowered Branch 3 announcement. Cisco introduced new Catalyst 2960 switches with LAN Lite IOS plus the new Cisco 1861 Integrated Services Router or ISR for small branch offices and a flurry of additions to its flagship 2800, and 3800 ISRs. With the integration of IPS/NAC security, application intelligence, unified communications, and mobility into its branch office routers; netops is simplified while design choices are expanded. Inbar and I discuss the new network design options available to network architects afforded by the latest empowered branch announcement.

Zeus Kerravala, of The Yankee Group and I discuss the Oct 16 Microsoft unified communications event in San Francisco where Office Communication Server and client as well as a host of other editions to existing products were announced. We debate the impact upon the communications and IT industry due to the event and ponder the question of what happen to the Mircosoft-Nortel ICA relationship. For sure the event was an ecosystem announcement and one that put the industry on notice that there is a new way to do communications. In short we are at the early stages of a systemic and worldwide shift in communications that promises simplicity in the use of multiple modalities of communications through software and in particular presence and identify. We define the new battle lines. You have to listen to this.

On October 16, 2007 Bill Gates will make his last product announcement with Microsoft’s Office Communications Server (OCS). This event will change the communications industry accelerating its shift toward software economics and professional services. Siemens has been a long term Microsoft partner specifically around its OpenScape software. Siemens is the largest enterprise Microsoft customer in the world too granting it a unique position with the software giant. Siemens Communications has focused its investments on open communications software and professional services to address new market needs. It has strong unified communication relationships with IBM Lotus Sametime and Microsoft’s OCS. Mark Straton, Senior Vice President of Product Marketing at Siemens Communications talks with me about OCS and the Siemens-Microsoft relationship. You’ll be just as surprised as I was to hear what Mark has to say.

Risk Management techniques to increase network availability has become an important topic as Risk Management Executives have become engaged in network design. This thoughtful analysis is available in both white paper and podcast media. The white paper, can be found here http://lippisreport.com/2007/09/24/risk-management-techniques-to-increase-network-availability. The white paper abstract follows. The white paper provides risk management techniques to increase network availability and reduce network outages. The paper explores the tools and techniques available to business and IT leaders who seek to increase network availability through management, device feature exploitation and network design. The mixed network vendor approach to diversity and redundancy is explored and brought into question. The paper takes the position that a common network based upon mixed network supplier platforms paradoxically reduces network availability by increasing complexity, which increases Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) and operational cost. The paper further identifies that a mixed network vendor environment restricts design options, increases security vulnerabilities and limits the ability to optimize application performance. A single network platform supplier is recommended for mission critical operations as this approach reduces complexity, increases design options, and simplifies trouble isolation, hastening resolution while optimizing operational resources.

Zeus Kerravala, SVP of The Yankee Group Enterprise Research joins Nick Lippis to discuss Microsofts pending Oct 16th announcement of Office Communications Server or OCS. This will be an event that will change the communications industry accelerating its shift to an industry driven by software economics and professional services. Zeus and I pontificate on the impact OCS will have on the communications industry. Our apologies that the quality of the recording is below our standards, but the content is outstanding. Enjoy

Ajay Kapoor, Director Enterprise Communications in the Consulting and Systems Integration group for Avaya joins the Lippis Report podcast to discuss unified communications operations. Along with UC vendor selection are elements of integration and on-going solution management. Selecting a communications partner who has proven expertise and capabilities to take a holistic view of your business needs and work along side you to ensure optimal solution success will result in a competitive advantage. The key is to not just design a perfect symphony but to make sure that all of the pieces in the orchestra are playing seamlessly together and harmonizing to meet the required result.

Zeus Kerravala, SVP of The Yankee Group’s Enterprise Research joins the Lippis Report podcast to discuss Juniper Networks and their enterprise initiative project; code named Hurricane. Juniper approaches the enterprise market tactically, entering market niches where they can add value. Not a bad approach, but a collection of niches does not sum up to be a serious enterprise provider. It seems that Juniper recognizes that it needs a complete enterprise product portfolio and seeks to jump in at the high end of the market by providing high density Gigabit and 10 Gigabit LAN products scalable to 100 Gigabit when standardized, based upon a new set of custom designed silicon, code named Hurricane. Zeus and I tell you want we know about Hurricane and provide a forecast as to its strength and the potential damage it will do to competitors. In short is Hurricane a category 5 storm or when it hits the market will it degrade to a tropical depression.

With wireless networking being more secure then wired, IT leaders have been able to deliver solutions to meet a global mobility need; and there are multiple mobility need drivers. For starters business process knows no time zones, thanks to corporations seeking competitive advantage by creating global virtual teams and personalizing customer experiences. A new generation of workers demand mobility solutions in their work environment and personal lives. Unifying wired and wireless networks also delivers business continuity attributes. And as on-line communications reduces face-to-face meetings, travel and real estate requirements, unified networks contributes to a lower carbon foot print and a Green friendly work environment. For CIOs and CFOs unified networking is smart business too as it enables cost reduction through network and service integration. Chris Kozup Senior Manager Mobility Solutions Marketing for Cisco Systems is my guest as we discuss strategies for unifying wired and wireless networking. Enjoy, Nick

There is an industry trend to integrate unified networks and unified communications to improve reach and business responsiveness. Industry insiders describe the extending of IP telephony features to mobile end points such as cellphones, PDAs and smart phones with the term fixed mobile convergence. The level of integration associated with fixed mobile convergence is usually limited to providing the user a single v-mail box and ringing either their mobile or desktop phone when an inbound call is placed. The linking of unified networking and unified communications offers a richer set of business experiences such as collaboration, calendar synching, data application access and much more. This experience is called Seamless Mobile Collaboration. Lynn Lucas, Director of Mobility Solutions for Cisco Systems joins me to discuss how mobility plus unified networks and communications are evolving to deliver business value. Enjoy, Nick

I invited Jim Cairns, VP of Marketing and Business Development for Spanlink Communications to talk about unified communications in a Cisco IP telephony environment. Spanlink was just designated by Cisco with their Master Unified Communications Specialization which recognizes an elite group of Cisco channel partners who have the most in-depth technology skills built on a track record of customer success in selling, deploying and supporting sophisticated Cisco Unified Communication solutions. Clearly Spanlink sees a lot of Cisco UC deployments and since we don't hear much about custom or complete business solutions built on Cisco UC, I wanted to find out what Spanlink customers are building. You will be surprised by what you hear, like I was. Enjoy Nick

According to the International Crime Complaint Center or IC3 the number of cyber crime complaints has skyrocketed from a little over 6,000 in 2000 to over 1 million as of June of 2007 with a total dollar loss from these crimes, which are usually fraud, estimated at $647 million. Many of the complaints involve reports of identity theft, such as loss of personal identifying data, unauthorized use of credit cards or bank accounts, etc. The threat for corporations is that cyber crime not only steels its intellectual property and customer data, but its reputation and trust relationship with customers which have a much large material impact then the initial crime. I talk with Jim Doherty Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President for CipherOptics about strategies to defend against cyber crime. This issue is too important not to listen to. Enjoy, Nick

Zeus Kerravala, Yankee Group SVP and I review the enterprise IP telephony market and discuss the latest industry changes including the ShoreTel IPO, Inter-Tel & Mitel merger, Avaya going private, Nortels implosion, Siemens reasserting, Microsofts overhang and Ciscos strong position. It is becoming very clear that the enterprise IP telephony business model is in play as it shifts to a software and services industry forcing consolidation and attrition. We get to the heart of the matter and provide the insight you expect from a Lippis Report podcast. We squeezed a little time in for Cisco’s major Data Center 3.0 announcement too. The audio quality is not as good as we normally deliver, but the content is great!! Enjoy.

Unified Communications or (UC) deployment is well underway. With the IP telephony, telecommunications and application industries focused on taking their share of the emerging $35B to $40B annual UC market it is inevitable that UC will soon be a fact of corporate life. So the question is: are you ready? Is your infrastructure secure enough to support UC? What specific vulnerabilities need to be mitigated within a UC infrastructure? Is NAC and NAP enough or do you need more? To answer these questions I am joined by Scott Lucas Senior director of solutions marketing of Extreme Networks, Shrikant Latkar Director of Enterprise Architecture at Juniper Networks and Kamal Anand VP Marketing and Corporate Strategy of Meru Networks. It is a jam packed podcast that will help you keep UC flowing. Enjoy, Nick

Zeus Kerravala of the Yankee Group joins me to discuss Avayas announcement to enter into a definitive merger agreement with Silver Lake and TPG Capital for approximately $8.2 billion. Avayas acquisition by a private equity company is the largest in the enterprise networking and communications space. What will it mean to customers, partners, employees and shareholders? Also how is the industry changing now that Avaya will no longer be a public company? Get two of the top industry analyst view on the topic by listening to this Lippis Report Podcast.

Nick Lippis, President of Lippis Enterprises, delivers the alumni commencement speech to the Boston University College of Engineering 2007 graduating class on May 20th. Mr. Lippis predicts that engineering resources and talents are shifting from enhancing the human experience to improving the human condition. As engineers invest their careers in biotechnology, nanotechnology, green energy sources and terrorist defense this generation of engineers are presented with an unprecedented opportunity to improve the human condition by extending healthy life spans in a clean environment while in the process changing the world.

Zeus Kerravala, Yankee Group SVP and I look around the industry and compare notes. We express concerns over the lack of progress that Microsoft/Nortel ICA has made. We touch on Cisco, Avaya, Siemens, ProCurve, Foundry and Force 10. Who�s doing well and who�s falling apart. Listen in to find out.

David Butler, Director of Business Solutions and Partners in Emerging Technologies for Avaya and Julien Courbe, Managing Director of Financial Services Technology for BearingPoint join the Lippis Report podcast to discuss the emerging communications enabled business processes or CEBP market. CEBP promises to deliver a new kind of agile and competitive organization that can respond to business events quickly, satisfy customers more deeply and in the process create competitive barriers of entry. But how will CEBP be brought to market? Is CEBP customized for every corporation or will there be packaged or partially pre-defined and integrated solutions?

Lynn Lucas, Director of Mobility Solutions for Cisco Systems joins the Lippis Report podcast to discuss a strategy to unify enterprise mobility. Wireless LAN architecture choices have shifted from thick to thin, to integrated vs overlay and now from a unified approach to wireless LANs to a unified approach to enterprise mobility. A discussion of mobility usually stirs up a range of topics including cell phones, PDAs, G3, VoWLAN, WLANs, RFIDs, cellphone-unified Communications links etc. Mobility is primarily about the experience of gaining access to corporate applications and services anywhere, which transcends all of these technologies. But we need a way to think about how all these technologies come together. We need a Mobility architecture for Enterprise Networks. Listen to this podcast and gain a unified approach to enterprise mobility.

Wenceslao Lada, VP & Americas GM and Andre Kindness, both from ProCurve Networking by HP join the Lippis Report podcast to announce major product and organizational additions to their ProActive Defense strategy. ProActive defense claims to deliver a trusted network infrastructure that is immune to threats, controllable for appropriate use and able to protect data and integrity for users. ProCurve with their number two position in enterprise networking will change the NAC market with this launch. I give my take during the interview. Listen in as the internal network security market just changed.

Wenceslao Lada, VP & Americas GM and Andre Kindness, both from ProCurve Networking by HP join the Lippis Report podcast to announce major product and organizational additions to their ProActive Defense strategy. ProActive defense claims to deliver a trusted network infrastructure that is immune to threats, controllable for appropriate use and able to protect data and integrity for users. This podcast dives into the technical aspects of the ProCurve announcement. We address NAC, NAP, supplicants and more. Listen in as the internal network security market just changed.

Inbar Lasser-Raab Cisco's Director of Marketing for Enterprise Routing joins the Lippis Report podcast to discuss strategies to extend your networked business platform to branch offices. The economy has forced businesses to be closer to customers, prompting leaders to shift resources into branch offices. Branch office employees demand the same level of IT services as headquarter offices. Branch offices are spread out over large geographic distances driving up wide area network and operational cost; challenging IT solutions with low bandwidth and spotty support.  But there are winning strategies that eliminate these traditional trade-offs. Hear about them by downloading this podcast.

IPS, SIMs and NBAD devices will evolve into a post-NAC monitoring function. Their days as single function devices are over. NAC is an architecture and approach to internal thread defense and not a fancy way to authenticate a user and their end point. NAC will subsume IPS, SIM and NBAD functionality into an overall IT security architecture. I explain my thinking in this Lippis Report podcast.

We’ve received a lot of e-mail request that the Lippis Report newsletter analysis, the part that I write be available as a podcast. So we’ll try it with Lippis Report Issue 78: The Chief Communications Officer and please give us your feedback on the lippis.com site. I wrote this piece because I’m convinced that the there will be a need for a new position within IT executive management to deal with all the changes that are occurring in networks and communications. I’ve been writing about the network as a business platform which means that networking is evolving from a connectivity service to a service of services which is callable from a WebServices based programming language. Also Communications is undergoing a revolutionary change with unified communications and comm.-enablement. All of this change means that IT executive management needs to focus on it to extract the most value for their corporation. Without any future ado, here is Lippis Report Issue 78: The Chief Communications Officer

Zack Taylor, Avaya Vice President of Global Strategic Solutions, joins the Lippis Report Podcast to discuss how corporations can lower the cost of raising the customer experience through virtualized contact centers. Contact centers are being virtualized to expand an agents pool of knowledge workers that can service customers and quickly resolve issues thus improving the overall customer experience with the firm. How does an organization implement a virtualized contact center? What are the impacts of standards such as SIP, Web Services & SOA on customer service? How can a virtualized contact center enable enterprises to reach beyond the traditional contact center environment to bring more business assets and value into supporting customers? In short how does a corporation create a customer facing organization to deliver competitive advantage through improved customer experience? Zack and I discuss these issues and opportunities, site several customer examples who have deployed this model and explore how Avayas IP contact center enable enterprises to differentiate themselves from competitors and enable them to provide an improved customer experience. Enjoy, Nick

Denzil Samuels, VP & GM of Global Managed Services for Avaya joins the Lippis Report podcast to discuss managed communication applications. As contact centers move toward IP and unified communications plus communications-enabled business applications start to be implemented, many firms are seeking approaches to mitigate risk and manage total cost of ownership. Denzil and I discuss the expertise, tools, and knowledge to consult, design, build and manage a converged environment in a way that will deliver a competitive advantage for enterprises. We end the discussion by introducing Avaya�s services value chain approach. If you are experiencing gaps in the required skills to manage a converged network, then listen up. Enjoy Nick

I�m joined by Kumar Srikantan Senior Director of Cisco�s Internet Switching Business Unit to discuss systemic IT changes, which are driving new design principals for campus networking. IT departments are required to support real-time multimedia services, multi-directional traffic, seamless wired and wireless connectivity, virtualized resources, automated management etc. In this podcast Kumar and I discuss how these IT trends have forced campus networking to evolve beyond a connectivity service to a strategic business platform by delivering network services. One key attribute of new campus network design is the ability of the network to detect specific applications and alter its configuration to deliver the best performance and experience to users. Now that�s strategic. You need to listen to this podcast. Enjoy Nick.

Marie Hattar, Ciscos Senior Director, Network Systems Marketing joins the Lippis Report Podcast to explore issues of network architecture as the blue print and framework for the new networked business platform. The increased stature and value of networking within corporate IT is discussed as well as its attributes and business value. Lippis and Hattar propose that networking is the new business platform and provide guidance to IT executives on how best to leverage their networking investment for corporate advantage. Enjoy, Nick

Zeus Kerravala, SVP of The Yankee Group’s Enterprise Research joins Nick Lippis to discuss the Microsoft/Nortel ICA CEO event, RSA, VoiceCon and Interop. Zeus and I talk about the major industry events coming up and what they may and may not bring. Enjoy Nick

John McHugh, VP and GM of ProCurve Networking by HP joins the Lippis Report podcast to discuss the network business platform and ProCurves Adaptive Network Vision. Adaptive Networking is the ProCurve industry commitment to add value to users, applications and organizations through its networking products. In this podcast John and I discuss the value delivered though Adaptive Networking and ProCurves investments are targeted toward making networking address the rapid change of business. Enjoy, Nick

Zeus Kerravala, SVP of The Yankee Group’s Enterprise Research joins Nick Lippis to discuss and define the network as the new business platform.  Networking is evolving well beyond its initial role as a connectivity service as location, unified communications, network access control, network virtualization, mobility, application fluency etc are embedded into the network fabric and are “callableâ€? entities to application developers.  This increased value in networking that can be molded and shaped by IT developers to achieve corporate goals is the genesis of the new business platform.  Zeus and I define and discuss the importance of this new role for networking within IT and the boardroom.

Arnold Solomon, Information Technologies Architect for the Southern Company joins the Lippis Report podcast to discuss its SIP phones based IP telephony deployment. The Southern Company is the largest utility company in the Southeast US and among the top 3 in the US. They have more than 85 locations served by HiPath 4000s. The Southern Co corporate HQ, which opened in downtown Atlanta in Oct 2005, features a 4000 v2 serving 600 optiPoint 420 Advanced phone sets. All users, including corporate officers, are using IP phones. They have a large deployment of SIP terminal adapters serving electric substations in GA, all off two 4000 v3s. Also installed are more than 100 Hicom 300s, which along with the 4000s serve more than 90% of all Southern Co desktops. They just introduced SIP phones in to this environment and you will want to hear what Arnold has to say about the deployment. Enjoy, Nick

I am joined by Arnold Solomon, Information Technologies Architect for the Southern Company to explore the interest in open source IP telephony.  There is a growing interest in the opening up of IP telephony architecture through the open source approach.  Arnold attended and spoke at Astricon this year and he shares his views and opinions on open source IP telephony and how Southern Company is using it.  There are lots of new companies such as Star2Star, Trixbox, Fonality, Asterisk and we talk about them all.  Enjoy Nick

Protecting data in "motion" has become top of mind for most IT executives as they look to close network security vulnerabilities and protect communications.  Being able to meet regulatory compliance requirements is also driving encryption sales.  Encryption has come a long way as users would pay the encryption penalty of delaying traffic as data passed through encryption devices.  But thanks to faster ASCIS this penalty has been all but eliminated.  Ron Willis, CEO of CipherOptics joins the program to discuss the encryption market.  Enjoy, Nick

Al Baker, US Vice President Product and Service Management and Martin Northend, Director of Portfolio Marketing for Small and Medium enterprise, both from Siemens Communications joined me on the Lippis Report to discuss SIP phones.  Siemens just launched its OpenStage SIP phones which interoperate with BroadSoft and Cilantro Softswitches.  These SIP phones allow Service Providers to offer hosted IP services based upon their existing softswitch investments to the small to medium sized business market.  The phones are sleek with i-pod like control, mobile phone directory services, large screen size and XML development environment.  You can download the Siemens presentation here.  This is the first SIP phone offering that is not linked to an equipment supplier's SIP proxy allowing a degree of freedom we have not seen in the industry thus far.  Enjoy, Nick 

Nick Lippis, of the Lippis Report and Zeus Kerravala, Senior Vice President of The Yankee Group�s Enterprise Research join the Lippis Report podcast to discuss the state of Unified Communications.  This term has received a renaissance with many companies using it to describe their approach to IP telephony applications.  Kerravala and Lippis define unified communications, discuss the problems it solves and it associated benefits to both end user and corporate productivity.

Jorge Blanco, Avaya'�s Vice President of Solutions & Software Portfolio Management joined me on the Lippis Report podcast to discuss Avaya's Unified Communications (UC) portfolio.  Many companies are using the term Unified Communication to describe different things.  Some companies use UC to describe the integration of a desktop launch point for communications.  Some use UC to describe communications enabled business process.  Some use UC to describe both.  In this podcast we talk to the man at Avaya in charge of it all and get the scoop on how Avaya defines the term and what's included in their Unified Communications offering.  This is one of our best podcast with a fresh off the cuff discussion on UC.  So listen up.

Where is networking heading over the next three to five years?  Zeus Kerravala, SVP Enterprise Research at the Yankee Group joins me for an industry roundtable discussion on the direction our industry is heading.  Is Moore’s Law about to collide with Metcalfe's Law bringing new combinations of companies and restructuring the industry?  Will the industry continue to be dominated by one company or will we see a major roll-up occur.  Will computing and networking firms combine to tightly link networks and application delivery?  We provide you a framework for how the industry may progress over the next three to five years.  Enjoy, Nick

Don Reece the Director of Information Technology at Pembina Trails, a Public School Division in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada joins the Lippis Report podcast to discuss his newly installed unified communications implementation.  Pembina Trails has an enrollment of approximately 14,000.  They have a network of dark fiber backbone between sites running at a gigabit, Microsoft Active Directory and Exchange, Dell Ethernet Switches and a very old voice system.  It was time to upgrade the voice system, so they did it with Objectworld’s Unified Communications Server and saved over $200K while offering a state-of-the-art IP telephony system.  Don goes into all the details.  It’s a great listen.  Enjoy Nick.

I was invited to deliver the keynote and moderate the Wall Street Technology Associations (WSTA) Hot Technologies conference in early October.  I spoke on network security, IP telephony and hosted IP services offerings and provided an assessment on what's hot and what's not.  You can download my presentation and listen to the keynote here.  Enjoy, Nick

Zeus Kerravala of the Yankee Group joins me to discuss Riverbed�s successful IPO, the rumors that Juniper is up for sale, the dismal performance of Interop in NY and the future of conferences in our industry.  Riverbed is valued at 3 to 4 times that of Packeteer, Force 10 and Mitel are scheduled to IP in early �07 is the IPO market back for networking companies?  You bet, listen in to find out which networking companies will have a successful IPO in �07, who may buy Juniper and how the IT competitive landscape is changing.

Brendan Hannigan, Chief Operating Officer of Q1 Labs joins the podcast to discuss the state of the network security industry.  Access control, compliance, internal data theft and integrating security data from point products are security projects being funded by most enterprises.  Brendan and I review these projects and put forward a network security strategy for rapidly containing security incidents thanks to analytics which can process tens of thousands of alarms per second while searching for anomalous behavior, delivering remediation options to security ops. If you�re looking to bring order and greater control to your security ops by integrating management and monitoring of multiple point security products, then listen in and learn. 

In this fourth and final special edition “Lessons Learned� podcast, Mr. John Poole, President and CEO, and Mr. Mike Taylor, CTO, both of Strategic Products and Services, discuss their experience, both pro and con, about deploying VoIP networks for 1000s of companies. As one of the largest system integrators in the VoIP space John and Mike have seen it all and they offer up a wealth of lessons learned for any company at any life cycle point of a Mike Taylorconverged network. Issues such as WAN provisioning, PoE budget planning, the top five issues that negatively impact voice service quality and more are discussed. The first three podcasts in this series are available in the Lippis Report Download Library. This is a must listen podcast for corporations serious about implementing VoIP. Special thanks to Viola Networks for sponsoring the “Lessons Learned� series. Enjoy, Nick

In this part three special edition �¢ï¿½ï¿½Lessons Learned�¢ï¿½ï¿½ podcast, Dr. Ron Marquardt, Director Broadband Access Technologies at Covad discusses their experience, both pros and cons, about deploying a nationwide VoIP network. As the largest VoIP service provider for business, Covad had many challenges to overcome which many of their competitors are now just starting to experience.  Dr. Marquardt discusses how Covad took a life cycle approach to their VoIP deployment and are now offer three distinct and unique VoIP services.  The first two podcast to this series are available in the Lippis Report Download Library. This is a must listen podcast for corporation series about implementing service provider  VoIP. Special thanks to Viola Networks for sponsoring the �¢ï¿½ï¿½Lessons Learned�¢ï¿½ï¿½ series. Enjoy, Nick

To deliver high performance applications and increase user productivity, IT and network management groups would like to identify the source of application performance problems in real time.  But to be truly effective, the identification of problems needs to be in terms all parties can understand and act upon.  A view of all major applications flowing across a network being discovered in real time which multiple groups can use to collaborate and troubleshoot performance degradation issues is discussed with Scott Safe and Dave Trowbridge both of Network Physics.  Network Physics� recently released NetSensory 6.0 and its Business Reporter delivers on the above.  Listen and learn how.

In this Part Two special edition “Lessons Learnedâ€? podcast, Peter Palmisano, CIO and Jerry Weiner, Manager of Systems and Networks both of Camp Dresser & McKee continue to discuss their experience, both pros and cons, about deploying a multi-national converged network.  This is, by far, one of the best podcasts we have recorded, and is full of useful advice and insights from two leading IT executives.  They will tell you what to look out for and what works.  The huge questions raised are:  Is the IP telephony industry ready to support connected remote offices, a fully converged network, disaster plans and more?  You will hear it from executives that are living with it right now.  The first part of this interview is available in the Lippis Report Download Library.  This is a must listen podcast.  Special thanks to Viola Networks for sponsoring the â€?Lessons Learnedâ€? series.  Enjoy, Nick

 

In this part one special edition Lessons Learned podcast, Peter Palmisano, CIO and Jerry Weiner, Manager of Systems and Networks both of Camp Dresser & McKee discuss their experience, both pros and cons about deploying a multi-national converged network.  This is by far, one of the best podcasts we have recorded and is full of useful advice and insights from two leading IT executives.  They will tell you what to look out for and what works.  The huge questions raised are:  Is the IP telephony industry ready to support connected remote offices, a fully converged network, disaster plans and more?  You will hear it from executives that are living with it right now.  The second part of this interview will be distributed September 12^th.  This is a must listen podcast.  Special thanks to Viola Networks for sponsoring the lessons learned series.  Enjoy, Nick

Changes in communications are accelerating at a rate no other industry has experienced.  The transition from circuits to packets is well underway while the transition from packets to applications is starting now.    The communications applications are being tightly linked into business process in an effort to automate workflow to deliver greater productivity and profitably to the global economy.  In this podcast, I interview Tim Kraskey of Spanlink, a leading communications application firm.  We explore how business processes is changing and how to utilize IP telephony for real competitive gain?  There is one slide to download for this podcast.  It is a great listen, enjoy.

There are three major industry initiatives in play today addressing network security; Cisco’s NAC, Microsoft’s NAP and the Trusted Computing Group’s TNC.   The problem with all three is that they are not ready, complex, non-standard and very costly.  However the market is demanding network access control without the above baggage.  So a few smart people started companies to address this window of opportunity; Tom Barsi being one of them with his company ConSentry joins me to discuss a better way to control network access.

As security features and functions become deeply embedded within network and IT infrastructure the need to centralize alarms, events and overall security monitoring is becoming increasing important.  The ability to analyze millions of events sourced from wide range of network and security equipment, correlate them, identify anomalistic behavioral threats and propose remediation promises to improve defenses while reducing operational complexity and cost.  This is a big promise.  I went to Q1 Lab�s Tom Turner, VP of Marketing to discuss this new category of security monitoring device as they build one, called QRadar.  You�ll be impressed at what you hear.  Enjoy Nick.

In this Lippis Report podcast, I interview Barry O'Sullivan on Cisco's IP Telephony strategy and tactics.  We discuss Cisco's SIP strategy within its Call Manager 5.0, its newly released Unified Communications and its approach to communications application development.  You'll learn that Cisco's Unified Communications is not the integration of e-mail, v-mail and fax but a larger approach to providing portals to multiple communications and back-end applications.  You may be surprised to hear Cisco's opinion on Web Services/SOA.  It's a great listen, enjoy.

Zeus Kerravala and I discuss two large industry announcements.  First, we dive into Microsoft's new Unified Communications announcement which we believe will start the communication application wars between Microsoft and the IP telephony vendors such as Cisco, Avaya, Siemens, Nortel, et al.  Then we weigh in on the pros and cons of the Nokia Siemens Networks joint venture and what will happen with their enterprise businesses.  We check the mood of the market by reporting on the Cisco and Nortel user group conferences.  We spend 25 minutes covering these important topics.  Enjoy.

I explore the third phase of IP telephony, the strategic value phase, which combines business process modeling tools with SOA and communications to deliver the new application creation model.  This new communications-enabled application creation model is being used by service providers and developed by all the major IT software and some IP telephony vendors.  Lawrence Catchpole Chief Strategy Officer and Co-founder of M1 Global joins the program to explain the benefits of communications-enabled business process.

Eric Bear, Vice President Product Management & Global Business Development for Viola Networks joins the Lippis Report podcast where we explore "Service Level Management" to solve scaling and converged network performance issues. This is a must listen podcast if you want to avoid the problems most find when they scale up their IP telephony pilots to full deployments.  Sale issues associated with equipment configuration and converged network design have a direct correlation on the stability of a converged network.  In this podcast we discuss best practices so you can avoid the crisis most organization experience.  Nick

CEO John Combs joins the Lippis Report podcast to discuss the IP telephony market and ShoreTel's chances of success.  The IP telephony market is growing rapidly.  It took 3 years for the industry to ship some 8 million IP phones; it ships that many plus in 3 months and the growth rate is increasing.  As the market starts to roar, private firms are taking the temperature of the IPO market.  John Combs comments on Mitel's IPO, ShoreTel's happy customers, innovation and the competitive IP telephony market.  There is a lot packed into this 20 minute podcast.  You'll want to make sure you listen to this episode.  Enjoy, Nick

I talk with Tony Barbagatto of GroundWork on the Open Source movement for network and system management.  The management software market as long been dominated by HP OpenView and IBM's Tivoli.  A new open source based model has emerged that promises to deliver a wider set of functions and features to IT management lowering operational cost.   The network management market is about to get interesting again.  Listen in, it is a great discussion of a new market disruption.

Zeus Kerravala, VP of Yankee Group's infrastructure research and consulting joins me as we discuss the hot new market of hosted IP services, Avaya On Demand, Cisco's Unified Communications, Mitel's IPO, the race for communication developers and more.  It is a fascinating discussion with insights into Cisco's IP communications management team and our take on its Unified Communications announcement.  Enjoy.

The Trusted Computing Group's Steve Hanna, of Juniper and Paul Sangster of Symantec provide us a progress update on the Trusted Network Connect (TNC) standards effort to deliver an open network admittance control approach.  Download this two page presentation to follow along with part of the discussion.  It's a great discussion on network admission control and which parts are and can be standardized avoiding vendor lock-in.  Enjoy, Nick

I interview Patrick Peterson, VP Technology of IronPort.  IronPort provides e-mail and web defense appliances blocking spyware and spam from desktops and exploits entering into an enterprise via port 80.   We discuss three general industry models available to defend e-mail and web traffic with associated pros and cons. These defenses are appliances, network or software based.  It's a great discussion if you need to know how to stop spam and spyware from steeling productivity and clogging your IT infrastructure.  Enjoy, Nick 

The anti-virus market distribution channel is changing for small to medium sized businesses.  Soon, gone will be the days when IT security personal managed AV client software.  AV is being increasingly bundled into communication services offered by ISPs and other service providers for both fixed and mobile end points.  In this podcast I discuss these trends with Curtis Cresta, VP & GM North America Ops of F-Secure, the leader is services based security.  If you thought your cell phone, smart phone or PDA were safe, think again.  Take notes on this one.

Scott Palmquist joins the program to discuss the network encryption market and CipherOptics' new Ethernet Security Gateway.  Protecting data in "motion" has become top of mind for most IT executives as they look to close network security vulnerabilities.  There's a great discussion on layer 2 versus layer 3 encryption, protecting data in motion versus at rest, where to apply encryption and the elimination of the encryption performance and latency penalty.  Enjoy, Nick

 

Nick Lippis interviews Al Baker of Siemens on how IT departments are looking to mold, shape and inject communications into business process.  IT departments are starting to view contact centers as the starting point to link communications directly into a wider set of business applications increasing productivity and creating competitive differentiation.  Al discusses these dynamics in the context of Siemens's new HiPath ProCenter Enterprise V7.0 contact center offering for the SME and mid-large enterprise markets.  It is a great listen and is studio quality too.

ProCurve Networking by HP Makes Its Most Significant Product Announcement To Date Nick Lippis interviews Andre Kindness, ProCurve Networking by HP on their largest product announcement to date. In this podcast I ask Andre to give us the bottom line on their new 5400, 3500, 6200 and 10 Gb modules for their 8100 core switch. One of the key points here is the integration of Power of Ethernet, network security and enhanced mobility features built into their 3rd generation of ProVision ASCI. As usual I give my take on the announcement at the end of the podcast. For a set of slides on the above go to www.lippis.com.

Zeus Kerravala, VP of Yankee Group's infrastructure research and consulting and Scott Bradner, University Technology Security Officer, Harvard University join me as we discuss the structural changes taking place which are shaping a new telecommunications industry.  Kicked off by a discussion on the pros and cons of the Alcatel and Lucent merger the talk then twist and turns into a discussion on Google, Microsoft, Vonage. legislative initiatives, mobile and wireline usage.  We end with a vision of the emerging telecommunications industry.  It is a fascinating talk.

Nick Lippis interviews Sid Nag, Founder, President and CEO of Prominence Networks www.prominencenet.com. We discuss the problem most IT organizations are having with quality of service (QoS) configuration, maintenance and troubleshooting over IPBPXs, routers, switches, WAN services etc. In short QoS is a tedious, time consuming and expensive process that eats up operational dollars. Prominence is offering its Clear Call Controller and Director which automates QoS configuration so that your users have an excellent voice and video experience over a converged network. It�s a great podcast for any organization serious about delivering high quality real time services over an IP network.

I interview Gopala Tumuluri of Foundry Networks on their ServerIron GT 10Gx2 and E 10Gx2P. These high performance switches are designed for IP data center applications in the enterprise and service provider markets. They sport Foundry's Traffic Works software which includes layer 2, 4, 7 plus SSL acceleration, load balancing, security features and more. I give my take on the announcement at the end of the podcast. Enjoy.

Nick Lippis interviews Bobby Johnson, President and CEO of Foundry Networks. In this podcast Bobby discusses the key areas where Foundry is investing to address the enterprise and service provider ethernet markets. There's a great discussion on industry structure and the new business cycle in which the network industry is entering that will be marked by innovation sparking a feature race and further consolation.

Nick Lippis interviews Naresh Kannan, Director Product Management and David Peikin, Director Marketing at Visual Networks now Fluke Networks. Visual Networks' flagship solution Visual UpTime Select is being upgraded to 2.0 with a focus on VoIP performance monitoring and troubleshooting. Select 2.0 will be released on Feb 24, 2006. I give my take on the announcement at the end of the podcast. If your interested in network performance monitoring you may want to check out the Network Physics podcast as well as these companies compete.

Scott Bradner, University Technology Security Officer, Harvard University and John Gallant, President and Editorial Director of Network World join me in our first industry roundtable. We discuss the reality of Web Services/SOA and how the IP Telephony vendors (Avaya, Cisco, Siemens, Nortel, Mitel) are using it. The discussion of VoiceCon drove us to E-911 open issues with Scott providing an IETF update on what the group is doing to help solve this important industry issue. VoiceCon also brought SIP to light as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, et al are embracing it and now pushing Cisco into SIP acceptance with Call Manager 5.0. ShoreTel made it to the discussion, thanks to its strong showing at VoiceCon. Juniper was next and we talked about its enterprise strategy and weighed in on its pros and cons. This led to a general discussion on Xorp or eXtensible Open Router Platform, Vyatta and its potential impact on Cisco and Juniper. John gives a sneak preview on next week�s Network World where they�ll cover the hot topic of IT pandemic planning, thanks to concerns over the avian flue, and the planned acquisition of BellSouth by at&t.

I interview John McHugh, GM and Vice President, ProCurve networking by HP. The ProCurve Group is the 2nd largest network switch concern, bigger then Extreme and Foundry combined and perhaps bigger then 3Com and closing in on Nortel in terms of the overall enterprise network infrastructure market. John talks about ProCurve's successes, challenges and where he is leading this group. It's about 25 minutes. Enjoy.

F5 Networks Jason Needham, Director of Product Management and Satya Vardharajan, product Manager came to brief me on their new BIG-IP appliances, the Global Traffic Manager (GTM), the Link Controller and the 8400 Platform. We also discussed F5's Traffic Management Operating System or TM/OS which is the firm's product development platform for hardware and software development. I find two things different about F5. One is that their customers are both networking and datacenter executives which is unique to a company the size of F5. Second is their TM/OS architecture has allowed F5 to stack software features/services on top of their appliances pretty rapidly such as adding DNS support, distributed application management, intelligent session persistence et al on top of its industry hardened load balancing technology.

Nick Lippis has a discussion with Lee Klarich, Director Product Management, at Juniper Networks. Lee provides an update to Juniper's Integrated Security Gateways (ISG) with proof points from customers AvantGo, ADP and the University of Nevada Reno. We review the multi-processing, multi-tasking capabilities of the ISG and its competitive advantages. What I like most about the ISG is its ability to virtualized firewall, VPN and IPS services and extend them to VLANs, ports, applications, etc, thus avoiding the cost of placing security appliances around your network. The integration of security features not only save on capital cost, but operations too by having a single management interface for confirmation, control and monitoring and allowing the security services to collaborate in an effort to automate exploit mitigation at the application level. It's a good deep dive in the network security market place and Juniper's ISG. Enjoy.

I interview Kenny Frerichs, President & CEO, Scott Safe, VP of Marketing and Dwight Barker, VP Product Management and talk with them about their network application performance and optimization products. We discuss the NP-2000 NetSensory Professional appliance available for $9,995 with built in best practices learned from their 200 customers and the NetSensory Solution Insights. We spend some time on channels as their new pricing model expands their addressable market to the mid-enterprise market. The NetSensory baseline, troubleshoot, secure and optimize graphical representations of network applications are some for the best I have seen in the industry. Enjoy.

Nick Lippis interviews Brandon Hoff and Katie Dunn on the state of the network security market, data security and the launch of CipherOptics' new 1Gb SG1002 IPSec encryption appliance. There’s a great discussion in this podcast, on scaling tactics for securing encrypted end-to-end networks versus tunnels. Also issues such as key and policy management and secure domains are explored.

Nick Lippis has an industry discussion with Mark Straton, Senior Vice President Siemens Communications. Nick leads the talk by describing the third phase of IP telephony, the strategic phase, while Mark makes his points of why Siemens will lead this phase. Gone will be capital cost, siloed communications applications and in will be SOA based communications enabled applications and hosted IP tel solutions. There's a good discussion about the industry structure and which vendors, Avaya, Cisco, Nortel, Mitel, Siemens, Alcatel will survive and thrive in the strategic phase.