Ethernet Roadmap Envisions Terabit Interfaces in 2020s

The Ethernet Alliance has published a 2015 Ethernet Roadmap that outlines the ongoing development and evolution of Ethernet through the end of the decade, while envisioning terabit speed interfaces scaling up to 10 Tbps rates by 2030.

Four new speeds – 2.5 Gigabit per second (Gb/s); 5 Gb/s; 25 Gb/s; and 400 Gb/s Ethernet – are currently in development by the IEEE, while the industry is also considering 50Gb/s and 200 Gb/s Ethernet.

The 2015 Ethernet Roadmap looks at Ethernet’s accelerating evolution and expansion in four key areas: consumer and residential; enterprise and campus; hyperscale data centers; and service providers. The roadmap provides visibility into the underlying technologies, including electrical and optical infrastructures. It further highlights the different area’s rate progressions, while emphasizing the changing dynamics and challenges within the Ethernet ecosystem, which includes support for wireless technologies such as 802.11ac.

“Ethernet is constantly evolving and diversifying into new markets and application spaces. Such expansion is successful when there is greater visibility about a technology’s future. The 2015 Ethernet Roadmap will allow the industry to peer into Ethernet’s future,” said Scott Kipp, president, Ethernet Alliance; and principal technologist, Brocade. “The roadmap, developed by our members, will help users understand where Ethernet is going. Such insight will heighten confidence to the market that Ethernet has a clear path forward and help further drive adoption of Ethernet solutions.”

http://www.ethernetalliance.org/roadmap

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Vertical Systems: Business Fiber Penetration Hits 42.5% in U.S.

Business fiber penetration of commercial buildings in the U.S. increased to 42.5% in 2014, according to latest research from Vertical Systems Group. This compares to a penetration rate of only 10.9% in 2004. These statistics measure fiber availability at company-owned and multi-tenant buildings with twenty or more employees, which covers more than two million individual business establishments.

“Accessibility to fiber-based business services in the U.S. nearly quadrupled between 2004 and 2014, with hundreds of thousands of sites newly fiber-connected during this time period. As a result of this growth, our fiber penetration benchmark now exceeds 40% for the first time,” said Rosemary Cochran, principal at Vertical Systems Group. “Looking forward, the high stakes endgame for network operators is to deepen and broaden their service infrastructures around fiber – the future of wireline.”

In the U.S., fiber is used to deliver the majority of Carrier Ethernet service connections. Fiber implementations are also increasing for access to high speed IP/MPLS VPN services, Cloud and Internet connectivity, and for mobile backhaul applications.

In response to Vertical Systems Group’s recent worldwide survey of Carrier Ethernet service providers, fiber footprint reach was cited as the top competitive advantage overall. Fiber expansion was the primary growth challenge for 2015.

http://www.verticalsystems.com/vsgpr/business-fiber-penetration-hits-42-5-in-u-s/

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Cisco to Acquire Embrane for its ACI Software

Cisco announced its intention to acquire Embrane, a start-up offering a lifecycle management platform for application-centric network services.

Embrane, which is based in Santa Clara, California, offers a software platform for powering application-centric network services, including firewalls, VPN termination, server load balancers and SSL offload.

Cisco said the deal would enhance its ACI vision. The Embrane team will be joining the Insieme Business Unit.

http://blogs.cisco.com/news/cisco-announces-intent-to-acquire-embrane
http://www.embrane.com/

• Embrane was co-founded by Dante Malagrinò and Marco Di Benedetto, both previously with Cisco.
  
• In March 2014, Embrane, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, raised $14 million in Series-C funding for its application-centric network services. The funding round was led by Cisco and included new Embrane investor Presidio Ventures, and participation from existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and North Bridge Venture Partners.

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Palo Alto Networks and VMware AirWatch Target Mobile Security

Palo Alto Networks and VMware are extending their strategic partnership by integrating their enterprise security and mobile management technologies to give organizations a rich and unique combination of mobile device management (MDM) with advanced threat prevention for secure enterprise BYOD support.

The partnership bring together Palo Alto Networks' Next-Generation Firewall, WildFire and GlobalProtect technologies with the AirWatch by VMware Enterprise Mobility Management platform.  The solution helps customers enforce security policy to protect networks from unauthorized or infected devices, provides the appropriate level of access to apps and data for mobile users, and enables mobile devices to be properly configured for business use and connection to a global threat intelligence service.

Detailed capabilities include:

• Malware Detection:  Palo Alto Networks WildFire security subscription service identifies known and previously unknown mobile malware. By integrating the intelligence provided by WildFire, users can identify infected applications and take immediate and automated action for security and containment, such as creating an application blacklist. 
• Network Protection:  Organizations need to make sure only approved devices are used with sensitive applications and networks; this is accomplished with Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect Host Information Profile (HIP), a direct tie between information about the mobile device, its configuration and what data and applications the device can access. 
• VPN and Network Security:  Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect provides a secure connection between AirWatch managed mobile devices and the Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall at the device or application level utilizing per-app VPN. This allows consistent inspection of traffic and enforcement of network security policy for threat prevention, wherever the user goes.

The Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect iOS VPN app deployed by AirWatch is now available.

https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/products/technologies.html
http://www.air-watch.com

• In 2014, Palo Alto Networks and VMware announced a software-defined data center reseller agreement and network security and network virtualization solutions.

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CipherCloud Acquires Anicut Systems - Adaptive Security as a Service

CipherCloud, which provides cloud visibility and data protection, announced the acquisition of Anicut Systems, a privately held provider of adaptive security as a service. Financial terms were not disclosed.

CipherCloud said Anicut's technology enhances its cloud discovery, data protection and monitoring platform by bringing additional intelligence and security controls that help organizations defend against a fast evolving threats landscape. Anicut provides advanced cloud security analysis of real-time traffic using machine learning to detect malicious insider and external threats. The technology detects both high risk clouds and high risk user activities in their use of cloud services based on over 60 attributes to detect advanced attacks on cloud services such as spear phishing and watering hole. It also enables administrators to effectively configure and enforce corporate cloud use policies.

CipherCloud's open platform provides cloud application discovery and risk assessment, data protection – searchable strong encryption, tokenization, data loss prevention, key management and malware detection – and extensive user activity and anomaly monitoring services.

"We continue to raise the bar for cloud security," said Pravin Kothari, founder and CEO of CipherCloud. "The rapid pace of cloud adoption by organizations requires deep intelligence into cloud threats and real-time protection for data across clouds. We are making this investment to go deeper into cloud visibility and security given the clear demand."

http://www.ciphercloud.com

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Dell'Oro: Data Center to Drive Ethernet Switch Market Growth

The Ethernet Switch market continues to fragment as the Campus, Data Center, Small Medium Business (SMB), and Carrier Ethernet segments grow and contract in different ways, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group.

While Cisco Systems and Hewlett-Packard were already above five percent market share in the data center, both Arista and the white box / bare metal switching segment joined them by virtue of their respective greater than 40 percent revenue growth posted in 2014. White box / bare metal switching represented 7% of data center revenue in 2014.

"The Ethernet switch market continued to evolve rapidly in 2014 with vendors performing very differently in each segment of the market," said Alan Weckel, Vice President of Ethernet Switch research at Dell'Oro Group.  "In looking to our forecast, we believe the demands of the Cloud and higher speeds of Ethernet such as 25 Gbps, 50 Gbps, and 100 Gbps, will cause the vendor landscape in the Data Center market to change significantly.  At the same time we believe the Campus market is about to go through a mini upgrade cycle to 2.5 Gbps and 5.0 Gbps to support higher speed WLAN Access Points," explained Weckel.

http://www.delloro.com

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Infonetics: Wireless LAN Gear Neared $5 Billion in 2014

Almost 1.2 million 802.11ac access points shipped in the fourth quarter of 2014 (4Q14)-a quarter of all access points-cannibalizing 802.11n rather than the older 802.11a/b/g access points, according to a new report from Infonetics Research (now part of IHS).

Some highlights:

• Worldwide wireless LAN (WLAN) equipment revenue reached $4.9 billion in 2014, growing just 6 percent over 2013-a far cry from the 20-percent-plus annual increases of a few years ago
• In 4Q14, WLAN equipment sales totaled $1.3 billion, up 5 percent quarter-over-quarter, and up 10 percent year-over-year
• Though demand for WiFi connectivity continues unabated-access point shipments were up 22 percent year-over-year in 2014-revenue growth has run out of steam due to fewer service provider and K-12 WiFi sales, 802.11ac not yet lifting ASPs, controller-less approaches and low-cost solutions
• There was higher than usual demand for WiFi phones in 4Q14, influenced by a large number of deals, but this isn't expected to be sustained in 2015
• Despite fickle economic conditions, EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) was the fastest-growing major region in 2014, up 9 percent
• Among the top 5 WLAN vendors-Aruba, Cisco, HP, Ruckus and Zebra-Ruckus led revenue growth in 2014.

"A pullback in K-12 spending in the US has caused a significant slowdown in the WLAN market, which, after having grown at double-digit rates for several years, grew only 6 percent in 2014," said Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise networks and video at Infonetics Research.

http://www.infonetics.com

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Arista Offers its Extensible Operating System as a Subscription

Arista Networks is now offering its Extensible Operating System (EOS) as a subscription. The Arista EOS is already provided on a perpetual license basis to customers who purchase as such.  The company said that by disaggregating hardware and software, its customers would gain more flexibility in managing their CAPEX/OPEX budgets.

Separately, Arista announced that CFO Kelyn Brannon will leave the company for personal reasons. Ms. Brannon has served Arista as CFO since July 2013, playing an instrumental role in taking the company public in June 2014 at NYSE.

http://www.aristanetworks.com

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