For months the infrastructure 2.0 blog has talked about the automation of IT from a network perspective, including the automation of the network itself.  While few may question the need for network automation most businesses today still run their networks like they ran their “supply chains” decades ago, before the network.   This great irony is about [...] Read Full Story

A recent article by Larry Dignan about how IT has fallen behind the Tech Curve laments how slow and cumbersome enterprise IT has become relative to consumerized technologies. Larry covered a session at the recent Gartner Symposium and was advised by Gartner analysts that IT pros want the world to proceed in an orderly fashion [...] Read Full Story

As infrastructure 2.0 is turned on it will represent an irreversible transformation in the way IT services are delivered.  The timing of product releases, investments and deployments could make all the difference for a range of companies and organizations.    Those who could be impacted include the cloud vendors (including Google, Amazon, Rackspace and Savvis), the virtualization [...] Read Full Story

In a matter of decades we watched the data network eliminate “middlemen” and arcane practices that had been around for centuries, only to see these practices re-emerge at the core of the network.  Understanding this irony is pivotal to understanding what is about to take place within the network and its effect on the evolution [...] Read Full Story

As Cisco, HP, Juniper, F5, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and others circle the data center field of battle, one strategic ridge of high ground is in network automation, or the ability to move (or adjust/provision) IT assets at the push of a button without the need for extensive manual intervention.   That manual intervention accounts for a [...] Read Full Story

A special thanks to the speakers and attendees at today’s webinar on Virtualization and the Future of the Network: Nemertes Andreas Antonopoulos, Cisco’s Chris Hoff, VMware’s Mark Thiele and Richard Kagan from Infoblox.     You can view the slides here.    Works best with IE 6 or higher.  Of course, you may want to watch the on demand webinar which will [...] Read Full Story

It only makes sense that the steam locomotive existed before the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.  One breakthrough created the need for another.  The power of the VM (virtual machine) introduced unprecedented mobility and flexibility, albeit within the confines of a VLAN container.  That mobility and flexibility has created new demands for larger, unified and [...] Read Full Story

Lori wasn’t able to represent F5 Networks at the first Infrastructure 2.0 Working Group but has been perhaps the most prolific contributor with some incredible thoughts on how networks must evolve.  Erik Giesa from F5 was on the Future in Review panel on I2.0 that inspired the formation of the Working Group.  So F5, Lori [...] Read Full Story

One week to go.  Nemertes co-founder Andreas Antonopoulos leads an expert-packed webinar on virtualization and the strategic importance of the network.  Speakers: Mark Thiele from VMware, Chris Hoff from Cisco and Richard Kagan from Infoblox.   Register Here for this online live webinar 8AM Pacific, September 23, 2009. Read Full Story

My recent podcast on infrastructure 2.0 with John Willis reminded me of some recent banter about my use of the term “Cambrian explosion” to talk about where IT is headed when infrastructure 2.0 becomes a reality.  In short, today we have a classic preconditions scenario when automated systems are connected with automated networks.  Synergy is [...] Read Full Story