Granted, information about the company has been around for a while, including an article in the New York Times last fall describing how NTT, in the wake of the Tsunami disaster, has been able to effectively leverage Nicira to maintain availability in the midst of rolling data center blackouts.  According to Nicira, other large service providers are also enamored with this technology, citing AT&T, eBay and Rackspace as customers as well. Nicira also cites a large enterprise customer, Fidelity, among those that have adopted its technology.

Why have these very large and well known service providers selected to work with Nicira? Simply put, because Nicira is helping them solve a very large, and fairly well known problem – network complexity in rapidly scaling, highly dynamic virtual environments. My colleague Jon Oltsik  has defined this as Data Center Network Discontinuity. As organizations continue to consolidate data centers, drive increased use of server virtualization technology, and increase their ability to react more quickly to business needs, legacy network solutions will reach a breaking point. Something needs to change in order to drive new and sustainable growth.  Organizations will need to create a virtual network platform to fully abstract the physical layer from the logical one, instead of an even bigger maze of individual boxes.

OpenFlow and Software Defined Networking hold a lot of promise in this regard. Many companies, including HP and IBM/NEC, and BigSwitch are leveraging this technology and some have recently made big announcements, while other companies like Arista and Juniper have been pursuing their own implementations. Nicira hopes its model will take network virtualization to a whole new level. By placing the intelligence in the virtual switch and leveraging an external controller, Nicira hopes to virtualize (and commoditize) the underlying physical network.

By taking this approach, Nicira proves that it has no hardware agenda and therefore organizations do not have to rip and replace any equipment. It can be deployed in conjunction with existing technology from any vendor. As the customer list suggests, large service providers with cloud environments will receive the most benefit, but those enterprises that have committed to and deployed their own private clouds could take advantage of this technology as well, like Fidelity has done. As more enterprises consolidate data centers and mature their server virtualization environments, I would expect to see more enterprise logos pop up on its website, if the technology works as advertised with its initial customers.

Although most overall IT budgets are edging up slightly, network budget growth is much more robust. Almost 60% of respondents (58%) report that they will be increasing their network budgets in 2012. The larger the organization(enterprises with 1,000 or more employees), the greater the increase. In fact, 21% of enterprises expect to increase spend by 8% or more.

Where will this money be spent? According to our research it will be spent on:

• Network security. As the network environments scale, organizations will require their security services to scale with them and be more tightly integrated with the network. For more on security spending see Jon Oltsik’s security blog.
• Network management. The key to managing more with less will be better network management tools. However, with only so many span ports to connect to, organizations will need to find solutions to help them scale their network management/monitoring coverage for the whole environment. This could bode well for companies like Anue, Gigamon, Netoptics, and VSS that will be instrumental in providing visibility across massively scalable networks. Especially for those 10 GbE networks. This management at scale may also open the door for SDN/OpenFlow vendors to highlight the virtues of their solutions.
• WAN optimization. It’s not just for the troublesome remote office anymore. As organizations continue to consolidate data centers, connect to cloud and SaaS providers, and try to deliver a solid user experience for  remote workers, we expect more organizations will be taking an enterprise wide approach  to optimizing their connections. Especially as latency sensitive applications like video, desktop virtualization and VoIP (see next bullet) continue to proliferate in the data center. Established WAN optimization vendors like Blue Coat, Cisco, Citrix, Riverbed, SilverPeak, and others have already started to adapt their solutions to meet these emerging needs.
• VoIP. One third of the respondents indicated that they would make investments in VoIP solutions. With a rapidly changing and increasingly remote workforce, VoIP solutions provide greater flexibility options. As networks continue to converge, we expect this will also include video and even desktop virtualization as well. So organizations would do well to look for both solutions.
• Headcount. ESG found that 36% of organizations plan to hire additional network staff – fortunately, most believe there are plenty to be found. The only area that showed a higher increase in adding more people was security.

For example, in 2009,  reducing operational and capital expenses topped the list, followed by business process improvement. However, over the last few years, as the capital markets opened up, reducing capital expenses has continued to fall from its second place spot in 2009 all the way to the fifth place in 2012. And while reducing operations expenses maintained the number one spot from 2009 – 2011, the gap between it and business process improvement has dwindled. In fact, in the 2012 survey, Business Process Improvement became the most important consideration for justifying IT purchases to business management teams.

This is reflective of organizations transforming their data centers to deliver more business value–the goal being to deploy IT solutions not because they make IT staffs’ life easier, but because they can deliver real business value. How the solution can improve upon an existing business process to enable  an organization to process more transactions, service more customers, or reduce a customer’s wait time is becoming more important to business managers than how much money it will save.

This does not mean that pricing doesn’t matter–it most certainly does–but it does point to the fact that  IT is becoming much more closely aligned to the business. I have even started seeing the term Business Technology (BT – not sure how British Telecom feels about this) used instead of Information Technology (IT).  Ultimately, this is good thing–by placing the business and business processes first, IT should be able to deliver real benefits and competitive advantages to the business.  Vendors need to recognize this shift as well and demonstrate how its solutions will enable organizations to improve business processes as well as demonstrate its economic value and return on investment.

Indeed, more organizations are looking to deploy desktop virtualization solutions to deliver a consistent image, complete with all applicable business applications to any device an employee chooses to leverage in order to solve this problem. It enables IT to provide greater levels of flexibility to its employees and yet still maintain control over the data, especially sensitive data, which will still be housed in the centralized data center. However, with most pilots done in a limited data center environment, organizations need to be more aware of the impact this may have on the network, especially if they are planning on deploying it in any remote or branch offices. Like any centralized application, if not done correctly, poor performance and availability issues will lead to user frustration and eventually abandonment, potentially wasting a great deal of money (think about some of the problems with the initial centralized SharePoint deployments, etc.).

In 2012 this may be even more of an issue, as ESG research indicates that, while 25% of respondents to our Remote Office/Branch Office Technology Trends survey indicated that they have already deployed centralized virtual desktop solutions at ROBOs, another 42 % plan to do so over the next 18 months. So now is the time to ensure that your virtual desktop initiative will not be hindered by the WAN. With the proper insight (network management tools) and testing (make sure the POC includes at least one typical ROBO location), problems can be averted. In some cases the WAN link you already have may be adequate, in others, you may need more. In those cases, I would recommend investigating optimizing the WAN link before simply ordering more bandwidth as over time it could save a significant amount from your operational budget. It should be noted that while WAN optimization technology wasn’t originally designed to optimize virtual desktops, many vendors have recognized the need and are rapidly adding support for different desktop virtualization vendors and their specific technologies. The key will be knowing which WAN links need additional support and then matching the appropriate WAN optimization vendors to your desktop virtualization solutions in advance of the formal rollout in order to increase your chances for success.

Unfortunately, this creates a challenge for those that are responsible for managing those networks and more specifically the network’s performance. What I find interesting is that in many recent conversations with network administrators, I was surprised at the number that used the telephone as a network performance management tool. Everyone smiling to themselves knows what I am talking about.  What this means is that  there are still quite a few organizations that monitor network performance based on very simple metrics -like the number of phone calls complaining about performance. No calls = Good.  Lots of calls = Bad. To be fair, they might actually be calling to complain about an application’s performance, but somehow it usually rolls downhill to the network. Even those I spoke to that had tools tended to use them for historical reporting rather than proactive monitoring and management.

There are a lot of things putting stress on corporate networks these days – way more devices requesting access and moving files, greater scale and complexity of the networks, virtual servers demanding more and dynamically shifting, the transition from 1 to 10 GbE,  more latency sensitive VoIP, video and desktop virtualization apps, etc. With everything that is going on, now is time for organizations take a more proactive approach to network management.

The key to more effective and proactive management is first getting visibility – more specifically end-to-end visibility- of the entire network. This would include everything from highly virtualized server environments and networked storage environments, to a modest 1 GbE network at a remote office. Once you have created the ability to collect information from all these locations, you can then decide what network tools are required to collect, analyze and deliver meaningful information to the business. If you’re not sure how to do this, check out solutions from vendors like  Anue, Gigamon, NetOptics, Virtual Instruments (networked storage) and VSS Monitoring.

So while visions of your networks are dancing through your heads this holiday season, make sure that those visions include a way to have end-to-end visibility. Even better, make a resolution for 2012 to ensure you have complete visibility into your network. That way you can fix problems before they happen and either eliminate the phone calls or just have them forwarded to the party (server/storage, etc.) responsible for the problem!

Why is all this important? Consider the fact that 30% of respondents to an ESG research study indicated that managing latency-sensitive applications such as video and IP telephony was among the biggest networking challenges facing organizations supporting IT requirements for ROBO locations. This issue will only become more problematic as organizations rely more and more upon communication and collaboration technologies such as video and rich content to bridge geographically disparate branches. In addition to adding native stream splitting over HTTP video support,  Riverbed has also included VDI support for Citrix ICA over SSL and earlier this year announced that it would be the first company to join the newly launched Teradici Network Solutions Partner Program with the intent of helping customers better address IT infrastructure performance, including VDI for VMware View environments.

Also, while the majority of application traffic may leverage TCP, there is still a need and market for optimizing UDP traffic, especially in DR environments.  The IPv6 is an important checkbox that will help Riverbed compete in government deals and certain geographies, and ensure a future-proof environment for its customers.

According to ESG research, nearly three-quarters (74%) of organizations manage applications and IT services centrally at a corporate site and deliver them over the WAN to remote and branch office locations (ROBOs) rather than managing them locally. This centralization and consolidation of IT leads to greater data center network traffic and enhanced importance of WAN performance. Unsurprisingly, therefore, WAN performance management (37%) and monitoring/managing WAN traffic (34%) ranked one and two, respectively, as the biggest networking challenges facing organizations supporting IT requirements for ROBO locations. In order to meet this demand, Riverbed has integrated Cascade Shark functionality into the Steelhead appliance, in what may be an industry first, enabling on-demand packet capture analysis, branch monitoring, and troubleshooting, without the need for dedicated probe appliances.

So getting to the Bigger Truth – if your organization has an initiative for Video, VoIP, or VDI, looking to enhance its DR environment and is currently a Riverbed customer, you should really take a look at RiOS 7. Not a Riverbed customer but are embarking on any of those initiatives, you should probably look at how WAN optimization solutions and RiOS 7 could help.

See this ESG Brief for more information.

• Monitor frequently and in more of an automated fashion.
• Intelligently tier (including archive) and reclaim data.
• Keep an eye on the impact of “Bring Your Own Device” initiatives.

However, to be able to do all these things, you must first have visibility over the unstructured data environment. Given the dynamic growth in unstructured data and the speed with which change can occur, it is no longer acceptable to perform annual spot checks or, worse, only do so during a technology refresh. With employees bringing in more and more personal devices to the workplace, organizations need regular automatic updates and visibility into their unstructured data environments to ensure they are optimized to support the business. Plus, the ability to audit files with sensitive information, ensure compliance, and avoid a careless data breach could save a company millions in fines, not to mention bad publicity for the corporate brand. To accomplish this, organizations require solutions that can collect information quickly and don’t impact production environments.

Fortunately, there are solutions available that can help. Just this week APTARE launched its StorageConsole File Analytics module to specifically address these needs. It offers a scalable solution with lightweight data collection technologies, and easy to use reporting.  For more information on this solution check out this ESG Brief (login required).

This probably isn’t much of a surprise, as there are numerous benefits to consolidating applications, including eliminating IT infrastructure and staff at remote sites to streamlining upgrades and patches in a centralized data center. Life is good as long as the application performance is acceptable. What was interesting when looking at the data were the number of respondents that selected one of the other choices–deploy at ROBO or SaaS–and which applications they felt would be better served by a different model.

For instance, industry specific applications yielded the highest response rate for “deployed and managed at a ROBO location” at 20%. I would expect this is especially true for custom built applications that can’t tolerate latencies created by the increased distances. It also illustrates that despite best efforts to consolidate all applications, there still may be some that need to be deployed and managed on infrastructure remotely.

On the other end of the spectrum, e-mail and customer relationship management (CRM) tied for the top spot for SaaS deployment models with each garnering 13% of the respondents. This is consistent with other SaaS research ESG has conducted and certainly Salesforce.com is the poster child for CRM SaaS applications. (ed. note: ESG uses them). Much of our research on SaaS has indicated that it will have a rapidly growing role in the enterprise, certainly for applications like e-mail, CRM, and collaboration tools like SharePoint.  In fact, SaaS was one of the biggest climbers in our 2011 IT Spending Survey top IT priorities list, jumping ten spots from 2010. It will be interesting to see where it lands on the 2012 IT spending report, which should be out soon.

So while much of the focus is on deploying and managing applications centrally, and rightfully so, organizations need to recognize that some apps will have to be deployed remotely (at least until some better technology comes along), and that some apps may be better suited to be deployed via a SaaS model. Will that always be the case? If the sequel “But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes” (1955, United Artists) is correct, perhaps we will see a lot more of the SaaS model in the near future.

• Big Data – Why am I thankful for Big Data? Well, because it may be the one initiative that finally stops everyone talking about “cloud” – even though it may create an everything “big” theme – you will of course need “big storage” to hold the “big data,” and leverage “big compute” to process it, and “big networks” to transport it –you get the point. If it has not been done already, now would be the time to trademark Big anything! All joking aside, the ability to analyze vast amounts of data could have a really cool impact beyond accelerating search functions – think about accelerating the time to cure diseases by leveraging larger data sets–pretty cool stuff. (For more on Big Data, check out ESG’s Julie Lockner’s blog )
• Solid State Drives – More specifically the Solid State Drive that Dan D from ESG’s IT department put in my PC that now makes starting my PC and opening applications almost bearable. Granted, it’s not close to MAC performance, but at least now I don’t have to wait 5+ minutes to boot up. So while SSDs are impacting the larger overall market (see Mark Peter’s ESG research on Solid State Storage Trends), it has also had a major impact on my day to day productivity! Thanks Dan.
• Cloud Computing – All previous jokes aside about all the cloud washing that has occurred, this is really starting to take hold and not just with service providers and Amazon anymore, a lot of enterprises are getting into the game as well. Thanks to the combined efforts of companies like VMware, Microsoft, Cisco, Brocade, HDS, EMC, NetApp, as well as solutions from Dell, IBM, HP and Oracle- organizations can now buy their own cloud computing building blocks, like Vblocks, FlexPods, Converged Infrastructures, Cloud Matrix, and Cloud Burst. These are greatly accelerating the time to value for enterprises and typically purpose built for specific solutions like Virtual Desktops. (Look for a market landscape report soon on these converged infrastructures by my ESG colleague Mark Bowker).
• Open Flow Programmable networks – This is a really cool open source project to separate the control plane and hardware, enabling centralized control of a network. I like this because it makes you rethink the way things have always been done. While it is still in its infancy it has the potential to really change the way we architect our networks. (For more info see Jon Oltsik’s recent blog post. )

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

In the future, I anticipate that there will be more business specific applications leveraged and organizations will each have their own app stores to enable even more productivity from mobile devices and remote workers. Think of a virtual desktop that contains all relevant business apps delivered to a mobile device. However, the key to driving adoption will be to ensure that the end-user “experience” is a positive one. We have all had the frustration of trying to pull up a site or app that is loading or responding slowly. For me that prompts a quick thumb strike to the button on the bottom of my iPhone to cancel the app.

Businesses need to be more aware of the user experience when working from a mobile device or from a remote location. Most organizations have taken steps to optimize connections between data centers and to remote offices, but there is still more to be done to guarantee optimal performance to mobile devices and remote workers. Many WAN optimization companies are now extending those technologies to include PCs, MACs, and mobile devices based on Android and IOS. With ESG research indicating that the number of remote workers will be steadily increasing over next few years, it may be well worth an organization’s time to explore options for optimizing the connectivity for remote workers and mobile devices.