The XSi Data Center Blog:

Many products with digital parts are sold with “strings” designed to lock buyers into high-margin post-purchase contracts for such things as “Support”, “Maintenance”, and “Upgrades”.  Some contracts are so intertwined into the purchase that buyers are forced to replace fully functional equipment on a schedule dictated by the manufacturer.

Cisco is salivating over the news from Huawei's VP Eric Xu that "Huawei is no longer interested in in the U.S. market anymore." As you may recall Huawei has had difficulty with the U.S. government's hardline stance towards Huawei due to its Chinese military ties. Xu said that Huawei is downward revising its 2017 enterprise sales to $10B which is below its prior goal of $15B. Huawei finished 2012 with enterprise sales of $1.9B. This is sure to boost Cisco's stock price.

If you haven’t caught wind of it yet, you’re sure to in 2013.  Software defined networking (SDN) seems to be all the rage for the upcoming year, and quite possibly for many years to come. (SDN) is changing the way data centers run, and OEMs are racing to get a piece of the predicted $2 billion a year (by 2016) pie.  The question is will everyone get an equal share of the pie, or will there be a few greedy pie hogs and only a crumb or two left for the rest.  It’s too early to tell, but one thing’s for certain money is flying around the network world like a massive hurricane picking up any SDN startup that looks promising.

Cloud services, be they private clouds, public clouds, or even traditional hosted services are themselves just as vulnerable as ordinary data centers to infrastructure problems of water, power, access, and adequate disaster backup.  Hurricane Sandy has taken an unexpected toll on Cloud services, highlighting the importance of picking the physical location of the underlying assets.

Hurricane Sandy exposes major weaknesses in mobile network architecture for consumers and business.

It seems to be a major industry trend over the last year as one company after the next announces more and more lay offs.   Just more proof that our economy is still down in the dumps.  Juniper Networks announced Tuesday, October 2^nd, that they will be cutting 500 workers from their workforce.  Sure it seems like a mere grain of salt in a big shaker when you compare it to HP’s 29,000 or Cisco’s 1,300 this year plus the 10,000 they announced last year.  But, when you consider that Juniper only employs 9,373 workers this layoff will make up 5.3 percent of Juniper’s workforce. 

Software vendors have a long history of trying to control and limit the use of their products in the aftermarket consistently thwarting their resell-ability.  We recently posted in Oracle Losses EU Software Resale Battle how the European Court of Justice on Tuesday July 3, 2012 ruled that used software licenses may be resold by individuals or companies.  Forbes has caught wind of the same story and we'd like to share it with you...

Recently Alcatel introduced a new line of routers that threatens to give Cisco and Juniper a run for their money.  On May 22, 2012 Alcatel unveiled a new family of Internet core routers that they have been diligently working on for the past three years.  This revolutionary technology promises to be the most innovative and powerful product currently in the industry.  The new 7950 line will enhance network operations and prepare their core networks to embrace the rapid expansion of smartphone and tablets, the conversion to cloud applications, and the fast growing video market.

Thanks to Cisco, you may now be able to watch your favorite YouTube or Netflix movie without the annoying “buffering” delays.  On Tuesday, June 5^th, Cisco announced a new tool, the ASR 5500, which will let carriers sift through and prioritize the traffic flooding their networks.

With Wall Street having a strong rally in stocks that began in October, there is now renewed optimism that technology spending has also returned.  According to IDC (International Data Corporation), the giant technology intelligence firm, tech spending rose 5% in 2011, and is expected to rise another 5% in 2012.  When IT budgets start to increase, very few companies beyond those directly involved in networking are more deserving of those dollars.  Undoubtedly, the increased spending will produce resurgence in some of the technology sector's biggest names.