Jeff Burt

Cisco Systems officials, who earlier this year have rolled out offerings to make video conferencing better for businesses of varying sizes, are now looking at collaboration at a more personal level. At the Cisco Live 2014 event in San Francisco May 19, the giant networking vendor unveiled two video systems designed to sit on the […]

Cisco System CEO John Chambers is calling on the Obama administration to rein in government surveillance following allegations that the National Security Agency has intercepted shipments of IT gear and installed firmware into the systems. In a letter May 18 to President Obama, Chambers said reports about the NSA putting surveillance technology into servers and […]

Makers of integrated data center systems are embracing software-defined networking technologies, and in the process, becoming a flashpoint in the growing competition between Cisco Systems and VMware in this market. Specifically, officials with VCE—a company spun out of a partnership between Cisco, VMware and storage giant EMC—this week announced new Vblock converged infrastructure that includes […]

Juniper Networks, which in September 2013 launched an open-source version of its Contrail software-defined network controller, announced that an advisory board has been created to help fuel more community involvement in the technology’s development. In a May 13 post on the OpenContrail blog, officials overseeing the development of the open SDN controller said the 11-person […]

Cisco Systems is making it easier for current customers to adopt its Application Centric Infrastructure by making it interoperate with legacy Cisco networking switches and routers, and by offering a migration plan for customers to implement ACI in their existing data centers. The interoperability and migration path are among a larger series of announcements Cisco […]

Network Instruments asked 241 networking professionals to define software-defined networks, the most talked-about topic in the field over the past three years. Of five options, “automated provisioning of network resources” was the second choice of survey respondents, with 34 percent picking it. Coming in first, with 37 percent of the responses, was “undefined, like a […]

Video Key to Online Meetings, Blue Jeans Survey Finds by Jeffrey Burt Connecting With Colleagues According to the survey, 87 percent of people want to connect with their bosses or subordinates over video, rather than through technology without it. Most (65 percent) want all of their online and remote meetings to be done over video, […]

IBM executives came to Boston earlier this year to unveil the company’s Elastic Storage solution, Big Blue’s most significant step into the increasingly competitive software-defined storage realm. The Elastic Storage announcement was significant enough that top officials—including Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president of IBM’s Systems and Technology Group and integrated supply chain business, and Jamie […]

Cisco Systems’ struggles in emerging markets and in some of its core networking businesses are continuing to be a drag on the tech giant’s financial numbers, but CEO John Chambers is confident the company is moving in the right direction. In a conference call with analysts and journalists May 14 to talk about the vendor’s […]

The Internet of things will grow rapidly over the next 10-plus years, holding out more than its share of promises and hope for a future that is more efficient, social, healthy and happy, as well as fear and concern around such issues as security, privacy and the decline of human interaction, according to a report […]

Dell officials are launching the latest version of its Kace K1000 systems management appliance to help businesses prepare for the upcoming onslaught of connected devices and sensors that will make up the Internet of things. Kace K1000 version 6.0 is designed to give businesses better visibility of the devices, systems and other endpoints that are […]

Blue Jeans Network is increasing the number of people who can participate in one of its cloud-based video conferences, and also is introducing new capabilities to record and share those meetings. Company officials announced May 14 that with Blue Jeans Release version 2.6, customers can now host meetings with as many as 100 participants, a […]