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At Interop 2013 New York, the Application Economy Rises (Again)

Jim Rapoza

During his keynote speech at the recent Interop 2013 conference in New York, Cisco CEO John Chambers talked about how technology trends are moving towards a focus on applications. Chambers said, “We're moving from a web economy to an application economy.”

This focus could be seen in many areas of the busy but smaller (compared to the earlier spring Interop in Las Vegas) show floor. The classic big iron networking pitches of more, bigger, faster and better hardware were being replaced by claims of improved application performance, better end-user experience and effective application delivery.

Of course, we heard many of the same pitches a year and a half ago at spring Interop 2012. One could have expected this trend to continue steadily, but the last two Interop shows took unexpected turns due to the rapid growth of, and interest in, Software Defined Networks.

SDN hasn't gone away, in fact, it was very prevalent at the New York Interop this October. But the push to application focus is back, and in some ways aided by the rise of SDN.

For the most part, it was good to hear Chambers and Cisco talk about the importance of applications. The more big vendors are focused on helping organizations build, deliver and manage high-performing services and applications, the more likely it will be that we'll see improved application capabilities across the board.

Among some of the other trends in focus at Interop 2012 was the Internet of things or Machine to Machine, looking at the challenges and opportunities that arise when everything, computers to printers to vending machines to you name it, has an IP address and connects to networks. There was also more than a bit of discussion about reigning in the impact of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). In this area, it was refreshing to see more vendors talk about better ways that networks can identify, connect and manage BYOD devices in a light and seamless manner without requiring heavy clients or other old school mobile device management solutions.

Jim Rapoza is Senior Research Analyst at Aberdeen Group.

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At Interop 2013 New York, the Application Economy Rises (Again)

Jim Rapoza

During his keynote speech at the recent Interop 2013 conference in New York, Cisco CEO John Chambers talked about how technology trends are moving towards a focus on applications. Chambers said, “We're moving from a web economy to an application economy.”

This focus could be seen in many areas of the busy but smaller (compared to the earlier spring Interop in Las Vegas) show floor. The classic big iron networking pitches of more, bigger, faster and better hardware were being replaced by claims of improved application performance, better end-user experience and effective application delivery.

Of course, we heard many of the same pitches a year and a half ago at spring Interop 2012. One could have expected this trend to continue steadily, but the last two Interop shows took unexpected turns due to the rapid growth of, and interest in, Software Defined Networks.

SDN hasn't gone away, in fact, it was very prevalent at the New York Interop this October. But the push to application focus is back, and in some ways aided by the rise of SDN.

For the most part, it was good to hear Chambers and Cisco talk about the importance of applications. The more big vendors are focused on helping organizations build, deliver and manage high-performing services and applications, the more likely it will be that we'll see improved application capabilities across the board.

Among some of the other trends in focus at Interop 2012 was the Internet of things or Machine to Machine, looking at the challenges and opportunities that arise when everything, computers to printers to vending machines to you name it, has an IP address and connects to networks. There was also more than a bit of discussion about reigning in the impact of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). In this area, it was refreshing to see more vendors talk about better ways that networks can identify, connect and manage BYOD devices in a light and seamless manner without requiring heavy clients or other old school mobile device management solutions.

Jim Rapoza is Senior Research Analyst at Aberdeen Group.

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As businesses increasingly rely on high-performance applications to deliver seamless user experiences, the demand for fast, reliable, and scalable data storage systems has never been greater. Redis — an open-source, in-memory data structure store — has emerged as a popular choice for use cases ranging from caching to real-time analytics. But with great performance comes the need for vigilant monitoring ...

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

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