NETWORKING

Some things don’t change, even during a pandemic. Consistent with previous years, in CIO’s 2021 State of the CIO survey, a plurality of the 1,062 IT leaders surveyed chose “data/business analytics” as the No.1 tech initiative expected to drive IT investment. Unfortunately, analytics initiatives seldom do nearly as well when it comes to stakeholder satisfaction. Last year, CIO contributor Mary K. Pratt offered an excellent analysis of why data analytics initiatives still fail, including poor-quality or…

Samsung Electronics last month announced the creation of a 512GB DDR5 memory module, its first since the JEDEC consortium developed and released the DDR5 standard in July of last year. The new modules are double the max capacity of existing DDR4 and offer up to 7,200Mbps in data transfer rate, double that of conventional DDR4. The memory will be able to handle high-bandwidth workloads in applications such as supercomputing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data…

There’s open, then there’s open.  At least that seems to be the case with network technology. Maybe it’s the popularity and impact of open-source software, or maybe it’s just that the word “open” makes you think of being wild, happy, and free—whatever it is, the concept of openness in networking is catching on. Which means, of course, that the definition is getting fuzzier every day. When I talk with enterprises, they seem to think that…

If you want to move assets out of your data center but for whatever reason can’t shift to the cloud, a colocation, or “colo” for short, is increasingly a viable option. Colo is where the client buys the compute, storage, and networking equipment but instead of putting it into their own data centers, they put them in the data center of a hosting company. They still own and manage the hardware, but they don’t have…

Major League Baseball is taking network visibility to the next level. “There were no modern network-management systems in place before I came in. It was all artisanally handcrafted configurations,” says Jeremy Schulman, who joined MLB two years ago as principal network-automation software engineer. Legacy systems, including PRTG for SNMP-based monitoring and discrete management tools from network vendors, allowed MLB to collect data from switches and routers, for example, and track metrics such as bandwidth usage….

As we approach Cisco Live Global 2021 (March 30 – April 1), the DevNet Partner community has much to celebrate. So, amp up and bring the noise for this year’s electrifying virtual event. If you’re a Cisco Partner and you’re building out your schedule, I encourage you to plug in “DevNet” into the search function and sign up for all our DevNet-focused sessions available with your free Explorer pass. Browse the catalog of sessions and…

Competition in the retail food space became even fiercer when Amazon bought Whole Foods, catapulting the digital giant into 450 physical locations across the United States. This move put all grocery store chains on notice: Digitally transform or perish. Easier said than done. Digital transformation essentially requires migrating workloads and applications to the cloud. But traditional brick-and-mortar grocers are unlikely to have all the expertise in house to go it alone. And no single vendor,…

With average fixed broadband speeds projected to peak up to 110+ Mbps and the number of devices connected to IP networks ballooning to 29+ billion (more than three times the global population by 2023), Internet growth remains unabated and could even be stronger as the ongoing pandemic makes the internet more critical than ever to our daily lives, defining a new normal for humanity – video conferences replaced physical meetings, virtual “happy hours” with coworkers…

Digital technologies have become prevalent in healthcare after the passage of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act in 2009. Though we have seen adoption and meaningful use of technology in at least 96% of the hospitals in the United States, electronic access to health information is stymied. What is Information Blocking? “Information Blocking” means any practice that intentionally interferes, prevents, or materially discourages patients, providers and others from accessing, exchanging…

It’s no secret that manufacturing was one of the hardest hit industries by COVID-19. The mass shuttering of factories tanked businesses, disrupted supply chains, and put millions out of work around the world. The numbers are quite staggering. A report from Interact Analysis noted that nearly $3 trillion of global industrial production would be lost due to the pandemic. Between January and April of 2020, 1.4 million manufacturing jobs were lost in the US alone…