Archive for September, 2009
Join a Datacentre Webcast with NYSE and BLADE Network Technologies
BLADE Network Technologies, the trusted leader in data centre networking, will host a webcast on Wednesday, September 30, starting at 6pm BST / 10am PT, entitled “The Data Center Revolution: Ultra-Fast Networks,” featuring Andrew F. Bach, senior vice president and global head of Network Services Technology at NYSE Euronext, and Vikram Mehta, president and CEO, BLADE Network Technologies. To attend, please register at: www.bladenetwork.net/BLADE-NYSE.
Topics will include:
– High-Speed Data Centre Networks: The world’s largest enterprises are
deploying a new generation of 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches for ultra-fast,
cloud-ready networks that enable them to reduce their total cost of
ownership while increasing capacity.
– NYSE Euronext’s New Consolidated Global Data Centres: NYSE Euronext is
building state-of-the-art data centres in London and New Jersey, USA, to transmit
millions of orders at lightning speed.
– Latency Reduction and Fairness: Latency reduction has become critical
as proprietary trading volumes skyrocket. New approaches to speed have
become a competitive advantage that can drop not only microseconds, but
milliseconds from trading strategies while also maintaining fairness
through deterministic latency.
“As the world’s largest enterprises undertake multi-billion-dollar upgrades of their data centres, BLADE will continue to join forces with IT leaders to meet the needs of this data centre revolution for open, scalable infrastructures that provide freedom from the domination of a single vendor,” said Vikram Mehta.
About BLADE Network Technologies
BLADE Network Technologies (BLADE) is the leading provider of Gigabit and 10G Ethernet cloud-ready networking solutions for dynamic, enterprise data centers worldwide. In addition to its innovative OEM blade switches, and SmartConnect with VMready virtualization and BLADEHarmony Manager software, BLADE’s “Virtual, Cooler, Easier” RackSwitch family enables “Rackonomics” — an efficient approach for scaling out data center networks to drive down total cost of ownership. BLADE’s customers include more than 300 of the Fortune 500 across 26 industry segments, for an installed base representing over 6 million switch ports connecting over 1,350,000 servers and storage systems. Visit: www.bladenetwork.net. Twitter: @BLADENetwork.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Network Instruments Celebrates 15 Years of Innovation with Reflections by Industry Veterans
Network Instrument’s attributes 15 years of double-digit growth to a unified product offering, consistent management and strong customer commitment
September 15, 2009- Network Instruments, a worldwide leader in network performance management, celebrates the beginning of its 15th year of business. Since its founding in 1994, the company has witnessed double-digit growth every year thanks to the Observerproduct line licensed to more than 60,000 users worldwide. To commemorate the anniversary, the company has solicited a variety of perspectives on the past 15 years from industry analysts, journalists and customers.
The company was founded by CEO Roman Oliynyk and President Douglas Smith to produce a higher performing and more cost-effective network analysis solution. Today, Oliynyk and Smith are still focused on the same goal with a significantly larger reach. What began in Smith’s basement as a simple software product evolved into a fully-integrated platform for managing network and application performance.
“It’s amazing to think about how far we have come as a company and how much the industry has changed in 15 years,” said Smith. “We hosted the original Observer download on CompuServe and a bulletin board system (BBS). It would have been hard to have foreseen then how tightly integrated networking and the Internet would become in the fabric of global business. Even with these rapid changes, some things have remained the same – for example, Ethernet is still the foundation of networking.”
As the first company to provide both real-time monitoring and packet-level drill-down capabilities in a single platform, Network Instruments continues to increase its reach across all verticals and enterprises. Today the Observer portfolio is used by 70 of the Global Fortune 100. The company is also heralded for building the first cost-effective Windows based analyzer, and being the first analysis vendor to create a gigabit and 10 Gb capture card. Earlier this year, Network Instruments became the first to provide long-term VM monitoring and analysis.
Steve Steinke, research director of networks for The 451 Group, a technology industry analyst company, noted in a recent report:
“Year after year, Network Instruments incorporates customer requests and its own good ideas to the point where the Observer product has been transformed from a network analyzer capable only of displaying packets at a single point to a full-fledged, multipoint analysis engine capable of reconstructing weeks and months of traffic. With its growing capabilities, the company butts up against an increasing slew of competitors, but it continues to thrive and meet the needs of large enterprises around the world.”
The company owes much of its success to a unified product offering with robust capabilities. Observer Reporting Server provides high-level aggregate views of performance, while allowing seamless drill drown for root-cause analysis. GigaStor saves substantial troubleshooting time by eliminating the step of problem recreation. Observer’s Expert Analysis and forensic capabilities quickly resolve network, application, and security issues.
To learn more about the company’s significant milestones and accomplishments, please visit:
http://www.networkinstruments.com/15/
To celebrate the 15th anniversary, Network Instruments elicited thoughts from customers, analysts, and network visionaries regarding the evolution of the industry. The following quotes reflect upon significant changes:
Application management:
“I must be getting old, because I can remember when the applications were not on the network. They only resided on mainframes which were connected (basically, patched) to other resources as needed. Now, applications define the network.”
John Davis
Infrastructure Specialist
EDS, an HP company
Increased network presence:
“Networking drove the democratization of computing in the early 1980s by making it possible to move processing power out to desktops, and in the last 15 years the Internet completed the push of network computing into the home. Now, ubiquitous, high performance networks – including high speed wireless nets – make it possible to be connected all the time, anywhere. Networks have become the digital nervous system of modern society.”
John Dix
Editor in Chief
NetworkWorld.com
IT infrastructure:
“Fifteen years ago the task of IT was to build out the infrastructure and begin to deploy the applications to automate some key business processes. Today the task is to increase the efficiency of the infrastructure and leverage that infrastructure for business value.”
Dr. Jim Metzler
Principal Analyst
Ashton, Metzler & Associates
The true source of network problems:
“Although network managers have seen an amazing evolution in technology over the past 15 years, one thing remains the same: no matter what the problem is, it’s always assumed to be the network’s fault! Gartner’s strategic planning assumption is that, through 2012, more than 80% of application performance and availability failures will be blamed on network problems, but the network will represent less than 20% of the root cause. Looking to the future, network managers are being pressured to move up the stack, and not just troubleshoot network faults and prevent network performance problems, but meet application performance objectives.”
Debra Curtis
Research Vice President
IT Operations Management
Gartner, Inc.
User need for instant content delivery:
“In today’s world with high expectations of instant web content and application delivery, network staff must be equipped with the right tools, empowered to rapidly diagnose and solve very complex issues in order to satisfy customer expectations. Without tools such as Observer and GigaStor, troubleshooting and problem resolution can often take countless hours or even longer, while the customer suffers, and more often than not, leaves and never returns.”
James W. Harrison
Sr. Network Security Engineer
PDX, Inc.
Growing network complexities:
“I got started as a student gopher for Norm Abramson on the AlohaNET project with stops along the way at Xerox, a Novell Distributor and the federal government along with tenure on the Interop NOC team since 1995. The industry has changed from a world just learning to talk to each other in the early days of Ethernet versus token ring to a world economy utterly dependent upon the global Internet. An important change is that with this massive growth have come layers of abstraction that have removed us from “seat of the pants” diagnostics of the early days.”
“It will be the sophistication of the evolving diagnostic suite to analyze across all those new layers moving towards the true future of networking. For you see we are on the cusp of the ubiquitous network described by authors like Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein where global communications will be the hammers that break down national boundaries.”
Brian Chee, Director
Advanced Network Computing Laboratory
School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology
University of Hawaii
About Network Instruments
Network Instruments, a leading provider of performance management and troubleshooting for fifteen years, helps organizations ensure the delivery of business-critical applications. The company’s platform of management and reporting products provides comprehensive visibility into networks and applications to optimize performance, speed troubleshooting, and assist long-term capacity planning. Network Instruments achieved profitability in its first quarter and posted double-digit growth every year since its founding – without any external funding. Headquartered in Minneapolis, the company has sales offices worldwide and distributors in over 50 countries. For more information, please visit www.networkinstruments.com.
Editor’s Notes: The 451 Group’s report, “Network Instruments delivers fast diagnoses for application performance management” referenced from Steve Steinke above, is an independently-produced report that was neither sponsored nor otherwise directly funded by Network Instruments. This report and its entire content are the sole property of The 451 Group, copyright 2008, and is reproduced here by permission. The entire content of the report is available at www.the451group.com.
The statistics cited in Debra Curtis’ quote are referenced from a Gartner research piece published on May, 14, 2009 titled, “2008 Polling Results Show That Data Center Network Managers Are Increasingly Being Tasked With Meeting Application Performance Goals” written by her and Will Cappelli.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )BLADE Secures Series B Funding From New Investors NEC and Juniper Networks; Founding Investor Garnett & Helfrich Capital Reinvests
Valuation reaches $230M as BLADE leads the data centre revolution for high-speed, cloud-ready networking
SANTA CLARA, CA, September 10, 2009 — BLADE Network Technologies Inc. (BLADE), the trusted leader in data centre networking, announced that the company has closed a strategic Series B funding round with new investors led by NEC Corporation along with Juniper Networks Inc., and a third technology industry leader as a silent investor. Garnett & Helfrich Capital, BLADE’s founding investor, is completing the round with its reinvestment. Hajime Fukuzawa (Fukuzawa-san), chief manager, Client and Server Division of NEC Corporation, will join BLADE’s Board of Directors.
This funding round values the company at $230 million. BLADE will use the investment to accelerate research and development and expand global sales and marketing. The company also announced today that it closed a record fiscal quarter on July 31 and has surpassed a six-millionth Ethernet switch port installation milestone. Despite the challenged global economy, BLADE remains on track to deliver another year of strong growth.
“We are proud that world-class companies have joined our founding investor Garnett & Helfrich Capital to back our vision of revolutionizing high-speed networking for the world’s largest data centres,” said Vikram Mehta, president and CEO, BLADE Network Technologies. “Since we established BLADE Network Technologies as an independent company in 2006, we have achieved impressive growth and an unsurpassed series of technology and industry firsts, as well as establishing ourselves as the market leader in cloud-ready networking.”
Mehta added, “This strategic investment from world leaders will fuel the acceleration of our pace-setting business performance as our committed team of BLADErs continues to delight our customers.”
Investor quotes and BLADE’s company overview provided below.
Quotes from Investors NEC, Juniper Networks and Garnett & Helfrich Capital
“BLADE Network Technologies’ Ethernet switches provide the essential network infrastructure for our NEC SIGMABLADE blade server products,” said Hajime Fukuzawa, chief manager, Client and Server Division of NEC Corporation. “The company has demonstrated its capabilities to deliver the high-performance and energy-efficient data centre networking that our customers demand. We see a bright future for BLADE as one of the most innovative leaders in high-speed data centre networks and are proud to be the lead investor.”
“BLADE is well aligned with Juniper Networks in our commitment to reduce the total cost of network ownership while providing the high performance, scalability and virtualization required by today’s dynamic data centre environments,” said David Yen, executive vice president and general manager, Fabric and Switching Technologies Business Group at Juniper Networks. “We are delighted to invest in BLADE Network Technologies to address some of the most challenging connectivity needs for next-generation networks.”
“Under the vision and leadership of Vikram Mehta, BLADE Network Technologies has grown into an outstanding performer by leveraging trusted alliances with global IT leaders and with more than 300 of the Fortune 500 companies,” said David Helfrich, chairman of BLADE Network Technologies and managing director of Garnett & Helfrich Capital. “BLADE provides its broad enterprise customer base with a compelling alternative for their most demanding networking requirements and has continued to outperform the industry even in today’s tough economic climate.”
BLADE Company Overview
BLADE Network Technologies delivers its Cloud Ready Network Architecture solutions for next-generation data centres–where virtual-machine awareness, ultra-high performance, extremely low latency, simplified management, lower cost and energy efficiency are of paramount importance.
“Many organizations are making real and lasting changes in their data centre architecture, which provides new opportunities for companies such as BLADE Network Technologies,” said Paul Mansky, principal and senior equity analyst for Data Centre Infrastructure at Canaccord Adams, Inc. “BLADE provides the networking solutions that support today’s multi-vendor, virtualized data center environments, while providing a compelling combination of performance with lower total cost of ownership.”
Vikram Mehta established BLADE Network Technologies as a division of Nortel in 2002, and spun it out as an independent company with the financial backing of Garnett & Helfrich Capital in February 2006. Through its partnerships with HP, IBM, NEC and Verari Systems, the company has emerged as the leading supplier of Ethernet switches for blade servers, one of the top 10 providers of 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches, and holds a commanding market share lead over Cisco in blade server networking.
In addition to its OEM products, BLADE’s RackSwitch family, based on silicon solutions from Broadcom and Fulcrum Microsystems, is the industry’s most advanced top-of-rack switching solution, offering the industry’s lowest latency, lowest power and best price/performance. The company recently pioneered new ground with the industry’s first 1,000 port Ethernet VMready switch and first FCoE-ready blade server switch. BLADE has championed the concept of “Rackonomics” – a way for enterprises to scale out their data centres more affordably and efficiently by duplicating racks of servers and storage with connectivity through BLADE’s embedded and top-of-rack switches.
The company has received many awards, including EE Times’ ACE Award for Startup of the Year, Red Herring Global 100, and the first networking company to win AlwaysOn’s “Going Green 100” award. BLADE’s president and CEO, Vikram Mehta, was recognised with the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® award for Northern California in 2009.
BLADE Network Technologies employs nearly 200 people in its Santa Clara, Calif., headquarters, BLADE Network Research (BNR) development subsidiary in Ottawa, Canada, and sales and support operations throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), as well as in Asia Pacific (including Australia, China, Japan and Korea).
About BLADE Network Technologies
BLADE Network Technologies (BLADE) is the leading provider of Gigabit and 10G Ethernet cloud-ready networking solutions for dynamic, enterprise data centers worldwide. In addition to its innovative OEM blade switches, and SmartConnect with VMready virtualization and BLADEHarmony Manager software, BLADE’s “Virtual, Cooler, Easier” RackSwitch family enables “Rackonomics”— an efficient approach for scaling out data center networks to drive down total cost of ownership. BLADE’s customers include more than 300 of the Fortune 500 across 26 industry segments, for an installed base representing over 6 million switch ports connecting over 1,350,000 servers and storage systems. Visit: www.bladenetwork.net. Twitter: @BLADENetwork.
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BLADE Network Technologies, the BLADE logo, BLADEHarmony, RackSwitch, RackSwitch Solution Partner, SmartConnect and VMready are trademarks of BLADE Network Technologies. All other names or marks are property of their respective owners.
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