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Lagrange boosts CloudMaestro for Web traffic management
In this news roundup, Lagrange adds app support to CloudMaestro ADC; analysts assess converged infrastructure spending and FireEye, F5 team up.
Lagrange Systems beefed up its CloudMaestro application delivery controller (ADC) platform, so that the software-based ADCs can accommodate spikes in traffic and Web traffic management demand before they occur.
Lagrange is using a combination of big data and analytics to predict Web traffic, said Sonal Puri, CEO of Lagrange, based in Menlo Park, Calif.; if a sharp uptick in demand is anticipated, the platform spins up new ADC instances across a network of cloud providers to handle the increased data flow.
CloudMaestro is also able to diagnose traffic at the application level -- for example, understanding what might be transactional traffic versus other types of traffic. "Our ability to watch data streams has been extended into the application layer itself, so that we can spin up instances at the app layer and not just at the ADC layer," Puri said.
That capability is particularly helpful for companies that must gear up quickly to handle a sudden surge of traffic from customers eager to purchase tickets or to buy a particular item that might be on sale. By being able to allocate more ADC functionalities to handle the transactional requests, CloudMaestro can help reduce customer frustration, Puri said.
"We predict the need ahead of the demand," Puri said. "A minute [lost as a result of a slow or slashed connection] in e-commerce is a lot of revenue."
Lagrange, which launched CloudMaestro in 2014, now has more than 30 customers -- primarily e-commerce vendors. The company is one of a growing number of vendors tackling the software ADC space, exploiting the industry's increasing adoption of software-based networking functions to handle Web traffic management.
Study: Converged infrastructure gaining traction in Q4
Converged infrastructure is catching the eye of enterprise IT users, who have passed on the word to purchasing departments. A new study conducted by 451 Research LLC in New York indicates that while only 17% of users planned to increase spending on traditional servers in the fourth quarter of this year, 40% said that they would ramp up spending on converged infrastructure.
"Commoditization of X86 systems is catalyzing competition, as decision makers increasingly consider alternatives, including white box [unbranded] servers," said Nikolay Yamakawa, a senior analyst with 451 Research.
Among standard server users, the survey revealed that most -- 52% -- rely on Dell PowerEdge and HP ProLiant. Dell's product attracted attention for its total cost of ownership and ease of management, while HP ProLiant elicited support for its deployment and brand recognition.
However, among customers in the converged infrastructure marketplace, Dell Converged Solutions, NetApp FlexPod and HP ConvergedSystem attracted the most attention. EMC subsidiary VCE Vblock is the most widely adopted among converged infrastructure vendors.
Other findings:
- Cisco UCS is the third most popular vendor in terms of use.
- White box server adoption is on the rise, with some 4% of enterprises using unbranded servers.
ManageEngine launches new products
Zoho Corp. unit ManageEngine launched two new products. Mobile Device Management offers users the ability to access and manage mobile devices, while AlarmsOne consolidates management tools and grouping alarms by host, application, database or network device.
Meantime, ManageEngine added runtime application discovery and dependency mapping to its Application Manager product.
Raj Sabhlok, president of Zoho and ManageEngine, based in Pleasanton, Calif., said the product launches come as organizations move more of their workloads to the cloud. In recent months, Sabhlok said he has seen increasing numbers of customers struggling to oversee applications distributed across both private and public clouds.
Zoho, through its ManageEngine subsidiary, has focused on moving help desks to the cloud, pairing software as a service applications with 24/7 cloud monitoring. ManageEngine said it is now targeting smaller customers with its portfolio of products to complement the major enterprises that now use its applications.
F5, FireEye team up in security bid
F5 Networks Inc. said it will integrate security features from FireEye Inc. in its line of application delivery controllers and that both companies will sell each other's products.
Under terms of a partnership announced earlier this month, F5's Big IP ADC platform will include FireEye software that supports such security features as network segmentation, protocol conformance, SSL inspection and distributed denial-of-service mitigation.
"Today, enterprises require a holistic security approach that defends a broad footprint," Jon Oltsik, senior principal analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group Inc., in Milford, Mass., said in a statement. "The FireEye and F5 partnership brings an important capability for security teams -- the combination of detection and enforcement for data centers and applications. This partnership is a valuable way to help CISOs defend more in a simple, logical way."
