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Mist introduces new analytics capabilities for wireless
ICYMI: Mist premieres new analytics capabilities on its Wi-Fi platform, while Broadcom targets large data centers with its new switches and IDC sees more security spending.
Mist Systems has beefed up its wireless platform with a wide variety of diagnostic and analytics capabilities, adding such features as one-click root-cause analysis, better performance metrics and more precise user-device tracking. In addition to enhanced analytics capabilities, Mist is introducing a new enterprise-grade access point, the 16-antennae BT11, which supports Power over Ethernet.
Mist has built its platform on a combination of artificial intelligence and big data to track user behavior and network performance. It also relies on pinpointing users' locations, which is made possible by a virtual Bluetooth Low Energy technology for which it has applied a patent. By harnessing the benefits of all three of these developments, Mist believes its approach takes advantage of a "new wireless inflection," according to Jeff Aaron, vice president of marketing for the Cupertino, Calif., company.
Analytics capabilities focus on new performance service-level metrics, including asset tracking of Wi-Fi devices. If anomalous events are spotted on the network, Mist's platform launches packet capture automatically to determine the cause. According to Aaron, Mist's new capabilities reflect industry trends, such as cloud-managed Wi-Fi and demands for asset tracking, particularly in healthcare. "[We see a] transition from the old world to the modern world cloud [and] look at RF packets off of everything," he added.
Broadcom intros faster switch aimed at large data centers
Broadcom released an upgraded network chipset that doubles the processing capacity of its previous merchant silicon. The StrataXGS Tomahawk II switch, available now, is tailored for high-performance computing (HPC) centers and large data centers, Broadcom said. The 16-nanometerline-width switch features 6.4 Tbps of processing capacity and can support up to 64 ports of 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) or 128 ports of 40/50 GbE, suitable for high-speed data center interconnect architectures.
In addition, the switch supports a variety of software-defined networking protocols and standards, including advanced OpenFlow, VXLAN and network virtualization using generic routing encapsulation.
"We expect this to accelerate 100 GbE adoption in the next wave of data centers, while delivering network scale and visibility for public and private cloud computing, storage and HPC fabrics," said Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager of switch products at Broadcom, based in San Jose, Calif., in a statement.
The Tomahawk release comes four months after a startup switch company, Barefoot Networks, announced it would begin shipping Tofino, a user-programmable chip that processes packets at 6.5 Tbps.
IDC: Security spending to rise 38% by 2020
Companies will spend more than $100 billion in security-related hardware, software and services by 2020, a 38% increase from the $73.7 billion organizations earmarked to security in 2016, according to a new global security report issued by IDC. With a compound annual growth rate of more than 8%, security spending will more than double the rate of overall IT spending growth, IDC said.
"Today's security climate is such that enterprises fear becoming victims of the next major cyberattack or cyberextortion," said Sean Pike, program vice president, security products, in a statement. "As a result, security has become heavily scrutinized by boards of directors demanding that security budgets are used wisely and solutions operate at peak efficiency."
Banking will spend the most on security systems, followed by discrete manufacturing, government and process manufacturing.
Healthcare will see the fastest growth, with hospitals and related institutions ratcheting up their security spending by more than 10% each year between now and 2020.
IDC said the largest chunk of spending will be devoted to security-related services, with managed security services expected to generate revenues in excess of $13 billion in 2016. Security software will be the second largest category, while security hardware sales are expected to reach $14 billion this year. User behavior analytics software, meantime, will become one of the fastest-growing segments within the security market, IDC said, with a compound annual growth rate of 12.2%.
