ra2 studio - Fotolia
Cisco-Viptela deal first step of segment consolidation?
This week, bloggers look into the Cisco-Viptela acquisition, barriers to hybrid cloud adoption and improving cloud analytics for midmarket groups.
Drew Conry-Murray, writing in Packet Pushers, took a look at the Cisco-Viptela deal. With the planned acquisition, Cisco will have at its disposal three distinct SD-WAN product lines as part of its portfolio, including Cisco Intelligent WAN, Viptela and Meraki SD-WAN.
Cisco said it will pay $610 million for Viptela, which has built its technology around a cloud-based controller. According to Conry-Murray, Cisco touts Viptela's pricing and cloud-based management features as an important asset.
Conry-Murray suggested that Viptela may still enjoy substantial product development freedom based on the flexibility that he said Cisco granted to Meraki. He noted that there was very little integration between Meraki and Cisco during the five years in which Cisco had owned the WLAN vendor. Conry-Murray also speculated that Cisco's move might launch another round of SD-WAN market consolidation.
Dig deeper into Conry-Murray's thoughts on the Cisco-Viptela integration.
What are the merits of the hybrid cloud?
Dan Conde, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group Inc., in Milford, Mass., moderated a panel at the Open Networking User Group in San Francisco, exploring hybrid cloud adoption at enterprises. According to Conde, the list of barriers to hybrid cloud adoption is short.
First-time adopters are wrestling with the challenges of education, training and total cost of ownership models; designing architecture; and planning for security and compliance. More mature programs are working to execute on their strategies, trying to find the best approach to data protection, visibility and data portability.
While many organizations new to hybrid cloud adoption struggle with the basics, Conde said he was interested to note that connectivity was an issue for both first-time and mature hybrid cloud users. Similarly, the theme of portability appeared for both types of users.
"The barriers are all valid and will inhibit rapid cloud adoption if not addressed. However, we must recognize that the dream of complete vendor independence and parity of features with traditional on-premises data centers is difficult to achieve during the early days of cloud computing," Conde said.
Explore more of Conde's thoughts on hybrid cloud adoption.
Boosting cloud analytics for the midmarket
Lyndsay Wise, an analyst with Enterprise Management Associates in Boulder, Colo., discussed how the midmarket can leverage Cloud analytics. Although human resources and infrastructure resources vary from company to company, midmarket organizations often face similar challenges that can be approached through better analytics adoption.
Midmarket companies face their greatest challenges with identifying new customers, going up against bigger competitors and keeping costs down. The cloud market continues to grow, as more companies leverage cloud platforms and analytics, which can boost data warehousing and business analytics performance. "Companies need to make sure that when they adopt cloud, they get the service and expertise that understands the unique needs of the midmarket," Wise said.
Read more of EMA's analysis of midmarket cloud analytics.
