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The advent of the internet, SIP trunking, intense competition and the economic downturn has contributed to changing the channel partner market forever and if you are doing the same things you always did as a channel partner you may get wiped off the earth in the next few years. You need to change. How? Well I would spoil it if I told you and didn't allow you to listen to the podcast which is complete and dare I say elaborate. It is worth a listen if you are in any segment of the telecom or technology spaces and the lessons you can learn here are applicable to other segments of the market.

You have no doubt noticed how traditional information technology vendors have embraced communications in response to customers who are looking for integrated and cost-effective solutions which span both markets. This thought occurred to me during a conversation with Mark Goodman, VP of Marketing for Ecessa a company focusing on "Uptime for IP networks," according to Goodman.

Last year the company quietly changed its name from Astrocom and even if you haven't heard of either company it is worth looking at their products as they solve real-world corporate problems such as security through their ShieldLink family which takes the company's PowerLink line of load balancing WAN optimization controllers and adds VPN gateway and firewall capabilities.

More recently the company announced ClariLink which takes ShieldLink and adds a SIP proxy, registrar and SBC allowing real-time failover for SIP sessions going over IP networks. Goodman explains you don't need service provider peering relationships or BGP with this solution and this saves you money.

Instead, the company uses NAT to traverse the network and their SIP proxy alleviates the double NATing problem which plagued enterprise VoIP in the good old days.

It is worth clarifying that one benefit of using this solution is there is no session loss if a WAN link goes down.

The product line is peripherally competitive to Acme Packet but there is more of a focus on smaller companies which correspond to the company's recent Covergence acquisition. Ingate would be another competitor to the product family as well. A recent announcement at Interop is that these appliances are getting scaled up to a 500 model which joins the family of 50 and 25. Higher model numbers allow a larger number of supported simultaneous sessions and capacity and the 500 model can support one million concurrent sessions and has gigabit throughput.

As IP communications gains even more traction in the enterprise we can expect more products which are aimed at helping companies consolidate multiple disparate functions into single-appliance, single-server or single-vendor solutions.

See Also: Ixia's IxNetwork and Juniper's Router Successfully Validate LST

Regardless of whether you think being green is the right way to live because of the environment or you think it makes sense to save money in a tough economy you should be keeping a close eye on Microsemi, the leader in the PoE midspan market allowing traditional networking equipment to be upgraded to PoE without a forklift.

In a recent conversation with Daniel Feldman, Telecom Marketing Director for the company we got to talking about the company's new high-power midspans the PD-9000G family.

Feldman pointed out that when the company first started producing PoE products they thought the midspan opportunity would be short-lived as all switches would eventually incorporate PoE natively meaning additional equipment would be unnecessary. As luck would have it MTBF times were reduced by half in equipment with powered Ethernet as heat dissipation became an issue.

Feldman equates a switch with integrated PoE to a TV with a built-in DVD player - if the DVD player fails you have to get a new TV making the combined product less desirable.

The even better news for the company is that PoE standards call for increasing wattage with the current 802.3at standard calling for 30W - up from 15W. The next stop is 60W and I have already heard of some vendors pushing higher wattage in specific PoE applications. As wattage increases, so does heat so you can expect the appetite for PoE in switches to decrease as MTBF times decrease in lockstep.

Regardless of how you achieve PoE, rest assured that there is tremendous potential to use the technology to save electricity as you can intelligently control the power to devices on your network when the power is being provided by an intelligent device. For example Feldman tells me his company came up with a way years back to turn off power to phones if a user was not in the office. He further went on to explain you can use PoE to determine machine failure and even determine if a computer has a virus if there is a power spike on a machine with no related change in user behavior (such as plugging in a USB-powered fan, etc).

The company is actually promoting a green PoE standard which they say is quite simple - efficiency is calculated by taking output PoE power and dividing by input power.

Obviously being able to intelligently control power through midspans and other methods can lead to tremendous power savings. One would expect all devices on networks of the future to be powered by PoE but the challenge today is with ubiquitous wireless connectivity, portable devices are proliferating more quickly than wired meaning less of a target market. Still, even if 10% of all computing devices get connected to intelligent PoE switching devices we can make a serious dent in computing power consumption and in the process Microsemi can only expect to grow much larger.

If you ask Cisco publically what they think of IBM you will get nothing but praise. In fact Cisco counts IBM as a major partner and IBM does the same with Cisco. Oftentimes the companies even promote technologies like collaboration together.

But more recently this alliance seems to be facing a challenge. Cisco as you may recall launched blade server technology recently aimed at IBMS's sweet spot. Some even called this an act of war.

Cisco of course will tell you publically that the relationship is as strong as ever but the concern for the networking giant has to be the $2-3 billion dollars in business directed towards the company by IBM consultants and other divisions. IBM says even more about their relationship through silence. In fact that is what Peter Burrows got when he was writing an article about the relationship and asked for a quote from IBM.

At Interop 2009 in Las Vegas I had a chance to sit down with executives from Brocade to learn about how IBM will be rebranding the company's products under its own name with general availability being May of 2009. In addition, we can expect this relationship to expand according to Brocade.

• Brocade NetIron MLX Series to be rebranded IBM m-series Ethernet routers
• Brocade NetIron CES 2000 Series to be rebranded IBM c-series Ethernet switches
• Brocade FastIron GS Series to be rebranded IBM g-series Ethernet switches
• Brocade FastIron SuperX Family to be rebranded IBM s-series Ethernet switches

To be fair, there are some who think this new relationship doesn't affect Cisco and instead is a shot at HP. You can decide that for yourself but in the mean time here are some of the other products Brocade rolled out at Interop recently.

First up is a suite of application delivery controllers known as the ServerIron ADX Series. The product has three initial flavors the ADX 1000, 4000 and 8000 and the size of the units corresponds to the first number meaning they come in 1U, 4U and 8U sizes.

The company also rolled out a new TurboIron GbE switch for top-of-rack server connectivity and a FastIron PoE switch delivering 30W of power per port.

In my meeting some of the main takeaways were that the products are full-featured and cost half of comparable Cisco products or less.

Over the next twelve months we will be able to watch and see exactly how the IBM/Cisco relationship unfolds. In addition, now that Oracle is acquiring Sun, it will be worth noting that the database leader and HP are also worth keeping an eye on. If IBM does start pushing less Cisco product it may lead Cisco down the path of acquiring a consulting company to combat the loss in sales.

• BLADE Unveils FCoE-Ready Blade Switch for IBM BladeCenter
• Brocade Buys Foundry for $3 Billion
• IBM to Rebrand, Sell Brocade's VoIP-Enabling Enterprise Switches, Routers

In 2001 when the PDA market was all the rage and smartphones didn't really exist, a company called Interactive Intelligence a leader in the contact center space saw an opportunity for a development platform called Mobilite (pronounced as if you are French) which would allow developers to develop once and have applications run on any mobile device.

The idea was genius and ahead of its time so Mobilite was shelved sometime later.

I couldn't help but think of this product as I spoke with Rhomobile Founder and CEO Adam Blum who was telling me about his company's open source mobile application framework Rhodes which lets you quickly build native mobile applications for all smartphone operating systems: iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Android. Blum emphasizes that applications can take advantage of native GPS, PIM contacts and camera and that they are native, not just web applications optimized for each platform.

Another company in the space is PhoneGap and Blum explains that Rhodes focuses more on business applications while PhoneGap focuses more on consumer apps.

This graphic was chosen due to its looks and may or may not be related to the subject matter in this article -- depending on your perspective.

He went on to tell me Wikipedia rewrote their iPhone application using the Rhodes framework and used 20% of the code needed in Objective C and the resulting program also ran faster. He further went on to explain that while you may imagine his development environment is slanted heavily towards the iPhone, the reality is objective testers have shown applications run the same across all platforms.

Blum was Director of Engineering for Good Technology and explains he saw $200 million pushed into the company and as a result 200 engineers worked to get an email client on three smartphone operating systems. This lunacy (my chosen term, not his) made him decide to launch a company to stop the madness and his twelve-person company is looking to make mobile application writing more efficient.

In our conversation Blum explained that he believes it is virtually impossible to develop to more than two device operating systems beyond version 1.0 without some sort of cross-platform development application. He further explained that such an environment needs to be open-source in nature and as such his solution is completely open source.

As mentioned above there is a strong business focus here so new features are to added to the development environment with business developers in mind first.

Blum also told me his company is well-positioned in this economic environment as they are solving a pain point - one that has a high-degree of urgency. He concluded by saying, "What would you do without it?"

With that Blum and his 12-person company may have made some software development history by announcing RhoHub, perhaps the first development-as-a-service offering for mobile applications.

What are the benefits to developers? Well first of all you don't need to have a variety of development environments and disparate computers in your company in order to develop mobile applications for multiple devices. In addition, the company offers up a provisioning server and can even host the application and allow users to download the correct version based on device.

If you are developing mobile applications it is apparent you need to support the iPhone, Palm, RIM, Nokia, Android, Windows Mobile and Blum thinks Linux Mobile is going to be a contender as well soon. You obviously can't be an expert at all of these environments and you will obviously benefit from some sort of cross-platform development tool like the one his company sells.

But before you go out and trash your Mac and start developing your iPhone apps on the web, you should be aware that Apple's App Store seems to be rejecting a high number of applications which are being built on cross-platform development tools. This could have something to do with the major changes in the iPhone 3.0 OS coming soon but for now it is too soon to tell.

While it is obvious this sort of solution is necessary, we need to watch what companies like Apple and others do to existing customers of cross-platform tools before jumping in too quickly.

This entry from the company's blog may prove useful in your decision-making process.

The drive for more bandwidth does not slow - even in a global recession some reports show bandwidth needs increasing at rates higher than 100% per year on carrier and enterprise networks. The trend towards more collaborative applications, video, VoIP and cloud-based services are no doubt just a few factors in what seems to be just the beginning of a global bandwidth binge showing no sign of slowing.

Enter Expand a company focusing on application acceleration over WANs who is looking to help solve the branch office bandwidth drought. The company makes its living selling a variety of appliances which they say will increase ROI and stretch IT budgets further. These devices are optimized for datacenters, branch offices and regional offices.

The company counts Fidelity National Insurance, Piconol, Antarctica NZ, Targus, DISA and Evans Fruit Company as some of its customers and has partnered with Vision Solutions to provide more efficient disaster recovery services.

At Interop 2009 in Las Vegas, the company unveiled a new solution they hope will become widely deployed on global networks. Simply put they have unveiled a free Mobile Accelerator Client which gives some of the benefits of an appliance but at a much lower cost. Well actually it is free so you don't get much cheaper. The catch? There is always a catch right? Well not really - you just pay for maximal concurrent users.

How is the performance you wonder? The graph below was provided to me to give an indication. Freestyle means you are alone, Collective means you are sharing a virtual cache and Slipstream means you are utilizing an appliance.

In order to get an idea how the mobile client works you need to better understand Expand Networks and their approach to WAN optimization. They have developed a technology called HIVE which is a clever acronym which stands for Heterogeneous Intelligent Virtual Environment.

The H in Hive tells us that the solution works on various platforms. If you are hoping one of the platforms supported is Apple, keep waiting as XP, Vista and Windows 7 are the only ones on the list so far.

The I standsfor intelligent and of course the software is smart - butone could argue in fact that all software is smart. Except perhaps for applications that let you turn your mobile phone into a virtual beer.

The V standsfor virtual and in this case is actually a solid descriptive word - not just marketing as the mobile client uses p2p technology to enable a branch office with multiple clients to take advantage of a pooled virtual cache. So if Donny in HR downloads a 10 gigabyte video file which five other users need later in the week, you can all tap into the file from Donny's computer rather that all wasting network bandwidth by downloading the file again and again. And you thought Donny had nothing to offer.

I almost forgot - the E stands for environment meaning the software knows if it is in a branch office without a nearby appliance or in the home office where there is an appliance or alone by its lonesome. In each case it adapts and utilizes a byte and object level cache to maximize performance.

As you might imagine, the system knows how to allocate bandwidth according to your QoS policies - it is Intelligent after all.

I spent some time with company representatives David White, Efi Gatmor and Adam Davison as they told me about their product and shared the benefits of their HIVE technology for information technology decision-makers worldwide and mentioned that the software can be rolled our via silent install using an MSI package if desired.

One point the trio made which is important to repeat is that in a typical branch office which does not have technology to take advantage of a shared cache, you can have clients competing with each other for bandwidth as they are utterly blind to the needs and presence of the other clients. When you think about it, a shared cache is infinitely logical and as the need for more bandwidth increases we can expect this sort of technology to be deployed in more and more corporate branches.

As companies roll out more cloud computing applications and install IP communications solutions, focus on compliance and centralized backups, we can only expect the opportunity for Expand Networks dare I say - to Expand?

As the networking landscape gets more complex through the addition of remote computing, WiFi, cloud computing and virtualization, it is becoming more of a challenge to determine who is using what services and how much aggregate bandwidth they are consuming. Moreover as the need for ever-more bandwidth shows no sign of slowing, companies need to ensure they have an adequate way of charging departments for their bandwidth usage.

One company looking to fill the void is eTelemetry whose self-described goal is to extract real-time business information from network activity. I recently sat down with Ermis Sfakiyanudis CEO & President and Jennifer Silate - Marketing Manager of the company to learn about their products.

To get started I should introduce Metron to you - it is a 1-2U (depending on model) rack-mounted device which monitors and manages bandwidth usage, time spent surfing and chatting by department. Other nifty features include the ability to track computers powered on during off-hours and the ever-important alerts you need to be sent when an employee uses Remote Desktop (if they aren't supposed to of course) or if they exceed their time or bandwidth allotment, etc.

In my conversation I learned the company now has the ability to track virtualization on the desktop allowing network managers to monitor the bandwidth use and websites visited by virtual instances on devices/computers on the network.

The company has technology which maps IP addresses to users meaning their products can help you get a better indication of who is doing what with networking resources. As you might imagine this technology can be important in helping companies track who is using what cloud computing services as well. Another logical area for the company to play in is E911 where the company's Locate911 product helps companies figure out where VoIP callers on the IP network are.

It is obvious that as networks get more complex, the ability to track usage across virtual sessions will only increase. Moreover, we can't expect E911 on enterprise VoIP networks to become less important. To that end, the company seems like it is solving some important networking problems which will only become more important over time.

There is nothing that builds a resume more like an award and if you are a developer, you definitely want to keep an eye on the new Dialogic Innovator Award contest which will not only give you some great bragging rights, you could win some prizes as well.


Dialogic was nice enough to ask me to be one of the judges in fact and I am looking forward to being part of this program. Winners get a free one-year service and support contract, a $5,000 credit towards future Dialogic products, t-shirts, press releases and an Innovator logo which I imagine can be invaluable in boosting a company's marketing efforts.

Sure it isn't a $75,000 motorcycle - which makes a great gift for your favorite blogger by the way, but hey, times are tough.

The catch? None really - you have to apply of course and Dialogic wants to also take a moment to invite you to participate in the Dialogic Exchange Network while they have your attention.

At one point in my career I was a programmer and I wish I had the time to participate in this contest. If I did, I would write an app that taps into all my social networks and then monitors my cell phone's GPS to determine when I am in the car. When I am driving, I would want it to call me every 15 minutes and update me on what's happening with my friends and relatives. I would want my news alerts tapped as well in case there is breaking news I need to know about.

Oh and of course I would want WAV file to social networking integration in this app so I could speak and have the files live on the net with links from Twitter, etc.

But that's just me and you don't need to do what I said to win. It wouldn't hurt of course. You have until September 30^th 2009 to apply so open a new window right now and get started. Good luck!

Last week at Interop my team conducted over 100 interviews with thought leaders at the show. Topics discussed include green switching, testing, Ethernet, cloud computing and more. So far, half a dozen of the videos have been posted and more are being added continually. I hope you find them helpful.

I have embedded some of these for your immediate viewing pleasure. Here is the page which will store all of these videos.

Chris Loeffler, Global Applications Manager and Lennart Jonsson, Vice President Technology, Eaton

Kevin Goulet, Senior Marketing Director, Enterprise WLAN, Motorola Enterprise Mobility Solutions, Motorola

Kevin Ryan, Director, Data Center Solutions, Extreme Networks

On a recent flight back from Europe I marveled at the ice littering the North Atlantic. A flight attendant told me it was sad as what appeared to be ice cubes from a mile or more in the air used to be icebergs. I am concerned about the environment but I am not sure I agree with the carbon cap and trade system being proposed in the US as it could adversely impact the economy.

But last I checked, regulation gets passed without my express permission and in a world where CO2 is becoming a pollutant, you need to be more aware of energy use and carbon emissions than ever before.

I am especially looking forward to the upcoming sponsored TelcoBridges webinar on TMCnet which will help educate the market on how data centers can lower their energy use.

Even if cap and trade does not become reality this year it is apparent that governments are more and more likely to impose penalties for carbon emissions. Since reducing energy use saves money as well, it behooves everyone with data center decision making authority to be part of this timely event.