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Personally I learn a great deal from this event and have attended it for many years. The companies there are on the front lines of bandwidth allocation and they know the trends in the market before they become widely known by those outside the industry. I look to this event as a barometer to the future of the internet - what is happening with IPV6? Do we really have a fiber glut? Is bandwidth demand still increasing in this economy? What is the real effect of all those smartphones on data demand?

The 2009 Customer Business Exchange is an invitation‐only networking event designed to help grow our customers' business. This years event will take place in New York City, NY, one of the largest telecommunication hubs in North America.
 

Hundreds of decision‐makers will gather, showcase new and existing products and services, and close deals. This event is unique in that all the network operators that are exhibitors and sponsors have direct capacity available to deliver from a Telx facility today. This makes the Telx CBX a highly targeted and relevant event.

The 2008 CBX event touted 1000 c-level and other senior-level executive attendees that representing 458 companies in 21 countries around the world. CBX attendees are focused on creating new business opportunities that will extend networks, facilitate faster data transfers, add new services and grows businesses organically. And due to overwhelming early demand and our Meet Me Room expansions, we expect this year's event to attract a record‐number of industry leaders and executives.

Enterprise customers will find considerable opportunities for business growth and expansion at CBX as well; those needing the services of a variety of carriers or service providers can meet all of their needs by choosing Telx and its partners. In addition, each industry including Financial Services can benefit from an ecosystem of providers targeted to meet the industry's specific needs. For example, financial service customers will enjoy particular benefits, as a variety of financial service providers, networks, and exchanges attend CBX.

Thursday, June 25, 2009   8:30 AM  -  9:00 AM CBX Registration Opens

All Guests must first check-in to receive their name badges before entering the 2009 CBX

9:00 am - 10:00 am - Session # 1 - Topic: Broadband Stimulus Plan

• Michael Romano, Of Counsel, Bingham McCutchen LLP

10:20 am - 11:20 am - Session # 2 - Topic: Advanced Video Networks

• Howard Lichtman, President, Human Productivity Lab
• John Bartlett, Principal, NetForecast
• Jason Redisch, Principal Architect, Virtela Communications
• Monty Richardson, Business Development Specialist, IPV Gateways
• Marc Trachtenberg, CEO, Teliris
• Chris Carr, Global Director, Masergy 
• James Peters, Senior Director, Cisco   

11:40 am - 12:30 pm - Session # 3 - Topic: Staying Ahead of the Low Latency Curve

• Pete Harris, President, A-Team Group
• Mark Casey, President, CFN Services
• Scott Caudell, CTO, 7Ticks
• Noah Lieske, CEO, Xasax Corporation
• Nelson Frye, Director of Product, Telx
  
• Shawn Kaplan, Director of Business Development, Activ Financial

Mr. Eric Shepcaro, the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Telx, welcomes guests and invites them to maximize the networking opportunities available at the CBX.

10:10 AM  -  10:20 AM CBX Door Prize & Wine Basket Giveaways

Eric Shepcaro, Telx CEO and Chairman of the Board invites CEO, CIO, CTO, and CFO representatives to take a seat at the CXO Roundtable on June 25th, 2009. This Roundtable is Invitation ONLY.

With unlimited drinks and hors d'oeuvres, all attendees are encouraged to network and do business with one another.

A room on the far right of the exhibit area is reserved for Telx customer announcements. Don't miss your opportunity to get the first scoop on major news and mingle with representatives from the nation's premier technology publications

Join us at the Broadway Lounge of The Marriott Marquis - 8th Floor for Live Music, Lite Appetizers and Open Bar!!!

Better M&A, management and marketing skills always win the war

As Ron Gruia pointed out this morning, the Nortel fire sale continues and a once-great company with a market cap of $250 billion is effectively being sold off at bargain-basement prices. In fact NSN picked up the ailing Canadian company's CDMA and LTE business for about one times revenue or $650 million. At this rate the entire company will be sold off for a total of $2 billion. The silver lining in this dark news is that customers will be able to have a solid company behind them in NSN and thankfully at least 2,500 employees working in Canada, the U.S., Mexico and China will be able to maintain their jobs working for NSN.

As a show of support for the deal, EDC or Export Development Canada is throwing in $300 million toward an NSN credit facility - a full 10x more than the agency was willing to commit to Nortel!

For NSN the deal means a stronger North American presence and also they go from not having a CDMA business to becoming number two. They will have to work hard to maintain this business as Asian rivals are coming on strong. An additional benefit of the deal is a number of LTE patents, technology and expertise which will come in very handy as the world transitions to faster wireless broadband networks.

I have seen some surmise Nortel went down because of open source and the Internet and to some degree this is part of the problem. But perhaps the biggest problem at Nortel was failure to adjust to a market that moves faster than ever coupled with the inability to effectively integrate acquired companies. Some Nortel employees told me the company was too flexible with the companies they acquired and should have set tougher rules regarding integration.

The major take away from this ordeal is how a company with superior technology got beaten by other companies with inferior technology but better M&A, management and marketing skills. At the end of the day the products are important but as Nortel continues to show us, having great technology alone does not a long-term successful strategy make.

Dear blog readers, your assistance is appreciated. We are looking for talented sales people - entry level and sales management. We have many resumes already but I thought it made sense to reach out to my readers in case they know someone really good who is looking. The job involves working in Norwalk, CT.

TMC is an extremely driven, financially stable media company which has seen it's online and event business flourish in the last five years. Hundreds of companies in the communications and technology space rely on TMC to provide them with exposure to our laser-targeted community each month.

For more, drop me a line and I will forward your info to the right department. Thanks.

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

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.

ADTRAN is a networking company which has transformed a great deal over the past decades. In the nineties, the company held a virtual monopoly in the CSU/DSU market and most every network had the company's standalone boxes in their network (including TMC). In fact the company was once synonymous with the term CSU/DSU in my mind. As this functionality was added into other boxes, the company saw its identity erode and in the process took the opportunity to grow into a major networking force selling over 1,700 products to enterprise and carrier customers. Total sales last year exceeded $500 million and the company employs 1,700 worldwide and is located in scenic Huntsville, Al.

One of the company's primary competitors is Cisco and to fight off this networking "monopoly" the company has focused on building quality products at lower prices. ADTRAN doesn't have the Cisco name but it has been around since 1985 and while so many competitors have left the space, the company keeps chugging along, identifying new market segments and rolling out multiple products to fill them.

Case in point is the NetVanta 1544 series of layer 3, Gigabit aggregation switches allowing customers to aggregate up to four 2.5 Gbps SFP ports in order to allow low-cost 10 Gbps switching in a product priced in the range of typical switches offering less aggregate throughput. All three varieties of the products have 24 fixed 10/100/1000Base-T ports and depending on your needs, there is a traditional Ethernet switch... The 1544P has PoE support and the 1544F provides support for fiber - perfect for campus and similar environments.

List prices are $2,795 for the base model while PoE support brings the price up to $3,795. Fiber support via the 1544F costs $3,995 and this is the only model which is not currently shipping - expect it mid/late-summer.

ADTRAN's Todd Lattanzi brought me up to speed on the new product line and explained these new solutions are great for a company that may need 10 Gbps support in the future but doesn't want to forklift upgrade later. He also mentioned these products are ideal for VoIP.

Latanzi went on to explain the benefits of this product line to customers are the ability to rely on a single vendor for their networking needs [as his company has such a broad product line], a 40% savings over other providers, a single OS on all switches and a built-in WiFi access controller in this product line.

My thoughts are that this economic environment seems to be one where companies like ADTRAN can differentiate themselves by pushing value. Yes Cisco costs more but Cisco spends a great deal of money on marketing which helps cement the networking giant as a very safe choice. But as many vendors and buyers have told me this year, customers are more open to new vendors who can provide them better value. On an upcoming trip to Huntsville I will be following up with ADTRAN to see how the market is reacting to their new offerings and the company's positioning as the quality and value focused networking equipment provider.

• ADTRAN NetVanta Certified for Deployment with Covad
• ADTRAN Helping SMBs with New IP Communications Alliance Program
• ADTRAN Intros Layer 3 GbE Switch Series
• Deploying VoIP on the LAN: Cross-Training In-house Teams Saves Time, Support Costs
• VoIP Provider Voxitas Expands to Colorado, Mountain Region

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!