Dimension Data Scoops Up OpSource

Systems integrator Dimension Data plans to enhance its cloud computing offerings by acquiring OpSource, a Santa Clara, California, provider of hosted cloud services.

Dimension Data, an NTT Group subsidiary based in Johannesburg, South Africa, traditionally has focused on offering communication services, such as building and managing networks, delivering unified communications services and offering security services. But with an increasing number of customers asking for help with building private clouds and using public clouds, the company has been boosting its cloud expertise, said Brett Dawson, CEO of Dimension Data.

It was attracted to OpSource's automation and orchestration capabilities and particularly how those tools can be used across hybrid public and private cloud systems.

When companies add new servers to their private clouds, they must provision a whole set of capabilities, including memory, software licenses, networking and all of their business processes, said Ettienne Reinecke, CTO of Dimension Data. OpSource has automation and orchestration technology that makes that process easy, he said. In addition, OpSource's tools allow users to extend this automation and orchestration over multiple data centers. Dimension Data plans to offer those tools as a managed service, and its customers will be able to use them in their private or public cloud environments.

Dimension Data also envisions building new kinds of services, such as unified communications offerings, that it can run off of OpSource's platform and deliver to customers.

OpSource will become part of Dimension Data's new Cloud Solutions Business Unit.

With so many companies entering the cloud computing business, analysts have been anticipating consolidation. Just a few companies have been bought so far. One of the largest acquisitions was Verizon's (VZ) purchase of Terremark for US$1.4 billion earlier this year.

The companies did not disclose the value of the OpSource acquisition.

Nancy Gohring covers mobile phones and cloud computing for The IDG News Service. Follow Nancy on Twitter at @idgnancy. Nancy's e-mail address is Nancy_Gohring@idg.com

For Wi-Fi, PCs and Macs are Now a Minority

It's a big week for interesting stats relating to Internet usage breakdowns by device. Comscore has released numbers that say that the iPad accounts for 97 percent of tablet usage on the Web-no shocker there. And cloud networking company Meraki has published some data based on device usage numbers from its customers networks:

Whenever I look at numbers like these, I try to remind myself that we don't know how precisely they map to the world at large. But they're still fun to ponder.

Takeaways:

• In 2010, at least 64 percent of Wi-Fi users were using traditional computers-Windows PCs and Macs. In 2011, that's down to 36 percent. 58 percent of Wi-Fi users are on mobile devices-iPhones, iPod Touches, iPads, and Android devices.
• In 2010, a slight majority (53 percent) of Wi-Fi users were on Apple devices. In 2011, that's up to 60 percent. Only 23 percent are on Windows.
• Android accounted for a measly one percent last years; in 2011, it's a meaty 11 percent.
• iPad users consume 400 percent as much Wi-Fi data on average as owners of Android handsets, iPhones, and iPod Touches. That's presumably at least in part because a sizable percentage of iPad owners have Wi-Fi-only models, whereas all iPhone owners and most Android handset users can also get data over cellular networks. (I also imagine that iPads get far more use at home than phones do.)

I was startled to see Windows account for only 23 percent of Wi-Fi usage given that the vast majority of PCs on the planet run it. But many of those Windows machines are desktops, and desktops are far less likely to be on Wi-Fi than notebooks are.

In case you're curious, here are current stats for device usage here at Technologizer. (These are visits to a blog, so it's an entirely different sort of data than Meraki's figures for Wi-Fi usage by device-which is why my breakdown bears little resemblance to Meraki's breakdown.)

• Windows: 52 percent of visits (54 percent of these visits were via Windows 7)
• Mac OS X: 25 percent
• iPhone: 8 percent
• iPad: 8 percent
• Android: 4 percent
• Other: 3 percent
• iPod: 1 percent

Expand Networks is delighted to sponsor the 2011 Ashton Metzler Application and Service Delivery Handbook by Jim Metzler - PART 3

The Application Delivery Handbook 2011 will be published and released in a series of publications. This is the third of the series of publications and consists of two sections – one on planning and one on management.

The primary goal of the planning section is to provide a central focus in the handbook for planning activities which include:

Identifying company’s key applications and services and establishing SLA’s for these applications and services.
Application Performance Engineering (APE), to help IT organizations reduce risk and build better relationships with business managers.

The management section aims to create a framework that IT organizations can modify and adopt in their environment. Successful Application Performance Management (APM|) requires a top down and tightly co-ordinated approach that is based on the on the integrated management of both the applications itself and as well as the end-to-end IT infrastructure must focus on the end user experience of the application or service.

Download the report here - http://email.openmoves.com/link.php?M=51270&N=224&uid=2216&L=173&F=H

Expand Networks and Telkom Win Prestigious Global Telecoms Innovation Award for Wide Area Network Project

Expand Networks, www.expand.com, the leader in optimizing WANs for branch office consolidation and virtualization, together with Africa’s largest Telco provider, Telkom SA, have been jointly honoured at the Global Telecoms Business Innovation Awards 2011, winning the prestigious prize for Wide Area Network Optimization.

Telkom and Expand Networks’ winning project successfully deployed a managed WAN optimization service for retail giant SPAR Group, improving performance levels, reducing latency and easing congestion of satellite links that had compromised the efficiency of SPAR’s applications and services.

The collaboration on the SPAR project beat off hundreds of nominations for the industry’s most innovative projects that were received from the readers of Global Telecoms Business in 2011.
Elie Barr, CEO of Expand Networks, explains the project: “Fast and resilient communications across SPAR’s supply chain is critical to ensuring high levels of service and convenience are delivered to customers. To optimize the bandwidth between SPAR’s headquarters, distribution centres and 900 stores in South Africa, we developed a managed optimisation service with Telkom to mitigate WAN latency and congestion over satellite links.

“Results were immediate; a number of the group’s top retailers quickly gave very positive responses to the solution as user experience improved dramatically.”

Mel Lachenicht, Executive, Telkcom Business Solutions, Telkom SA, added, “Expand Networks provided a good solution to the problem due to its telco-class performance, ease of management and configuration, as well as its cost and ability to scale.”

For Expand Networks, it is the second consecutive year it has been honoured by Global Telecoms Business, receiving in 2010 an award for Satellite Service Innovation.

Barr continued, “We are all delighted to receive this award which demonstrates the value and transformational qualities of network optimisation.

“The award also chimes with our own continued commitment in working closely with our global telco partners in helping to better manage the flow of traffic and optimize communications offerings to organizations across the globe.”

The winners were announced during a gala dinner at the Park Lane Hotel in London last night. In presenting the Awards, Alan Burkitt-Gray, editor of Global Telecoms Business, commented: “This is the fifth time we’ve run the Global Telecoms Business Innovation Awards and this year we saw more nominations, from a greater range of operators and vendors, than ever before.

“We started the Awards in order to celebrate what the industry is doing, making a huge difference to the world, to all of us in business and as consumers.

“This is a sure sign the industry is working harder and harder to deliver exciting and innovative services to customers worldwide. We’ve seen a greater number of nominations for services directly aimed at businesses and consumers, designed to give them better services and make their lives easier.

“Congratulations to all of this year’s award winners and to Expand and Telkom for the Wide Area Network Innovation award.”

Global Telecoms Business magazine, which is read by the industry leaders in the telecommunications industry worldwide, is part of the Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC group.

VADition sells up to Exclusive Networks

Pan-European distributor Exclusive Networks has more than doubled its UK footprint by snapping up VADition for an undisclosed sum.

The acquisition builds on the Paris-based group's 2009 acquisition of Arc Technology and VADition will now act as its 24/7 support centre for Europe.

Founded in 2006 by channel veterans Neil Ledger (pictured) and Ian Morris, VADition has grown rapidly to become a £34m distributor with vendor franchises including Fortinet, Isilion and Palo Alto.

Read more: http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/news/2082858/vadition-sells-exclusive-networks#ixzz1QkjNuLc9
CRN - Essential information for VARs, integrators and converged resellers. Claim your free subscription today.

Schools Upgrade Wireless to Support the iPad

Given the thousands of innovative education applications designed specifically for tablets as well as the integrated learning experience such apps can offer, it’s no wonder that iPads and other mobile devices are entering K-12 schools at an aggressive rate. In some cases the schools have rolled tablets out to every student, and in other cases students and teachers are bringing personal devices from home. Either way, schools are upgrading their wireless networks to accommodate the influx.

Red Lion Area School District in Red Lion, Pennsylvania and Rainbow District School Board in Northern Ontario, Canada both recently upgraded their networks to better support iPads and other mobile devices. The chief concerns, of course, are higher demands for bandwidth and the need for stricter network security.

Red Lion Area School District (RLASD) deployed over 120 Meraki 802.11n access points (APs) across 11 locations, with the largest number of APs at the 3000-student senior high school. “We needed a wireless solution with centralized management that was customizable,” said John Lenhart, Network Manager at RLASD. “We also needed something affordable but that still had enterprise-level features like active directory RADIUS authentication and the ability for a protected guest network.”

Lenhart explained that RLASD didn’t have the budget for a 1:1 initiative and therefore wanted to allow staff and students to bring in tablets and mobile devices from home—but still wanted to be able to protect the network with port filtering and AD authentication. Meraki’s cloud-managed solution enabled Lenhart to create separate SSIDs for district-issued devices vs. personal devices while also utilizing splash login pages, SSID schedules (only broadcasting the network during school hours), and NAC for added security.

Lenhart can also see what devices are authenticating and who is doing what. Macs, PCs, iPads, and iPhones have all joined the network with no problems, though Lenhart is keeping an eye on his bandwidth. The RLASD network is averaging nearly 200 GB/week. “We’re using Meraki Traffic Shaper to throttle down the student networks a little bit,” he said.

Figure 1: Red Lion Senior High

“The high school is really leaning on the wireless with a lot of devices.” –RLASD Network Manager John Lenhart

Rod MacLeod, Manager of Information Services at Rainbow District School Board, also praised Meraki’s Traffic Shaper as a way to prioritize bandwidth for learning activities at the district’s nine high schools. “Application shaping is the future of how things will work, rather than the old days when we tried to do everything by port,” he said.

Like Lenhart, MacLeod chose to upgrade his network to meet increased demand. “We had provided laptops for teachers, and more students were bringing personal laptops, iPhones, and iPads to school,” he said.

At the same time, he had concerns about his inability to monitor or limit the network traffic occurring on these portable devices. Rainbow’s deployment of 157 Meraki 802.11n access points across nine high schools provided greater capacity in conjunction with centralized management and more sophisticated insight and control.

To read more about Rainbow District School Board’s deployment, check out the case study. If you want to prepare your school for the iPad and its interactive learning applications, check out the Meraki iPad web page, or register for the iPad webinar.