After the doldrums of 2009, Interop is back!
By joltsik on Fri, 04/30/10 - 1:30pm.Okay, I'm back in sunny Boston after four days at Interop. I'm now convinced that no normal person should be subject to Las Vegas for more than this amount of time. Everyone I ran into yesterday was looking forward to leaving. I flew out at 2:15 and found that people with later flights were jealous. This says it all.
Enough about fake city however. As for Interop, a lot of people thought that the 2009 downer indicated that Interop may not be around much longer. In less than a year, the buzz has returned under the guise of strong financials, more market demand, and cloud computing. Here are my final thoughts on the show:
1. I was certainly entertained by the Xirrus booth that featured a real boxing ring with live sparring. That said, Xirrus positioned this as the Wi-Fi battle between Arrays and APs. Hasn't this debate been settled? Personally, I think that Wi-Fi must evolve into a smart mesh that seamlessly integrates into the wired network. Aerohive seems especially innovative in this regard.
2. I was impressed last year by 3Com's product line and bravado but wondered if it really had the resources to impact Cisco. Now that 3Com is part of HP, those concerns go away. At the very least, Cisco margins will be impacted every time HP is in a deal but HP's product line and resources may represent the first real Cisco challenger since Wellfleet Networks. HP's problem? Marketing. When Cisco leads with its compelling borderless network vision, HP can't simply respond with price/performance. What's HP's vision of the network in a cloud computing-based world? To challenge Cisco, it needs its own vision and thought leadership -- qualities that HP hasn't been strong with in the past.
3. The WAN optimization market continues to flourish with Blue Coat, Cisco, and Riverbed leading the pack. To me, the next battle royale here is desktop virtualization. Which vendor will offer the best support? Too early to tell but this certainly provides a new opportunity for Citrix and it Branch Repeater product.
4. It seems like the application acceleration market has become a two horse race between F5 and Citrix/NetScaler. I was impressed by some new feature/functionality from Brocade and also like scrappy startup A10 Networks who play the "hot box" role in this market. Of course Cisco plays in this market as well, I need to ask my friends in San Jose for an update as the competition is aggressive and confident.
5. Yes, Juniper wasn't at Interop. Should we read anything into this as some people have suggested? No. Just look at Juniper's financial results and you'll see that the company is doing quite well. With all due respect to the folks who run Interop, it is no longer a requirement to attend industry trade shows.
One final thought. I don't think anyone really knows what the network will look like in a world with cloud computing, advanced mobile devices, and ubiquitous wireless broadband. In my opinion, this means that the network business is up for grabs in a way it hasn't been in the past. This should make next-year's Interop just as exciting -- I just wish it were at the Moscone Center.
PS: Thanks to all the folks who provided feedback on my comments about Arista Networks. Clearly, I owe Jayshree a call.
PPS: I am co-chairing a cloud computing summit for the federal crowd next week in DC. More on cloud computing soon.
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