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A lot of my coverage over the past couple of years has been focused on the increasingly interesting mix of applications that get delivered over enterprise networks and the impact that has on how networks are being planned and operated. This cocktail has become increasingly volatile, as latency-insensitive traffic loads are mixed with a growing [...]

In keeping with my nascent tradition of not predicting trends, I’ll instead propose a number of focal points that network engineering and operations professionals should keep in mind in the coming New Year of 2012.  2011 resolutions were around application-awareness, connecting with the network security team, assessing the impact of videoconferencing, embracing automation, and improving service [...]

Thanksgiving is a time of gathering and community, and for many of us a primary task, beyond the obvious food, and football traditions, will be to reach out and connect with extended family that can’t be with us in person.  For my family, it will be Skype video chat when possible and phone calls when [...]

(Editors Note:  Today’s post is by EMA Senior Analyst Tracy Corbo) Finally freed from the demands of crunching together data for our just-released ADC/LB radar report, it was a good time to check in on the WAN optimization front and see what has been transpiring over the last couple of months. What I found was [...]

For network managers, there was great news coming with the VMware vSphere 5.0 release, in the form of enhancements to the Virtual Distributed Switch (vDS.) In a particular, the vDS now supports Port Mirroring (commonly known as SPAN) in addition to (finally!) formally offering NetFlow support. This should go a long way in helping with [...]

[Editors Note:  Today's entry is provided by Tracy Corbo, Senior Analyst, Enterprise Management Associates] On June 6 Apple kicked off their World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC ) 2011 and you probably did not pay attention, because it was not about new cool devices.  Well, you missed some really good stuff and it is worth going [...]

(Editor’s note:  Today’s post is by guest blogger and EMA Senior Analyst, Tracy Corbo) One of the many insights we gained while compiling EMA’s recent WAN Optimization Controller (WOC) Radar Report, and after talking to numerous WOC users, is that there are many situations where dedicated WAN links are simply not an option. Traditional WOC [...]

EMA recently studied WAN Optimization technologies, publishing an EMA Radar Report on the topic last month, and in the process compared 13 major solution suppliers. Part of that investigation included an assessment of each supplier’s mobile solutions, for helping to establish optimal application and service performance for endpoints that may or may not be able [...]

(Editor’s Note:  The following is a guest post by our newest EMA Senior Analyst, Tracy Corbo) EMA has been following the WAN optimization sector for some time. Back in 2008, EMA’s Network Management Megatrends research determined that depending on which IT teams you asked, their view towards WAN optimization was divergent. While those who identified [...]

Network management best practices still make sense in Cloud and Virtual server environments.