Interop: Networking Vendors Race To Open Cloud Bottlenecks

Networking vendors are racing ahead to solve technology bottlenecks standing in the way of the growth of cloud computing, and on Tuesday at Interop 2012 in Las Vegas, several leading networkers described their efforts.

Executives from Cisco, Zynga, Avaya, Dell, SingTel and Google each described issues they are addressing as they develop cloud networking platforms.

Padmasree Warrior, Cisco CTO, senior vice president for engineering and general manager for Enterprise Business, said Cisco is building open, programmable networks through APIs, which will have the capacity to be virtualized and secure.

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She said the company in June will introduce its much-anticipated Cisco Cloud Connect, cloud management platform. ’It will enable us to have security for public and private cloud environments,’ she said. ’Cisco’s strategy is to support an open ecosystem, and we will continue to build public clouds and private clouds.’

Allan Leinwand, CTO for Infrastructure Engineering, for the Internet games company Zynga, outlined how his company built a private cloud, called Z Cloud, to work with its public cloud to handle its massive growth as its games drew millions of players.

Zynga could make decisions about what applications it wanted to keep within its private cloud and what it could send through its public cloud, Leinward said.

’Whether you have two servers or 2,000 servers, you can use private and public clouds together,’ Leinwand said. ’The critical data that drives your business is still in your data center and that’s where private clouds are going. Hybrid cloud computing brings it all together.’

Marc Randall, senior vice president and general manager, Avaya, emphasized making the network ’Cloud easy,’ so that data can flow seamlessly and quickly through networks. ’Like it or not, you users are going to remember you by the quality of service you deliver to them, and they will use QoS benchmarks,’ he said.

For example, Avaya’s Identity Engine 8.0 enables unified wired and wireless network access to employees, guests and their devices without compromising enterprise security and addresses bring-your-own-device issues.

NEXT: Execs Speak To Cloud Connectivity And Collaboration

Many cloud issues slowing connectivity and collaboration through the cloud are getting addressed through the rollout of ambitious projects, such as Translational Genomics Research Institute, with a Dell technology, efforts to find ways to treat cancer attacking children.

Dell helped the institute utilize the cloud, integrated data analytics, and high-performance computing to share new research results across 18 medical groups throughout the country.

’We are dealing not just with the volume of data but its complexity, linking it to prior knowledge so we can access the information to help the patient,’ said Dr. Spyro Mousses, vice president for the Office for Innovation and director of the Center for BioIntelligence Translational Genomics Research Institute. ’We’ve tried to use this as an open technology providing awareness across the network. Dell provides a backbone to integrate these technologies.’

Singapore Telecommunications Limited, or Singtel, is also integrating technologies through clouds on a grand scale as one of the largest IT service and cloud providers in the Asia/Pacific region.

Bill Chang, executive vice president of SingTel's Business Group, with a $50 billion market capitalization, is offering infrastructure services, managed services and cloud services across several countries, many of which have different cultures, compliance and regulatory issues.

Chang said his company’s ability to provide cloud services as a teleco provider is helping overcome many issues because telecos can manage across many platforms. ’The cloud is changing our business, giving us the ability to pull together for our customer end-to-end services,’ he said.

Google discovered new ways to offer productivity applications through a browser in the cloud in contrast to the licensed software businesses have been using for a generation, said Jonathan Rochelle, director of Google Enterprise.

Google Apps allows users to be more collaborative and creative he said. ’We wanted to let people be able to work together and let them work in ways they would be more productive,’ he said.