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Enterprises Embrace Rich Media Delivery with ECDNs

2010-08-31T22:33:15Z

AT&T

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The rise of rich-media applications on corporate networks has many organizations seeking ways to reliably and cost-effectively deliver multimedia content to internal employees. Many are turning to enterprise content delivery networks, or ECDNs, to get the job done. As this AT&T paper shows, ECDN technologies not only reduce WAN bandwidth consumption, they can also reap productivity gains.

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New Public Forum Entries

2010-08-26T19:53:51Z

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Unified Threat Management Price/Performance Comparison

2010-08-25T17:36:29Z

WatchGuard Technologies

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Choosing the right network security solution is one of the most important decisions you will make for your IT infrastructure. With so many factors to consider when selecting the right product, it's easy to lose sight of one of the most important goals: getting the best performance for your security dollar.

Comparing the major brands by this all important metric - price/performance - can become a difficult chore. Though Cisco, Fortinet, Juniper, and SonicWall make it possible to derive this metric based on their own published numbers, WatchGuard has taken the next step and put them all together for you - so you can make a direct comparison among Unifed Threat Management vendors.

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2010 Midyear Security Report

2010-08-23T08:39:59Z

The Impact of Global Security Threats and Trends on the Enterprise
Cisco Systems

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Web 2.0, mobility, virtualization, and other dramatic shifts in how we communicate and collaborate are carving out a new landscape for business and for enterprise security.

The business world continues to evolve due to spectacular revolutionary forces that are changing the way we work, live, learn, and play, and how we communicate and share information. These changes aren't something enterprises can choose to take part in or ignore; in fact, they're already having a profound impact on your business and your life at this very moment, whether you are unaware of or welcome the change.

These changes are part of the dramatic shifts - "tectonic forces" - that are making it essential for businesses to rethink their approach to enterprise security. Gone are the days when a network firewall would deter teenagers looking to hack into corporate databases for the challenge, notoriety, or for the fun of it. Now, serious and well-resourced criminals with business plans are intent on stealing both personal data and business intelligence they can sell--and perimeter-based security alone cannot stop them.

The Cisco Midyear Security Report examines these changes and their impact on the enterprise, and highlights other significant trends and threats creating security challenges for organizations worldwide. The report also includes recommendations from Cisco security experts designed to help enterprises strengthen their security.

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Bringing Unified Communications to Life with Seamless Video Interoperability

2010-08-19T20:48:12Z

A Revealing Look at why Integrating Video with Unified Communications is a Winning Long-Term Strategy
E. Brent Kelly, Wainhouse Research
Sponsored by Avaya

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Video in the enterprise is growing by leaps and bounds. We estimate that over 50,000 additional video endpoints are added within enterprises every quarter. These endpoints run the gamete from high end telepresence suites to high definition group conferencing units to video kiosks. And, this does not count the desktop and mobile video that is also beginning to emerge on laptops, smartphones and consumer devices used by business professionals.

So how do organizations deal with this massive influx of new video capabilities? In spite of the fact that most enterprises still deploy video as a standalone capability, recent market research indicates that enterprises are increasingly recognizing the need to integrate video in with the rest of the enterprise communications fabric; that is, to create an integrated, unified communications infrastructure that includes all of the communications capabilities people need while providing them in an easy to use and consistent way. To obtain the greatest benefit from these individual components, enterprises are moving toward unified communications environments in which phones can call video units, IM sessions can escalate to web collaboration and audio/video sessions, and in which users can seamlessly and effortlessly utilize any communications mechanism available to them.

In this white paper we discuss the video solutions available today and provide a snapshot of the current video market. We discuss how video can be integrated with the unified communications environment, why this is a good idea, and the benefits that organizations will get by creating a unified communications strategy that includes video. We provide the ROI and customer evidence to illustrate that video-enabled unified communications is useful to real businesses. We close with compelling use case examples in which video is integrated with telephony as part of an overall collaboration and UC framework.

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Field Testing Installed Optical Fiber Cabling

2010-08-18T18:56:49Z

Fluke Networks

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This white paper reviews best practices for the technician performing field tests on installed optical fiber cabling. As traffic over networks expands and expectations of reliability increase, testing optical fiber cabling after installation is more important than ever before to assure the end-user that the installation was done properly and that the cabling will support Local Area Networks (LAN) into the future.

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Unified Communications for Dummies

2010-08-18T14:55:39Z

Lawrence Miller, CISSP
Avaya Second Custom Edition

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Today's tough global economy is forcing companies everywhere to look for innovative new solutions to help them reduce costs, increase productivity, and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. Unified Communications (UC) is one such solution that integrates many various business communications technologies and applications. UC also empowers an increasingly mobile workforce in a virtual workplace, allowing large companies and enterprises to achieve their business objectives (and much more) from virtually anywhere.

Unified Communications For Dummies, Avaya 2nd Custom Edition, provides an overview of UC: what it is, what capabilities and benefits it can provide for your company, and how to implement it successfully.

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Troubleshooting Your VoIP Ecosystem

2010-08-17T22:44:11Z

Integrated Research

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The VoIP call quality issues explored within this whitepaper include those experienced within the network, within the VoIP application and within devices in the voice stream. Its aim is to help you as a VoIP stakeholder troubleshoot issues from a telephony perspective within the overall data network. Enabling an end-to-end view of the entire VoIP ecosystem with PROGNOSIS helps you correlate, diagnose and resolve performance issues that affect VoIP quality. This results in reduced mean-time-to-repair, more streamlined troubleshooting processes and efficiency gains. Tangible benefits like these help you deliver better ROI on the investments you make in deploying and managing a high quality VoIP service.

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Successfully Mitigating Corporate Risk

2010-08-16T23:53:23Z

AT&T

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Emerging trends such as social networking, Web 2.0, shifts to mobile and wireless networking, virtualization and cloud computing are all helping to create complex security landscapes that are difficult to manage. It is becoming increasingly difficult to keep network equipment updated with the necessary software patches that will help prevent network breaches, data theft, malware and denial of service attacks. This paper discusses how to help reduce risk and successfully manage your security infrastructure through conducting vulnerability assessments, using discovery tools, adopting centralized policy setting and event correlation, and taking a cohesive approach to updating network equipment.

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The AT&T Telepresence Solution: Transforming Business at AT&T

2010-08-12T23:08:08Z

AT&T

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AT&T has adopted telepresence as both a service offering for customers and as a key communication tool for use within the AT&T enterprise. This paper details the gains AT&T has achieved from using the AT&T Telepresence Solution: Improved productivity, increased business velocity, controlled costs, strengthened business relationships and reduced environmental impact.

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The Mandate for Network Infrastructure Automation

2010-08-11T14:56:49Z

An Analysis by Jim Metzler, Ashton, Metzler & Associates
Webtorials Analyst Division

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In the last couple of years, server virtualization has become very popular in part because it reduces cost. Another reason for the popularity of server virtualization is that it enables IT organizations to provision virtual machines and to move virtual machines among physical servers, both within a given data center and between disparate data centers, in a matter of seconds or minutes. As described in this white paper, many IT organizations already make regular use of the capability to move virtual machines between servers and the interest that IT organizations have in dynamically provisioning virtual machines is increasing greatly.

The ability to dynamically provision and to dynamically move virtual machines between servers is an important step towards the ultimate goal of elastic or on-demand computing. When this goal is met, IT organizations will be able to respond to the demand for infrastructure resources with instant-on, real-time delivery of virtualized network services. However, a complex computer system is more than a virtual machine and although compute cycles have become virtual and dynamic, the rest of the overall computer system is still largely physical and static. As a result, while it is possible for an IT organization to provision or move a virtual machine in a matter of minutes, it can take weeks or months for the organization to implement the necessary changes to the rest of infrastructure.

This white paper identifies some of the challenges relative to implementing a dynamic infrastructure. This includes VLAN proliferation, the loss of visibility into the traffic within virtualized servers, the need to transfer configuration state information along with a virtual machine as well as the network and storage support that is needed. This white paper also identifies the progress that is being made relative to responding to these challenges. This includes the evolution of dynamic infrastructure management, virtualized performance management, virtualized security management, distributed virtual switching as well as orchestration and provisioning. This white paper concludes by highlighting the fact that just implementing new technologies will not enable IT organizations to realize the goal of elastic computing. IT organizations also need to implement streamlined processes that reflect the reality of a dynamic, virtualized IT infrastructure.

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Threat Defense for Borderless Networks

2010-08-10T13:48:53Z

Cisco Systems

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To protect today's borderless networks, IT managers must adapt by implementing faster, smarter security measures that monitor the constantly changing global landscape. This new white paper examines the security risks and needs of borderless networks, details a systematic plan of action, and describes how Cisco can help implement threat defenses that will serve you today and for years to come.

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Introduction to Carrier Ethernet VPNs

2010-08-08T18:22:24Z

Understanding the Alternatives
Juniper Networks

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There are a wide range of VPN technologies available. MPLS-based VPNs are the most prevalent technology types used today, with many based on the use of Ethernet transport to provide high-speed communications. This paper describes the various MPLS-based Ethernet VPN services and technologies which Juniper Networks® supports. These include Juniper's best-in-class VPN implementations, as well as alternatives which provide interoperability with deployed non-Juniper products. This paper is intended for marketing managers seeking to understand Ethernet VPN options, as well as technical managers seeking an overview of their technical alternatives.

This paper describes the Ethernet VPN capabilities supported by Juniper Networks. Although Ethernet VPNs can be implemented using various methods such as generic routing encapsulation (GRE), IPsec, Ethernet VLAN stacking, and MAC-in-MAC, the focus here is on the prevalent MPLS-based techniques.

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VPLS: The Switched Ethernet

2010-08-06T23:39:26Z

AT&T

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Virtual Private LAN Service is evolving into the next "in" technology. AT&T defines it as any-to-any Ethernet that can be either metro or long haul.

VPLS allows enterprises to scale bandwidth and is a good fit for customers who require meshed connectivity and want to control and manage routing.

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Dynamic Security for the New Network Data Center

2010-08-03T20:49:27Z

Juniper Networks

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Trends ranging from consolidation and virtualization to distributed applications and user mobility are reshaping the data center, bringing enterprises significant benefits, but also creating new security vulnerabilities. Consolidating servers and other resources in data centers helps organizations boost efficiency, maximize resources, and reduce costs. At the same time, technologies such as server virtualization and distributed applications have enabled enterprises to increase business agility while also cutting CapEx and OpEx. Mobile workers extend an enterprise's geographic reach and allow for 24x7 operations.

But these trends create a range of security challenges. Consolidation results in high volumes of traffic to and from the data center, which can strain the security infrastructure so crucial to protecting enterprise assets, operations, and reputation. Virtualization results in a lack of visibility into and control over traffic passing between virtual machines (VMs) on the same server. As a result, malicious traffic can propagate unchecked between VMs and potentially onto the physical data center network. Similarly, by creating highly distributed communication patterns with multiple flows per transaction, distributed applications pose a variety of security risks as well as making it difficult to enforce access entitlements and data privacy.

Mobile workers need anytime, anywhere access to a broad array of applications, further taxing the data center security infrastructure. The ever expanding matrix of users, devices, locations, and applications makes it difficult for IT staff to ensure that access controls and other security mechanisms are applied consistently to the same user at all times. IT is also struggling to combat evolving internal and external threats, make sense of a flood of logged events, and meet compliance mandates.

To date, security in data centers has been applied primarily at the perimeter using firewalls, and at the server level by installing host-based intrusion detection, identity enforcement, antivirus, and other software agents. With virtualization, applications on the same host can communicate without accessing the physical network, thereby circumventing traditional firewalls and breaking zones of trust. Server-based security isn't scalable, doesn't encompass the range of network-attached devices in the data center, and presents major operational challenges. To protect today's data center, enterprises need a unified security layer operating dynamically across the heterogeneous and ever changing data center infrastructure.

The network is ideally suited to provide visibility into the application traffic it carries and to act as an insertion point for policy enforcement devices. As a market leader in network security, Juniper Networks understands what's required to secure the data center environment. Juniper's comprehensive product portfolio combines high capacity and scalable platforms; application fluency; identity-based access enforcement; and centralized, automated management to deliver unified threat control across both physical and virtual systems. With Juniper's dynamic security solutions, enterprises can easily secure their data centers today and well into the future, as they adopt new business models and technologies such as cloud computing to fuel competitive advantage and their future success.

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