WEI Tech Exchange

Cisco ACI: An SDN Solution for Digital Transformation

By Greg LaBrie |   Nov 20, 2018

Companies live in an environment today in which the “time to value” is diminishing constantly. In order to attain continuous profitability, IT managers and their staffs must focus on strategic value added projects rather than dissipate their time with routine maintenance of the existing infrastructure. Multiple studies point out that routine maintenance is currently consuming as much as 80% of IT budgets. Simply put, IT Managers must find a new paradigm that can deliver their organization to the promised land.

Defend Your Enterprise Network with Micro-Segmentation

By Greg LaBrie |   Oct 30, 2018

Data center architectures have continually evolved to meet the needs of mobile, social, big data, and cloud applications--and enterprise security solutions have evolved as well to support the new security needs of these applications in distributed data centers.

How Do VMware NSX and Fortinet FortiGate Work Together?

By Greg LaBrie |   Sep 18, 2018

With an increasing number of enterprises investing in digital transformation and the software defined data center (SDDC), IT leaders are getting accustomed to managing overwhelming large volumes of data and business applications. With this shift, network security is proving to be a foundational (and required) layer when it comes to building the data center needed to drive business of today.

The HPE and Arista Converged Architecture portfolio – Why They are Better Together

By Greg LaBrie |   Jun 14, 2018

Some things are meant to be together. Think of your favorite foods like peanut butter and jelly, macaroni and cheese, bacon and eggs. When it comes to IT, one can argue that the partnership between HPE and Arista is meant to be as well. In today’s datacenter in which the traditional worlds of computer, storage, and cloud fuse together, this collaboration between these two innovative giants is melding the world’s leading servers and storage with high-performance networking solutions into a single deliverable platform. Together they are collaborating to create new architectural best practices designed to take enterprises to the cloud. The result is the ability to scale large cluster growth, lower costs, and drive high compute efficiencies. Their shared vision of delivering secure Hybrid IT solutions built on industry-leading software defined infrastructure is indeed one that can help in a world in which change is the only constant.

Cisco ACI Case Study: Data Center Relocation and Innovation

By Greg LaBrie |   Dec 15, 2016

Writer's note: Every Thursday in November and December, this blog will highlight the SDN solution, Cisco ACI. As market acceptance and adoption increases for SDN, IT professionals can count on WEI to fairly evaluate the market leading SDN solutions available today.

Several analysts have predicted a rise in the adoption of SDN and software-defined technologies in the years ahead. We stand by the prediction as our networking solution engineers often get asked about our experience implementing the market leading SDN solutions available today. Read through this example of how WEI assisted its customer with a data center relocation and consolidation project that was enhanced by the implementation of Cisco ACI -- which presents a new networking model that leverages policy-based networking.

Cisco ACI Takes your Data Center to the Next Level with Nexus 9000 Switches

By Josh Cronin |   Dec 08, 2016

Writer's note: Every Thursday in November and December, this blog will highlight the SDN solution, Cisco ACI. As market acceptance and adoption increases for SDN, IT professionals can count on WEI to fairly evaluate the market leading SDN solutions available today.

Networks are continuously undergoing some level of transformation and conversion to new technologies and bandwidth capabilities. It is the nature of the beast and one that data center managers are all too familiar with. However, IT leaders are facing increasing levels of required network alterations and conversions today due to several emerging trends:

Cisco ACI Secures Your Enterprise through Microsegmentation

By Greg LaBrie |   Nov 24, 2016

Writer's note: Every Thursday in November and December, this blog will highlight the SDN solution, Cisco ACI. As market acceptance and adoption increases for SDN, IT professionals can count on WEI to fairly evaluate the market leading SDN solutions available today.

There’s a lot of talk about SDN solutions today such as Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure. In fact, Cisco ACI is the industry’s most comprehensive software defined networking (SDN) architecture to date. By integrating ACI into IT operations, IT now has the ability to align IT services with business objectives and policy requirements. [click to tweet] Achieving this organizational transformation can be a game changer for most any organization, allowing them to streamline their services at large and gain greater efficiencies and profit margins. Instead of serving its traditional role as a cost bucket, IT can become a leader, introducing and initiating value added projects that recognizably add to the profitability and success of the business.

Software Defined Systems: 5 Major Benefits to the Enterprise

By Greg LaBrie |   Jun 02, 2016

Are you considering migrating to software defined systems to automate just about everything in your infrastructure? A software defined system uses software to automate and virtualize the main components of your IT architecture: Compute, Networking, and Storage. There are a number of benefits of software defined technology and today we will highlight five major benefits, we call them the 5 A’s.

Software Defined Networking Explained

By Greg LaBrie |   May 17, 2016

Software defined networking (SDN) has emerged as a versatile, budget-friendly and dynamic architecture that allows IT managers to respond quickly to business demands and manage cloud networks in a central environment. It’s a new revolution in IT that can help propel your business ahead of the competition and deliver an impactful change. Surely you’ve seen that SDN can provide many benefits, but like any new IT project, you should make sure you are well-versed in the approach before deploying a new strategy.