Well, the votes are in and once again we’re pleased to bring you some of the top new products that appeared at Interop 2011-Las Vegas. Every year I and my fellow judges are delighted to be able to review and compare some of the hottest technology available, and this year was no exception. This year we had 135 qualified entries for Best of Interop, and in reviewing the nominees this year the trend seems to be a focus on a number of great products to allocate, secure, manage and improve the performance of what’s becoming an increasingly extended IT environment.

In previous years, the emphasis was on providing many of the underlying technologies for virtualized and cloud resources, but for 2011 a number of the contenders for Best of Interop are looking at ways to provide better visibility and control of these distributed types of services. Recent headlines about service outages in the cloud just reinforce the need for products and services that not only enable the use of distributed resources, but protect and provide contingencies for cloud workload interruptions; whether they be internal or external to your enterprise. – Steven Hill – Lead Judge, Best of Interop 2011

Best of Interop (Overall) and Cloud Computing & Virtualization Category Winner

VMware - VMware vCenter Operations Standard 1.0
Judges: Charles Babcock & Jonathan Feldman

VMware’s vCenter Operations is another one of those products where you can see an ambitious company testing the limits of what can be done from an existing position of strength. It is a bold effort to combine the data center disciplines of system configuration, performance management and capacity management into one management tool and apply them to what in the future will be referred to as the private cloud.

Granted vCenter Operations is aimed at virtual machines, not hardware devices, and that is the departure point from its predecessors in the systems management field. But the virtual world has emerged with new needs. The established world of systems management is ill equipped to relate the configuration of a virtual machine to the capacity - or lack of it - on a set of host servers and then manage those VMs as they start dynamically moving around. New tools are needed and VCenter Operations shows that VMware is responding to the call with a vision, breadth and grasp of what it’s going to take to get there.

VMware already has tools to get a virtual machine provisioned, spun up and running and move it around, such as vCenter and vSphere. VCenter Operations draws information out of them and feeds it into a powerful analytics engine, gained last year in the Integrion acquisition. VCenter Operations can compare current operations to baseline statistics, defining what is normal for its complex environment. Then, instead of issuing alerts and cryptic messages, it assigns a value in the form of a green, yellow or red symbol for the server it is examining in three categories: Workload, Health and Capacity.

With this tool, VMware moves up from object-based system monitoring, with its constant stream of alerts, to a problem-based environmental picture. VCenter Operations can detect when performance has fallen below a norm. It can look inside a host to see how each virtual machine is performing, or, if necessary, it can detect whether the host itself is overloaded. If we are moving toward a user self-provisioning environment, known as the private cloud, tools like vCenter Operations are going to be needed, not only to get there but to keep it running. – Charles Babcock

Category: Collaboration

Vidyo Inc. - VidyoMobile
Judges: Eric Krapf & Michael Healey

VidyoMobile promises to extend high-quality video conferencing to mobile users who will increasingly demand it. Especially as we move into a 4G world, video is going to be one of the most important mobile applications, and Vidyo’s ability to deploy its client directly on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets represents a powerful recognition that enterprise video is going mobile. The Best of Interop judges for the Collaboration category found that Vidyo’s submission is an important step towards enabling enterprise mobility.

One of the biggest challenges to mobile video will be the potential for inconsistent quality, and in this area, too, VidyoMobile represents a commendable step forward for the industry. Vidyo’s Adaptive Video Layering architecture promises to deliver high-definition 720p video with resolution up to VGA on smartphones and tablets. This is critical, especially in enterprise environments, where lower-quality video and audio act as a constraint upon widespread adoption.

In short, VidyoMobile will let enterprises quickly and efficiently deploy a high-quality, bandwidth-efficient video client to smartphones and tablets across the enterprise, helping to drive adoption of mobile video within the enterprise. As such, it is a worthy of recognition as Best of Interop for the Collaboration category. – Eric Krapf

Category: Data Center & Storage

Alcatel-Lucent – Alcatel-Lucent Data Center Switching Solution Blueprint
Judges: Kurt Marko and Howard Marks

Radical changes are coming to data centers on a number of fronts, from the flattening and convergence of data and storage networks to the transformation of power and cooling hardware into smart, adaptive systems. Yet in a category so broad, it's easy to see where the most monumental and strategically significant technical innovations and vendor battles are occurring this year by looking at our three finalists, all of which are breaking new ground in improving the nervous system of every data center: the network. While not a household name in enterprise wiring closets, our winner, Alcatel-Lucent, is clearly exploiting its decades-long history as a preeminent supplier to telecoms and ISPs alike in developing its Data Center Switching Blueprint, which includes an innovative edge network mesh and companion switch, for an MPLS-compatible core coupled with management software designed for today's virtualized workloads.

While co-finalist Mellanox won the edge-switch speeds-and-feeds battle with its impressive SX1036 10/40 Gigabit Ethernet device, Alcatel-Lucent prevailed by providing plenty of 10 Gigabit edge capacity, an edge mesh directly supporting over 200 server ports, a “pod” architecture extensible to more than 14,000 ports at multiple sites, and a management stack providing virtual network profiles that can bind network configuration to virtualized applications and follow them as they migrate throughout the infrastructure -- both within and between data centers. The pod design allows network managers to start small, with a mesh of six Omniswitch 6900 edge devices, and grow into a multisite fabric using Alcatel-Lucent's OS 10000 core routers. Because it uses Shortest Path Bridging and is compatible with MPLS WANs, the fabric can span multiple data centers and even public ISPs or cloud providers. This incremental, modular architecture is one important factor distinguishing Alcatel-Lucent's design from our other co-finalist, Juniper's QFabric. While both provide flat, high-performance, massively scaleable networks, QFabric seems more appropriate for a wholesale data center redesign, as it requires a greater architectural, hardware, and thus budgetary, commitment to deliver on the promise of a single flat yet highly scalable network.

All three finalists were strong entrants. We can't help but admire the QFabric's innovative, extensible switch backplane and the impressive custom silicon enabling Mellanox to deliver 36 40 Gigabit ports in a 1U box. But in the end, Alcatel-Lucent had the most compelling design and supporting products for building extremely scalable, high-performance, cloud-like data center networks suitable for today's virtualized applications. – Kurt Marko

Category: Infrastructure

NEC Corporation – NEC ProgrammableFlow Switch
Judges: Mike Fratto & Jake McTigue

The NEC ProgrammableFlow switch has been chosen as a Best of Interop Category Winner because it is advancing networking technology in innovative ways. OpenFlow is a protocol that allows a centralized controller to manipulate the forwarding tables on switches and routers. The centralized control provides an opportunity to radically change the way networks are designed and managed by reducing the number of routing and switching protocols in use today. OpenFlow also enables new techniques like easily managing physical and virtual machine mobility.

The PF5240 is a hybrid switch supports both OpenFlow and native switching and routing simultaneously so administrators can segment a portion of the switch ports to OpenFlow control and the remainder to native control. The hybrid approach allows organizations to use OpenFlow for switch ports when it makes sense and for traditional switching/routing when needed. The real power of the ProgrammableFlow switch becomes apparent when, through a controller, you can virtualize the layer 2/3 topology regardless of the underlying physical layout and visualize the network paths. The OpenFlow network can be further segregated into multiple tenants regardless of the source or destination.

OpenFlow and the PF5240 improves on bandwidth reporting of traffic trends. Unlike flow based monitoring, the PF5240 collects and reports back vital stats on flows and not just a sampling. That give s a more accurate picture of network and application behavior that alternatives.

The ProgrammableFlow PF5240 is a 48 port 10/100/1000 Mbps switch with 4 10Gb SFP+ uplinks. The PF5240 has all the switch functions we’d expect to see in a top of rack switch including redundant power supplies, remote management, and routing features including IPv6 support. – Mike Fratto

Category: Network Management, Monitoring and Testing

BreakingPoint Systems, Inc. - BreakingPoint FireStorm CTM
Judges: Mike Fratto & Steven Hill

What would you do if every single adult in the United States decided to ping your data center all at the same time? Seriously… do you think it would it weather the storm or simply fold like a plastic grocery bag? Many companies will never need to find that out, but there are a growing number of companies that regularly deal with that kind of traffic and more, and for them the question becomes how to find out how resilient they really are before some unforeseen event does it for them. We suggest the FireStorm Cyber Tomography Machine (CTM) from BreakingPoint Systems, Inc. may be just what the doctor ordered.

Really big systems need really big testing tools; and brother, the FireStorm CTM is just that. Capable of emulating 90,000,000 concurrent users simultaneously, a fully equipped FireStorm chassis only takes up 3 rack units of space, yet can, and more importantly, WILL stress your environment right to the breaking point. No pun intended; the people at BreakingPoint Systems actually take a great deal of pride in helping companies find out just when and how their systems will fail so they don’t have to find out later - the hard way.

The modular chassis of a FireStorm CTM starts with a FireStorm control module and supports up to three, four-port, 10-Gigabit Ethernet modules; bringing its total bandwidth to 120-Gigabits of combined throughput. But what makes the FireStorm CTM even more impressive is that it doesn’t just focus on raw infrastructure throughput alone; it’s also a detailed testing solution that that provides highly accurate modeling templates for 150 common, application-specific protocols as well as over 4,500 types of security exploits right out of the box.

What we really liked about the FireStorm was the simplicity that it brings to the complex science of production modeling. If you’ve done any performance testing at all you already know that the most challenging part of testing is designing a load matrix that comes even close to a real production environment. The FireStorm comes pre-loaded with a large number of pre-configured testing templates that can easily mirror an extremely wide variety of typical production scenarios. From that point you can then insert any number of potential security threats to further emulate real-world use conditions and generate granular reports with the precise visibility of its 10-nanosecond resolution.

Another impressive aspect of this testing brute was the BreakingPoint Resiliency Score Lab. This is an extremely simplified, wizard-driven testing option that allows even non-expert users to initiate a highly-detailed test suite that generates a verifiable, repeatable and easy to understand Data Center Resiliency Score. It’s this combination of power, simplicity, flexibility and turnkey functionality that makes the FireStorm CTM a truly worthy Category Winner for Best of Interop 2011. And don’t let the six-figure price tag put you off. When you try to calculate the cost of all the servers, applications and networking tools, (not to mention test development time), necessary to even come close to the capabilities of a single FireStorm I think you’ll find the BreakingPoint FireStorm CTM an amazing bargain. And whatever you do, don’t run it on a system in production… – Steven Hill

Category: Performance Optimization

Talari Networks - Mercury T750 APN Appliance
Judges: Michael Biddick & Jim Rapoza

In a tough economy, frugal IT shops are looking to cut costs and Talari can help organizations move away from private WANs and toward secure, well performing public Internet connections. Performance of the WAN is key – but price is also part of the equation. Talari can enable better WAN performance at reduced cost. The Talari Networks Mercury T750 combines multiple sources of abundant and inexpensive public Internet connectivity to deliver business-class reliability & predictable performance for enterprises, drastically reducing WAN costs.

By combining and operating public Internet connectivity in parallel, the T750 enables enterprises to utilize inexpensive bandwidth that has previously been unusable due to concerns over its performance and reliability. As a result, enterprise WAN customers: gain 30x to 100x the bandwidth per dollar; can reduce monthly WAN service costs by 40%-90%; and have greater reliability and application performance predictability than existing private WANs that use single-provider Frame Relay or MPLS.

Talari can continuously monitor the state of all available networks, using all the bandwidth most of the time, and immediately re-directing traffic to alternate paths sub-second. The T750 enables enterprises to use public WAN bandwidth in a way that achieves equal to or better performance and predictability than private WAN bandwidth. - Michael Biddick

Category: Security

Barracuda Networks, Inc. - Barracuda Flex
Judges: Tim Wilson & Randy George

One of the hallmarks of security technology today is that it seldom fits right. Many of the tools are designed for consumers; others are designed primarily for Fortune 1000 enterprises with deep pockets. For companies in the middle – that is to say, most companies – most solutions require a shoehorn or a lot of extra padding. Enter Flex, a new package of products from Barracuda, which actually allows the enterprise to tailor a solution to its needs in a form that’s affordable. The individual technologies offered in the Flex package may not be revolutionary, but there is some genius in the way they are packaged and delivered.

As a tool for SMBs that don’t have the time or expertise to buy these products separately, Flex is a real find. It features malware protection and content filtering, including antivirus, anti-spyware, behavior analysis, intrusion detection, anti-spam, email filtering, policy management, data leak prevention, bandwidth management, rules management, traffic monitoring, application control, botnet protection, and other capabilities in a single package.

Perhaps even more importantly, users can choose to implement these capabilities in a variety of different ways – as an on-premises appliance, as an SaaS service, or as a remote agent on mobile/home devices. This enables the user to choose the level of protection they want to implement themselves, and outsource the rest to a third party provider. And it’s all offered in an affordable pricing scheme that starts at $1 per user. This is a package that makes security available and affordable to every company, rather than just those with deep pockets or great expertise. – Tim Wilson

Category: Wireless & Mobility

Citrix Systems - Citrix Receiver for the iPhone
Judges: Mike Finneran & Grant Moerschel

It is no secret that mobility is sweeping through the enterprise, and users are demanding access to key applications using an ever-widening array of smartphones and tablets. Recognizing the importance of this trend, Citrix answers the call by introducing a fourth generation iOS application to support both iPhone and iPad access. This release complements other Citrix Receiver flavors for other mobile platforms that include Android, Blackberry, and Windows mobile. Citrix promises future support for webOS, Blackberry Playbook, and Chrome notebooks. An easy to install application, the Citrix Receiver delivers a secure, seamless and consistent on-demand access to corporate data, business apps and desktops. All Receiver implementations share a similar look and feel to ease the user learning curve.

The Citrix Receiver for the iPhone enables Apple users the ability to access Citrix’s virtual desktop and any Windows, Web or SaaS app. The app offers one-tap connect to read, create and share documents, and can be downloaded for free from the iTunes store or from any private app store you operate through a mobile device management system. Receiver provides a range of useful features including an on-screen virtual track pad or if used with iOS, the ability to use a separate iPhone as an external trackpad via Bluetooth. The interface automatically adjusts for connection bandwidth whether you’re using it over Wi-Fi, 4G, 3G, or even slower EDGE network. To ensure security and regulatory compliance, no data is stored on the mobile device itself since the actual apps are operated remotely at the data center.

The Citrix Receiver for the iPhone was chosen for this award because of its consistent, simple implementation across this and other platforms and its ability to truly foster business mobility. - Mike Finneran

Category: Best Start-Up

Ciphertex Data Security
Judges: Steven Hill & Andrew Conry-Murray

Small to medium-sized storage systems have been popping up everywhere these days, but security for those easily “relocated” storage systems has usually been an afterthought; if it’s even being considered at all. Our Best Startup Winner – Ciphertex – may be one of the first SMB storage companies that take data security just as seriously as the other key storage variables of price, performance and data protection. We must say, it’s always refreshing when companies look at the big picture when developing their product strategy.

Ciphertex came to our attention through one of their new storage systems, the CX-RANGER-EX; a portable AES 256-bit hardware-based encrypted RAID system with eSATA, FireWire 800, USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 connectivity and offering up to 15 Terabytes of storage capacity. Though the product itself was a little overshadowed by our other Data Center BOI Finalists for 2011, we couldn’t help but be impressed with the thought process behind the products and services that Ciphertex offers overall.

During our due-diligence research we found that the list of top company executives is an impressive group of seasoned storage and security professionals, and that expertise clearly shows in the design of their product matrix. We were also pleased by the fact that the degree of storage security and portability available with Ciphertex storage hardware doesn’t come at a premium either; a quick review of their products showed a number of very reasonably-priced storage devices as well as a number of security-based services that deserve further examination.

The service offerings listed on their website could be directed at any number of verticals that require detailed data security or forensic data services. However, their secure storage devices are priced comparably or better than other systems without security offerings, so it’s likely that Ciphertex portable storage solutions would be a good fit for practically any small to medium storage application; whether security was a priority or not. – Steven Hill