Networking and Infrastructure News Roundup: December 11 Edition

Keeping up with today's new technologies and the slew of products and services introduced to support them is a daunting task. Here is a brief list of some networking and infrastructure news of the week to help you navigate the choices.

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IEEE and IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA) announced the formation of a study group within the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet Working Group. With bandwidth demand growing across all areas of Ethernet connectivity globally, the IEEE 802.3 Beyond 400Gb/s Ethernet Study Group will explore initiating a new IEEE project that would standardize capabilities exceeding today's maximum data rate of 400 Gigabit per second (Gb/s) for IEEE 802.3, IEEE Standard for Ethernet. Expertise from across application spaces around the world will come together in the new study group to consider the definition of a project to define Ethernet rates beyond the current maximum rate currently defined for IEEE 802.3 Ethernet, 400 Gb/s.  

Cato Networks introduced the first API to a global SASE platform. With the Cato Cloud API, enterprises and MSPs can automatically provision new sites and policies, and monitor Cato network analytics and security events from SIEMs and other third-party platforms. The API uses GraphQL and interfaces to the entire Cato Cloud, not one location, replacing what would have been hundreds of third-party API calls with a single Cato Cloud request.

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, announced new capabilities for its SD-WAN portfolio – comprised of the Aruba SD-Branch and the recently acquired Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect solutions – designed to centrally monitor, manage, and automate connectivity from branch locations to Amazon Web Services (AWS). The Aruba SD-WAN portfolio integration with the new AWS Transit Gateway Connect simplifies network operations and management and enables customers to apply consistent quality of service and security policies across branch sites when connecting to Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (Amazon VPCs). Branch office users benefit from consistent performance and a high quality of experience.

Also, this week, Aruba announced new orchestration software, switch models for the distributed data center. The offerings include:

Arista Networks announced enhancements to Arista CloudEOS, providing native support for AWS Transit Gateway Connect. The integration of CloudEOS with AWS Transit Gateway Connect enables enterprise networks to cost-effectively and easily connect Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (Amazon VPCs) hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to enterprise campus, branch, cloud, and data center networks across the private WAN or public Internet connections.

Also, this week, Arista Networks announced a network observability software, DANZ Monitoring Fabric (DMF), on Arista switching platforms for enterprise-wide traffic visibility and contextual insights. Network observability is the next-generation, analytics-driven approach, delivering network visibility across data center, campus, and edge use cases. This new offering enables mission-critical monitoring for enterprise-wide traffic while improving efficiencies and reduced OpEx through the adoption of modern cloud networking principles.

NFINIT announced its new suite of object storage solutions: NFINIT AO (Active Object) and NFINIT Object LS (LightSpeed). The new offerings provide storage at a competitive cost per gigabyte, and they introduce NFINIT's new Free-gress model, which eliminates variable charges for egress (accessing data) and transactions. Out of the full stack providers to offer their own object storage product, NFINIT is one of the few in the country to completely eliminate additional fees on object storage. With NFINIT AO and Object LS, midsize businesses and enterprises can reduce the cost of storage by more than 40%.

Gluware, Inc. unveiled Gluware 4.0, its next-generation, cloud-delivered intent-based network automation platform. Gluware 4.0 introduces an expanded feature set and customization to help any sized network team automate the management, maintenance, and security of increasingly complex, mission-critical enterprise networks. Its new multi-engine architecture automates networking functions across a growing list of multi-vendor, multi-domain, and multi-cloud infrastructures to enhance the network agility, performance, and security that today's complex enterprise networks require.

In brief:

Hitachi Vantara announced the expansion of its E Series line of high performance NVMe all-flash arrays and additions to the HNAS family of NAS solutions aimed at midsized enterprises.

IBM Security announced new technology initiatives leveraging Amazon Web Services (AWS), designed to help businesses simplify and extend their security visibility across AWS and hybrid cloud environments.

Juniper Networks announced that the company has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Apstra, a leader in intent-based networking and automated closed-loop assurance.

If your company has networking and infrastructure news, send your announcements to [email protected].