Earlier this year, Riverbed released a product known as the “Granite Edge Virtual Server Infrastructure (VSI)” to optimize the performance of many of the applications that it’s core product, Steelhead, does not. 

For those not familiar with the differences between Steelhead and Granite, the traditional Steelhead product optimizes the performance of file-based applications, such as Word and Exchange, through a number of acceleration technologies such as compression and TCP optimization.  Granite addresses block level applications such as database and virtual machines. 

While the continued growth of Steelhead demonstrated that there were a number of “killer apps” for it, the killer application for Granite was not obvious, since there aren’t that many block storage based applications run in the data center. 

Cloud has obviously become one of the biggest, if not the biggest, topics of conversation in the tech industry today. I’ve done a number of presentations, panels and roundtables on the subject and the big topic of conversation is always security and deployment strategy, which makes sense based on where we are in the evolution of cloud. However, I do think one of the often overlooked topics of investigation is the impact on the network and how to optimize user experience.

Legacy networks are built with a “hub and spoke” design. That is, all branches connect to a single “hub” location from which they receive network-enabled services, including Internet access. So, with the hub and spoke design, all traffic, in effect, “trombones” where it comes into the central location and then back up one of the spokes to a branch office.

The appeal has nothing to do with VoIP, but has to do with video interoperability.

Earlier today Cisco posted a blog that indicated the company is appealing the European Commission’s approval of the Microsoft/Skype merger to the General Court of the European Union. The blog also indicated that Messagenet, an Italian Service Provider, has joined Cisco in the appeal.

Contrary to what one might think, the appeal has nothing to do with VoIP, but has to do with video interoperability. As Cisco stated in their blog, their goal is to “make video calling as easy and seamless as an email is today. Making a video-to-video call should be as easy as dialing a phone number.”

Frankly, this should be the goal for the entire video industry yet, despite advancements in this area in the last couple of years, we’re still light years away from achieving this. Solving this problem would be greatly beneficial to the entire video industry and would create a “rising tide” that would lift all the boats. Metcalf’s Law states the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected end points. More connected end points means more value. The video industry has many end points but they’re all in independent islands, so the value remains limited.