Aruba Networks Introduces the First BYOD Solution to Securely Provision and Onboard iOS, Android, Mac OS X and Windows 7 Mobile Devices on Any Network

Aruba ClearPass enables IT resource ‘rightsizing’ and is designed to help businesses realize the benefits of BYOD while sharply reducing costs and staff burden   

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – February 21, 2012 – Aruba Networks, Inc., (NASDAQ:ARUN) today introduced Aruba ClearPass, an access management system designed to simplify and automate the secure provisioning of mobile devices on any enterprise network. The Aruba ClearPass solution is designed to enable IT organizations to both drive down mobility services management costs and rapidly scale to address the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) phenomenon.

“BYOD can be a double-edged sword for enterprise IT departments today,” said Zeus Kerravala, principal of ZK Research. “On one hand, there are great productivity gains to be had by enabling workers to use their own devices on the business network. On the other, provisioning, securing and managing those devices is a nightmare for IT. Solutions such as Aruba’s ClearPass portfolio offload the work from IT, while the business gets to reap the benefits of BYOD.”

Previously available solutions require IT departments to rip out much of their existing infrastructure and replace it with an expensive and confusing array of devices. When factoring in the cost of the infrastructure upgrades, Aruba’s ClearPass can save customers up to 76 percent over “forklift” options that lack the full range of capabilities required to deliver comprehensive mobility services management.

Adding to the complexity, Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions, while focusing on the device management, do not typically address the need to provision and control network access for the device, forcing yet another solution for network access controls. Aruba’s ClearPass portfolio integrates network access controls with automated device provisioning and can be deployed on any existing network – wired, wireless or VPN – as a non-disruptive overlay. Aruba ClearPass also automates burdensome policy management and device health checks, enabling IT to onboard and control mobile devices at lower cost and with less complexity while improving network security.

Read Full Article             Watch Now: Introducing Secure BYOD over any network

Comm Solutions is an Aruba Networks Platinum Partner, see here for more information http://www.commsolutions.com/index.php/partner/aruba-networks

Citrix CloudStack 3 Brings the Power of Amazon-Style Clouds to Customers of All Sizes

Citrix Announces Availability of CloudStack 3, Customer Momentum, and New “Citrix Ready” Cloud Verification Program

SANTA CLARA, Calif., – CLOUD CONNECT, BOOTH 509 » 2/13/2012 » Today at Cloud Connect 2012, Citrix announced the general availability of Citrix CloudStack™ 3, the first release of the market leading open source cloud platform under the Citrix brand. CloudStack is already the world’s most successful platform for public clouds, powering over $1B in revenue for more than 85 large scale production clouds, including some of the biggest brands in the industry. With the new CloudStack 3 release, Citrix brings the power of true Amazon-style clouds to customers of all sizes. For the first time, enterprise customers who want to build clouds the way the world’s most successful clouds are built, can quickly and easily transform virtualized datacenter resources into automated, elastic, self-service clouds.

Citrix CloudStack is a key component of the Citrix cloud computing portfolio, providing customers with solutions that make it easy to Build new clouds, Connect to existing cloud services, and Deliver any cloud with the best security, performance and reliability. The Cloud Era is built on a completely different set of assumptions than past generations of IT – in fact, many of the exceptions from the PC Era now represent the norm in the Cloud Era. This is forcing enterprise IT organizations to reevaluate IT strategies, causing them to search for lower costs, greater capacity and improved agility. The Citrix cloud portfolio is designed to help customers accelerate this Cloud Era innovation by making inexpensive compute power accessible to anyone, allowing people to work from anywhere any device, and enhancing business agility.

Since its introduction, CloudStack has rapidly become the leading commercial open source platform for building, managing and delivering highly scalable infrastructure-as-a-service clouds for a wide range of customers such as Datapipe, Edmunds.com, IDC Frontier, Nokia Research and Zynga. CloudStack is designed to ensure organizations can build production cloud environments on a platform designed for economics, elasticity and scale. It is not a traditional enterprise server virtualization platform with cloud-like management layers on top. Rather, it was designed from the ground up as an open, multi-hypervisor platform to help customers build public and private clouds the way the world’s most innovative clouds are built – simple, automated, elastic, scalable and efficient. New capabilities in CloudStack 3 focus on openness, flexibility and completeness and include:
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Comm Solutions is a Citrix Systems Gold Partner, learn more here http://www.commsolutions.com/citrix

Hard Drive Prices to Remain High Through 2014

Inventories won’t be back to normal untillater this year
 

Aruba Networks- Bring your own Device

Aruba Networks will be introducing BYOD over any vendor’s network. Join a webinar on February 21st, 2012 to learn more about these products.

Register today! .. http://bit.ly/y1l8WV

Customers and Partners Accelerate Time to Market and Improve Efficiency by Up to 60% with Cloud Services Built on NetApp

Leading Service Provider Program Nearly Doubles in Size in Six Months, Enables Partners to Increase Profits and Help Customers Succeed with NetApp

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — January 18, 2012 — Organizations worldwide are turning to cloud services to gain efficiencies and respond faster to today’s rapidly changing business demands. Service providers play a critical role in bringing cloud services to market and helping customers make strategic infrastructure decisions. Together, NetApp and its service provider partners have achieved proven success as trusted advisors to these customers. By collaborating with NetApp and its partners, customers are achieving accelerated business results with cloud solutions ranging from on-premise private cloud solutions to off-premise public cloud services.

NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) today announced that customers are reducing costs, managing business growth, and improving customer service with cloud services built on NetApp® technologies. These cloud services are delivered through a global ecosystem of service providers who benefit from the NetApp Partner Program for Service Providers, which was the first of its kind in the storage industry. Over the past six months, this global partner ecosystem has nearly doubled in size with the addition of more than 20 new partners; today it includes more than 50 service providers. In partnership with NetApp, these service providers deliver more than 90 innovative services that help customers accelerate and simplify their transition to private and public clouds.

“NetApp’s success in establishing a strong partner ecosystem has enabled many of our enterprise and midsize business customers to achieve greater value, speed, and efficiency by leveraging cloud services offered by partners participating in the NetApp Partner Program for Service Providers,” said Julie Parrish, senior vice president, Global Partner Sales at NetApp. “NetApp is focused on collaborating with partners – not competing with them – to help them increase their revenue, grow their businesses, and help customers succeed in capitalizing on the opportunities that adoption of public and private cloud solutions offer.”

Customers Accelerate Business with Cloud Services from NetApp Service Provider Partners
World-class service providers are collaborating with NetApp as their partner of choice to build, deploy, and sell differentiated cloud service offerings that help customers improve business outcomes.

About the Program

  • The NetApp Partner Program for Service Providers enables service provider partners to build differentiated, enterprise-class cloud service offerings and to operate profitably based on low-cost and predictable service levels.
  • NetApp welcomes the following new service provider partners, who bring enhanced portfolios of services to our customers across multiple geographies: AAPT, Adapt, Artisan Infrastructure, BSNL-Sai Infosystems, ControlCircle, Datacom, dinCloud, Easy Street, Fujitsu Asia, Fujitsu Thailand, Heitech Managed Services, IT-LifeLine, K-Opti.com, KVH, NTT Europe, Phoenix NAP, Proact MCS, StratITsphere, Stratogen, Nihon Unisys, NSSOL, NS Solutions, Telus, Tokai Communication, Windstream, and Wipro.

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Comm Solutions is a NetApp partner, find out more information here: http://www.commsolutions.com/index.php/partner/netapp

Palo Alto Research: Employees Three Times More Active on Social Networking Applications Than Previous Year

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 17, 2012 – New research published by Palo Alto Networks™, the network security company, indicates explosive growth in global social networking and browser-based file sharing on corporate networks, with a 300 percent increase in active social networking (e.g., posting, applications) compared with activity during the same period in the latter half of 2010. The Palo Alto Networks Application Usage and Risk Report provides a global view into application usage based on assessments of the raw application traffic from more than 1,600 enterprises between April 2011 and November 2011.

“Whether or not employees are using social networks or sharing files at work is no longer a question; this data clearly demonstrates that users are embracing and actively using such applications,” said René Bonvanie, chief marketing officer at Palo Alto Networks. “Companies must determine how to safely enable these technologies on their networks so that users can maintain the levels of productivity that many of these applications can afford, while at the same time ensuring that their corporate networks and users are protected against all threats.”

The report focuses on three primary findings:

  • Social media use is more active; Twitter has gained significant mainstream traction in the workplace: Since October 2010, social networking usage patterns have become more active with bandwidth consumption for Facebook Apps, Social Plugins, and posting increasing from 5 percent (October 2010) to 25 percent (December 2011) when measured as a percentage of total social networking bandwidth. Twitter browsing at work alone grew by more than 700 percent year-over-year.
  • Widespread file sharing use requires a balanced response: File sharing sites continue to be used on most networks, appearing on the networks of 92 percent of the participating organizations. In total, 65 different browser-based file-sharing variants were found with an average of 13 being used in each of the analyzed organizations. The report also explores a variety of risks associated with browser-based file-sharing applications, which varies by application and use case. However, the use of evasive techniques by these applications implies that they are often operating unchecked on corporate networks.
  • The types of traffic on enterprise networks is changing: Web applications that use TCP port 80, the standard port associated with HTTP web browsing traffic, actually represent a minority of the traffic on enterprise networks for the first time ever. The 297 applications that use only TCP port 80 and no other port by default represent a mere 25 percent of the applications and 32 percent of the bandwidth observed, meaning that a standard web browsing-focused security model actually protects a minority of an organization’s traffic.

“This is the largest sample size of actual application traffic from enterprises worldwide that we have analyzed since we began this area of research in Spring 2008,” said Matt Keil, senior research analyst at Palo Alto Networks. “The most surprising finding from this data is the one that is most counter-intuitive: non-web-based traffic and application use is much more significant than most people think.

Application and Threat Information

Information on the more than 1,400 applications that are identified by Palo Alto Networks can be found in Applipedia, part of the company’s Application and Threat Research Center. Visit the online resource to find the latest news, commentary, and discoveries on applications and threats at http://www.paloaltonetworks.com/researchcenter/.

To download the Application Usage and Risk Report (Fall 2011), please visit: http://www.paloaltonetworks.com/aur

Comm Solutions is a Palo Alto Networks Platimun Partner, see here for more information: http://www.commsolutions.com/index.php/partner/palo-alto-networks

Manage your Disaster Recovery Environment with VMware’s vCenter SRM

Disaster Recovery is often over complicated by introducing varying software components to achieve the goal of a simplified and efficient DR plan.  Quite often, the simplest and most cost effective answer is already partly installed within the current infrastructure.  The majority of virtualized environments consist of a physical hosts running VMware to fulfill their virtualized host platforms needs.  By taking advantage of the VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM), companies can quickly and effectively setup a Disaster Recovery plan within a fraction of the time it would take through the introduction of third party DR software components.  VMware’s vCenter SRM offers the ability to manage and automate your Disaster Recovery environment from within the existing VMware environment.

The following video link provides a quick introduction to VMware’s vCenter SRM:

http://http://www.vmware.com/products/site-recovery-manager/

Coupled with a NetApp storage solution, your company can be just a few clicks away from achieving a fully automated Disaster Recovery solution, contact Comm Solutions to  learn more. http://www.commsolutions.com/index.php/contact-us

Cisco Analog Gateway SPA8800

Need to add some Analog ports to an Asterisk or Cudatel System. The Cisco SPA8800 will do the trick it has a combination of 4 FXO ports and 4 FXS ports.

Click Here for the Cisco Data Sheet

DHCP and ShoreTel IP Phone Interaction

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a protocol used by networked devices (clients) to obtain various parameters necessary for the clients to operate in an IP network.  The DHCP operation falls into four basic phases. These phases are IP Discovery, Offer, Request, and Acknowledgement (ACK).

Below is a classic example of a ShoreTel IP phone getting an IP address in an environment where VLAN trunking (802.1Q) has been configured (i.e. both voice and data is accessible from a single patch cable).  If voice is the only VLAN configured on a port then you should only see the 1st four events (Discovery, Offer, Request, and ACK).

 

NOTE:  This Packet capture was done with Wireshark and a hub.  Simply unplug the patch cable from the IP phone and plug it into the hub and then place your pc and IP phone into the same hub.  Open Wireshark and select the interface that is connected to the hub.  Once you have Wireshark running through an entire boot process of an IP phone, stop the packet trace and order the results by protocol (i.e. DHCP).   

 *To erase the previous IP information in the phone, enter MUTE+clear+# and then * for yes.

 DHCP Discovery

Whether it’s the first time or the 100th time a client will typically broadcasts a DHCP Request on the physical subnet to find an available DHCP server.  This client creates a packet with the broadcast destination of 255.255.255.255 or subnet broadcast address.  A client can also request its last-known IP address.  If the client is still in a network where this IP is valid, the server might grant the request.  An authoritative DHCP server can deny the IP request, making the client ask for a new IP address immediately.

 DHCP Offer

When a DHCP server receives an IP lease request from a client, it extends an IP lease offer. This is done by reserving an IP address for the client and sending a DHCP OFFER. This message contains the Client’s MAC address and IP address that the server is offering along with other relevant IP information.

 DHCP Requests

When the client receives an IP lease offer, it’s required to tell all the DHCP servers that it has accepted an offer.  This is accomplished by the client broadcasting a DHCP REQUEST message containing the IP address of the server that made the offer.  When the other DHCP servers receive this message, they withdraw any offers that they might have made to the client.  Any number of DHCP servers can respond to an IP lease request, but the client can only accept one offer per NIC.DHCP Acknowledgement (ACK)

DHCP ACK

When the DHCP server receives the DHCP REQUEST from the client, it initiates the final phase of the process. This acknowledgement phase involves sending a packet to the client. This packet includes the lease duration and any other relevant information (i.e. this can be found in the Bootstrap protocol of a DHCP ACK packet).  Below is a figure highlighting the Custom Option 156, within the Bootstrap protocol.  At this point, the IP configuration process is complete.  The DHCP server acknowledges the request and sends the acknowledgement to the client.

 

Below is an example of having 2 DHCP servers on a single network (192.168.140.2 and 192.168.140.23) which is not recommended.  In this case, it’s a race between the two DHCP Offers to the client.  If the request is fulfilled by the unintended DHCP server then the IP phone will not get the Custom Option 156, thus the IP phone will not release its IP address and move over (Reconfiguring Network) to the intended voice VLAN.  In this example the unintended DHCP server was a SOHO Linksys router.

 

ShoreTel Mobility: Roam Anywhere Platform

Comm Solutions introduces ShoreTel’s Mobility solution

Enterprise mobility that puts mobile UC on the smartphones employees love. ShoreTel Mobility enables businesses of all sizes to integrate leading– and loved –smartphones and tablets securely, simply and cost-effectively, with existing enterprise communication and applications and infrastructure.