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Information, intelligence and insight for Network and IT Executives.

Ultra Ethernet Consortium publishes 1.0 specification, readies Ethernet for HPC, AI

14 June 2025 @ 7:49 pm

(Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include comments from HPE.) In mid-2023, a host of big name networking vendors including Cisco, Arista, HPE and Intel got together to form the Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC). The goal is to make Ethernet better for the needs of AI and high-performance computing (HPC). Now, nearly two years later, the UEC is delivering on its initial promise with the release of the first UEC 1

Why people love Linux

13 June 2025 @ 1:20 pm

The people who love Linux love it for a wide variety of reasons. Some of them appreciate having access to source code and the ability (if they’re so inclined) to modify it. Most love that the majority of Linux distributions are completely free. Some understand and appreciate that Linux is less likely to be attacked by malware and viruses than Windows. And, thanks to the open-source community, they appreciate that vulnerabilities are generally patched quite rapidly. Many Linux users appreciate that Linux is very lightweight and can run on older hardware. Some understand and value that Linux can be tailored to run on the smallest devices and embedded systems and that it runs on

Google Cloud outage disrupts over 50 services globally for over 7 hours

13 June 2025 @ 11:45 am

Google Cloud suffered a major outage on Thursday, affecting countless apps and services that power both industries and consumers. The incident, which lasted over 7 hours, started at 2:51 PM UTC and was resolved by 10:18 pm UTC, as per the Google Cloud Service Health report. This global outage disrupted 54 Google Cloud Platform products,  including API Gateway, Agent Assist, Cloud Data Fusion, Cloud Workstations, Contact Center AI Platform, Database Migration Service, Google App Engine, Google Cloud Console, and Vertex Gemini API. “Following a disruption to a number of Google Cloud ser

AMD steps up AI competition with Instinct MI350 chips, rack-scale platform

13 June 2025 @ 7:41 am

AMD (Nasdaq:AMD) has launched its latest accelerator chips and offered a glimpse into its AI infrastructure strategy, aiming to expand its role in the enterprise market, which Nvidia currently dominates. At its 2025 Advancing AI event, the chipmaker unveiled the AMD Instinct MI350 series accelerators and previewed a rack-scale AI infrastructure platform built on open industry standards. “The MI350 Series, consisting of both Instinct MI350X and MI355X GPUs and platforms, delivers a 4x, generation-on-generation AI compute increase and a 35x generational leap in inferencing, paving the

Oracle’s struggle with capacity meant they made the difficult but responsible decisions

13 June 2025 @ 12:36 am

During an earnings call late on Wednesday, Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) executives boasted/complained about their demand far exceeding capacity. That is a nice problem to have, but it is absolutely still a big problem. “We recently got an order that said ‘We’ll take all the capacity you have, wherever it is. It could be in Europe, could be in Asia, we’ll just take everything,’” said Oracle chairman Larry Ellison. “We never got an order like that before. The demand is astronomical.” Oracle CEO Safra Katz echoed Ellison’s sentiment: “I am still in a position where our supply i

Winners and losers in the Top500 supercomputer ranking

12 June 2025 @ 10:37 pm

It’s June, which means it’s time for the spring release of the Top500 list of supercomputers in the world… that we know of. It has long been suspected that there are other supercomputers out there that could easily make the top 10 of the list, or even surpass the No. 1 computer, El Capitan, but their owners and operators keep them a secret. Nonetheless, this list that was once read only by HPC insiders is now a source of bragging rights for the vendors that make a strong showing. A lot has changed in the 31 years since it was created. Back in 1994, there wasn’t an X86 processor in sight. Now that’s all that’s on the list

Meter secures $170 million to scale NaaS stack from the ground up

12 June 2025 @ 9:37 pm

A decade ago, Anil Varanasi had an idea to create a new type of networking vendor, where there was a unified stack and the whole offering was provided as a service. That was the founding vision for networking-as-a-service (NaaS) pioneer Meter. It took five years of research to get the first products out the door. The next five years were spent on iterating and growing the technology. Now in 2025, Meter is set to advance further. Today the company announced a $170 million Series C round of funding to grow the technology for the next generation of networking requirements. “Everybod

Cisco underscores AI commitment with networking LLM, agentic AI interface

12 June 2025 @ 3:29 pm

SAN DIEGO–A wide range of new AI-based software and technology from Cisco is designed to manage, secure and automate network operations as well as to cement Cisco’s place at the center of customers’ AI infrastructure plans. Cisco rolled out the new wares at its Cisco Live event, where it also unveiled new Nexus data center management software, campus Smart Switches, branch routers and a

At Cisco Live, it’s all about AI for networking and security

11 June 2025 @ 3:43 pm

Cisco Live 2025 is being held this week in San Diego. I had a chance to speak with Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s president and chief product officer, before the event, and he dubbed it “the most consequential Cisco Live in the past decade,” as he emphasized the combination of interest in AI and Cisco innovations to help customers adopt it. At last year’s Live event, Cisco indicated it was all in on AI, and it has continued to drive developments in that direction. Every IT pro and business leader has AI on their minds, but organizations struggle with adoption si

Cisco Live: Security focus yields new firewalls, Hypershield integrations, and agentic AI defenses

11 June 2025 @ 2:40 pm

SAN DIEGO – Cisco unwrapped a variety of advanced firewall and AI software enhancements aimed at further combining and simplifying its network and security technology across enterprise infrastructures. At its Cisco Live event, the vendor rolled out a new Hybrid Mesh Firewall portfolio, bolstered security support with partner Nvidia, and further tightened its own technology integration with its Splunk platform. The announcements share a common goal of protecting all things AI – workloads, inferencing, models and more – as Cisco works to se