The 2015 Best of Interop category winners include:
- Applications: JumpCloud –JumpCloud Directory-as-a-Service
- Cloud based Directory Services… LDAP, AD Replacement, etc. Here is their info.
- Cloud/Virtualization: FixStream, Inc. –FixStream Operational Analytics and Visualization Platform
- Single pane of glass analytics platform for everything in your datacenter. Tech info here.
- Data Center: Cisco –CiscoITD (Intelligent Traffic Director)
- In effect this is just a really really fast load balancer that goes into the Nexus 7000 and 7700 series Switches. Here is a great overview document.
- Mobility/Wireless: Cisco –CiscoHyperlocation Module
- Next generation user tracking technology that uses your smart phone to determine where you are… can be used to help guide people to their gate at the airport or find a product in a store. Here is the overview document.
- Networking: ALE – Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Intelligent Fabric
- SDN technology to make building and managing a network easier on their switches. Here is the overview doc I read.
- Performance/Management/ Monitoring: VMware –vRealize Operations 6
- Im sure you already know the story here. vCOPs = vRealize Ops in the latest round of rebranding. At a high level this is a monitoring platform, but with the right setup it can be integrated into many things and provide a pretty awesome single pane of glass.
- SDN: Cisco – Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) for Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure
- This is the management portion of ACI according to this page. Personally I havent looked into ACI, but if it beat out VMware’s NSX in this category it must be some pretty awesome stuff, I’m not sold on the vendor lock-in it creates though.
- Security: Dell, Inc. – Dell Sonic Wall Secure Remote Access
- VPN concentrator would probably be an understatement for this product line. In a nut shell it allows outside devices to access corporate resources in a secure way, VPN connections are just the beginning. It then layers on mobile device management options and remote support options. Check it out here.
- Storage: NEC –HydrastorHS8-4000
- Here is a document on the HS8-4000 line, but basically these are globally deduplicated storage nodes that cluster together. They target backup and archive storage workloads much like EMC DataDomain or HP StoreOnce. It looks like a pretty cool product, I’d definitely like to see the interface and price tag 🙂
Best Startup Award:
In addition to the category awards, Best of Interop judges named VeloCloud as the Best Startup for the company’s innovation in WAN networking.
Here is a great page that describes the before and after effect on what internet/WAN connectivity will look like with their solution.
