Tag Archive for Cisco

| January 26, 2017
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Avaya Goes Chapter 11

-Updated- 03-07-17 As predicted Avaya spun off its networking business. The lucky winner is Extreme. The presser from Extreme is here.

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Avaya Goes Chapter 11In one of the worst-kept secrets in tech, Avaya has finally declared bankruptcy. The Santa Clara, CA-based communications company filed for chapter 11 protection on January 19th, 2017 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Reports are that Avaya faced an end of January deadline to reach agreements with creditors to address its $6.3 billion debt or potentially default.

Avaya logoThe company’s presser announcing the bankruptcy characterizes the decision to seek Chapter 11 as a necessary re-do on deals made a decade ago. The company was spun off from Lucent, a former AT&T unit, in 2000. Avaya went private in 2007 when private equity firms Silver Lake Partners and the Texas Pacific Group took over the firm for $8.2 billion. Avaya was set up as a leveraged buyout – loaded with debt. At the time the new owners said going private would help Avaya to accelerate product development. In 2009 Avaya scooped up the remnants of Nortel for $900m.

The Nortel acquisition added Ethernet switching and VoIP to Avaya’s portfolio. While the move added needed hardware to the Avaya portfolio the rest of the tech world started the shift towards software-as-a-service and the cloud. Avaya was not able to digest Nortel while taking on Cisco, Microsoft, and the cloud at the same time.

$6.3 billion debtAvaya was both late with VoIP and Unified Communications. Neither Microsoft nor Cisco were competitors in the TDM/PBX era. Cisco joined the race with VoIP and Microsoft then came along with Unified Communications. Both have tremendous enterprise penetration and brand recognition.

The pressure forced Avaya to consider selling its crown jewel, its contact center products to Genesys in 2016, in the hope it would raise some cash. When the deal with Genesys fell through, Avaya decided to file for bankruptcy. Avaya CEO Kevin Kennedy said in a statement, “…chapter 11 is the best path forward at this time.”

In order to keep the lights on during the reorganization, the company has secured a $725 million loan underwritten by Citibank.

As part of its debt load, Avaya owes its pensioners $1.7 billion in unfunded pension liabilities. According to NoJitter Avaya will honor it obligations to maintain and continue the pension (as did GM in its reorganization).

Chapter 11 only impacts Avaya’s United States operations. In the rest of the world, the company is moving to assure customers and stakeholders that it’s business as usual.

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My experience is that the Avaya IP Office product is way over-priced, even in a bid environment. Why would anyone buy an Avaya Ethernet switch or access point when you can get a Cisco or an HP?

So what is to become of Avaya? One likely outcome is that all of the business units will be sold off to satisfy the creditors. The only thing left of Avaya will be a service organization to care for the huge installed base of orphaned Nortel and Avaya systems.

I know people are already getting calls from Cisco about replacing Avaya.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| July 23, 2016
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Ethernet Marches On

Ethernet Marches OnIt has been a while since we talked about networking on the Bach Seat. So it is time to get back to my roots. Ethernet continues to dominate the world. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.3 Ethernet Working Group, the group responsible for the Ethernet standard, recently ratified 4 new Ethernet-related standards. The committee approved IEEE 802.3bp, IEEE 802.3bq, IEEE 802.3br, and IEEE 802.3by.

IEEE 802.3br has implications for IoT and connected cars. This new standard addresses the needs of industrial control system manufacturers and the automotive market by specifying a pre-emption methodology for time-sensitive traffic. IEEE 802.3bp addresses how Ethernet operates in harsh environments found in automotive and industrial applications.

The 2 more interesting new standards to networkers are IEEE 802.3bq and IEEE 802.3by. These standards help define how 25 GB and 40 GB Ethernet will work and more importantly how products from multiple vendors should interoperate in the data center. For a summary of the rationale for the new standard here is the IEEE presentation  (PDF).

Data c enterIEEE 802.3bq, “Standard for Ethernet Amendment: Physical Layer and Management Parameters for 25 Gb/s and 40 Gb/s Operation, Types 25GBASE-T and 40GBASE-T“, opens the door to higher-speed 25 Gb/s and 40 Gb/s twisted pair solutions with auto-negotiation capabilities and Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) support for data center applications.

IEEE 802.3by, “Standard for Ethernet Amendment: Media Access Control Parameters, Physical Layers, and Management Parameters for 25 Gb/s Operation”, introduces cost-optimized 25 Gb/s PHY specifications for single-lane server and switch interconnects for data centers.

Siemon’s Standards Informant explains that 25GBASE-T will be backward-compatible with existing BASE T technology and both 25GBASE-T and 40GBASE-T are planned for operation over TIA category 8 cabling. The deployment opportunity for 25GBASE-T is aligned with 40GBASE-T and defined as the same 2-connector, 30-meter reach topology supporting data center edge connections (i.e., switch to server connections in row-based structured cabling or top of rack configurations).

The standard’s ratification comes shortly after the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) approved its standard specifications for Category 8 cabling, the twisted-pair type designed to support 25GBase-T and 40GBase-T.

Though 25 Gigabit Ethernet is only now becoming an official standard, Enterprise Networking Planet reports that multiple vendors already have technologies in the market. Among the early adopter of 25 GbE is Broadcom (AVGO) which announced back in 2014 that its StrataXGS Tomahawk silicon would support 25 GbE. In 2015, Arista (ANET) announced its lineup of 25 GbE switches. Cisco (CSCO) is also embedding 25 GbE support in some of its switches including the Nexus 9516 switch.

That is where 25-Gb/s Ethernet comes in. It uses the same LC fiber cables and the SFP28 transceiver modules are compatible with standard SFP+ modules. This means that data-center operators can upgrade from 10 GbE to 25 GbE using the existing installed optical cabling and get a 2.5X increase in performance.

The IEEE 25GbE standard seems to have come out of nowhere, (especially considering the L O N G D R A W N O U T 8 0 2 . 1 1 n process but the technology actually came into being as the natural single-lane version of the IEEE 802.3ba 100-Gb/s Ethernet standard. The 100-Gb/s Ethernet standard uses four separate 25-Gb/s lanes running in parallel, so defining a single lane makes it a straightforward and natural subset of the 100-Gb/s standard.

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IEthernetEEE P802.3by and P802.3bq were initially targeted for server connections in mega data centers like Amazon, Facebook, and Google. In the next 5 years, 25G will be the next mainstream server upgrade from 10G, even for smaller data centers. SMB data centers will be facing a connectivity crisis in the future as the pace of virtualization increases.

According to IDC, the typical virtualized server supported about 10 virtual machines (VMs) in 2014 and will support in excess of 12 VMs by 2017. In many organizations, the majority of production workloads are already virtualized and almost all new workloads are deployed on virtualized infrastructure, placing inexorable stress on server connectivity.
In order to accommodate this growth Twinax copper and short-reach MMF are included in the “by” standard, while 25GBASE-T (twisted pair) was added to the existing 40GBASE-T “bq” project making 25G possible in smaller data centers without having to re-wire the data center.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| May 1, 2016
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How Much Cash Do Tech Firms Stash Overseas

How Much Cash Do Tech Firms Stash OverseasA new report (PDF) from charity Oxfam says American companies stash a significant part of their cash overseas to take advantage of more favorable tax laws in other countries. They claim that tech companies take particular advantage of this practice, also known as “tax havens.” Oxfam which is crusading to get the U.S. government to crack down on this practice says tax havens costs the United States more than $100 billion a year in lost tax revenue.

Tech firms are hoarding nearly $500 Billion overseasThe Business Insider brought us this Statista chart, based on the Oxfam report. Tech firms are hoarding nearly $500 Billion in cash overseas. The chart shows how much money major US tech companies have stashed overseas, and how many subsidiaries they have set up in countries that Oxfam defines as tax havens, “which can be characterized by secrecy, low- or zero-tax rates, and the almost complete lack of disclosure of any relevant business information.”

U.S. tech firms with most cash held overseas

While tech is the most prominent sector on Oxfam’s list, the article claims tech is not alone — large companies in other sectors like General Electric ($119 billion), Pfizer ($74 billion), Merck ($60 billion), and Exxon Mobile ($51 billion) also have lots of cash stashed overseas.

There’s nothing illegal about this practice. But Oxfam believes it contributes to income inequality. They are urging U.S. lawmakers to make it harder for companies to use international tax laws to their advantage in this way.

money stashed overseasOverseas tax havens have been the focus of recent revelations about tax scams by wealthy people, based on the leak of the “Panama Papers,” documents from a single Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca, involving 214,000 offshore shell companies. The firm’s clients included 29 billionaires and 140 top politicians worldwide, among them a dozen heads of government.

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This list looks a lot like the one for the top lobbying spender firms. I wrote about the tech titans lobbying efforts just a couple of weeks ago here.

RankFirmCash $ held off shoreLobbying rankLobbying $ spending
1Apple181.1B104.5M
2Microsoft108.3B78.5M
3IBM61.4B114.6M
4Cisco52.7B142.7M
5Alphabet/Google47.4B116.6M
6HP42.9B
7Oracle38.0B134.5M
Related articles
  • Obama urges Congress to take action on corporate tax reform (bnn.ca)

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| April 18, 2016
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Schools Face RansomWare Risk

More than 2,000 machines at K12 schools are infected with a backdoor in unpatched versions of JBoss that could be used at any moment to install ransomware such as Samsam. TargetTech defines ransomware as malware designed for data kidnapping, an exploit in which the attacker encrypts the victim’s data and demands payment in Bitcoins for the decryption key.

JBossRansomware has typically been spread through drive-by downloads or spam emails with malicious attachments. One of the latest victims of Samsam was MedStar Health, a not-for-profit organization that runs 10 hospitals in the Washington, D.C., area.

PCWorld reports that the Cisco (CSCO) Talos threat-intelligence organization, announced that roughly 3.2 million machines worldwide are at risk. The article says that many of those already infected run Follett’s Destiny library-management software, used by K12 schools worldwide. According to Cisco, Follett responded quickly to the vulnerability,” Follett identified the issue and immediately took actions to address and close the vulnerability”.

BitcoinIn a presser, Follett offers patches for systems running version 9.0 to 13.5 of its software and says it will help remove any backdoors. The author states that Follett technical support staff will reach out to customers found to have suspicious files on their systems. Follett even offers SNORT detection rules on the presser page.

Snort is a highly regarded open-source, freeware network monitoring tool that detects attack methods, including denial of service, buffer overflow, CGI attacks, stealth port scans, and SMB probes. When suspicious behavior is detected, Snort sends a real-time alert to Syslog, a separate ‘alerts’ file, or to a pop-up window.

JBoss the vulnerable underlying system is described as an open-source Red Hat product that serves as an application server written in Java that can host business components developed in Java. Essentially, JBOSS is an open source implementation of J2EE that relies on the Enterprise JavaBeans specification for functionality.

PCWorld reports that compromised JBoss servers typically contain more than one Web shell. Talos advises that it is important to check the contents of a server’s jobs status page. “This implies that many of these systems have been compromised several times by different actors,” the company said.

BackupWeb shells are scripts that indicate an attacker has already compromised a server and can remotely control it. The list of those associated with this exploit is listed in Talos’s blog post.

Companies that find a Web shell installed should begin by removing external access to the server, Talos said in the article. The security firm recommends quick action.

Ideally, you would also re-image the system and install updated versions of the software … If for some reason you are unable to rebuild completely, the next best option would be to restore from a backup prior to the compromise and then upgrade the server to a non-vulnerable version before returning it to production.

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I have worked with a number of customers on their library automation projects. The cost of these systems is as usual in the data. There is a great deal of time and effort that goes into creating the proper MARC records, especially for books that are out of print and kiddie books. If these files get locked up by ransomware, the system is useless and expensive to replace.

K12 schools are notoriously cheap, but the advice is the same as always,

  1. Keep your software UP TO DATE
  2. Use a real virus scanner on your servers and administrative stations
  3. Back-Up – Back-Up – Back-Up – With a good backup, you can just blow the machine away, re-install and restore the data. and be back in business.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| April 16, 2016
Comments Off on Hey Lobbying Tech Spender

Hey Lobbying Tech Spender

-Update 04-26-2016- As if to prove my point, Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders just named Verizon one of America’s Top Ten Tax Avoiders. VZ has a corporate tax rate of -2% for the last 6 years according to the post. Verizon has the #4 lobbying spender.

Hey Lobbying Tech SpenderJust in time for the U.S. tax deadline, the Business Insider has a report which details the amount of money the tech titans spent on bribing lobbying the politicians in DC. Thanks to one of the small bits of transparency in the gooberment, the U.S. House of Representatives requires companies to file government lobbying records. You can search their disclosures here at the Office of the Clerk of the House. (rb- Use this while you can, it’s likely to be shut down at any time by politicians with things to hide.)

Amazon was the most aggressive tech lobbyist in 2015The most aggressive tech spender on lobbying in 2015 was Amazon (AMZN) according to research by Consumer Watchdog. The company spent $9.07 million (a company record) on lobbying in 2015, an incredible 91.4% surge from its 2014 spend dedicated to influencing federal regulations last year according to BI.

Amazon lobbied Washington about

tech firms spent over $122M lobbying Washington politiciansDespite Amazon’s aggressive lobbying, Google (GOOG) topped the list of tech companies for the second year in a row. Google spent $16.6 million in 2015 vs $16.83 million in 2014. The biggest spending tech firms spent over $122M lobbying Washington politicians.

How the tech titans spent their money

  1. Google: $16.6 million in 2015 vs $16.83M in 2014.
  2. Comcast (CMCSA): $15.63 million vs $16.8M in 2014
  3. AT&T (T): $14.86 million, up from $14.56M in 2014
  4. Verizon (VZ): $11.43 million, up 1.9% from $11.22M in 2014.
  5. Facebook (FB): $9.85 million from $9.34M in 2014, a company record.
  6. Amazon (AMZB): $9.07 million up 91.4% from 2014 .
  7. Microsoft (MSFT): $8.49 million vs $8.33M in 2014.
  8. Time Warner Cable (TWC): $6.8 million in 2015, down 13.2% from 2014.
  9. T-Mobile (TMUS) $6.14 million, up 1.7% from 2014.
  10. Apple (AAPL): $4.48 million in 2015 compared to $4.11M in 2014.
  11. IBM (IBM): $4.63 million, a 6.5% decrease from $4.9M in 2014.
  12. Intel (INTC): $4.55 million in 2015, up 19.7% from $3.80M in 2014.
  13. Oracle (ORCL): $4.46 million in 2015, down 23.5% from $5.83M in 2014.
  14. Cisco (CSCO): $2.69 million compared to $2.35M in 2014.
  15. Yahoo (YHOO): $2.84 million in 2015 vs $2.94M in 2014.

Tech titans with boxes of meney for politicansBI reminds us that these may seem like big numbers, they’re a tiny part of these companies’ overall expenditures — in the third quarter of 2015, Google spent $3.47 billion on traffic acquisition costs (such as the price of its deal to stay the default search on Apple’s iPhone), and another $6.93 billion on other operating expenses.

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I haven’t written about the tech’s industry lobbying efforts since 2010. Many of the names have remained the same, ATT, Verizon, Google, IBM, Yahoo, and Intel have been bribing lobbying the gooberment for a very long time.

However, just 5 years ago, Apple and Facebook were barely in the lobbying racket.  In 2015, they both ranked at the top in lobbying spending.

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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