Enterprise on a blade and the risk of putting all your eggs into one basket

The pros and cons of a 'godbox' for convergence Convergence & VoIP Alert NetworkWorld.com | VoIP & Convergence Research Center | Update Your Profile Sponsored by American Power Conversion Seeing IT and Beyond Looking for consolidated visibility and predictive planning for ALL your multi-vendor IT assets? Introducing the industry's only truly vendor-neutral management software suite that brings all your data into one place: InfraStruXure Central and InfraStruXure Change and Capacity Manager v 5.0. Check out the software on our FREE online multimedia tour! Spotlight Story Enterprise on a blade and the risk of putting all your eggs into one basket By Steve Taylor and Larry Hettick We received several reader responses to last week's discussion about "enterprise on a blade" as a trend in convergence. Today we'll address readers' concerns with reliability, ASIC design demands, and enterprise infrastructure supplier approaches to the 'godbox.' For the purposes of discussion, we'll assume that enterprise on a blade - in which discrete boxes such as routers, switches and PBXs will be replaced by services on a blade server - will happen, although as we pointed out last week, we also think the enterprise-on-a-blade will co-exist with hosted services, software-as-a-service and cloud computing. Read full story Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis. Related News: Is the future of convergence 'enterprise on a blade'? In reply to our newsletter last week titled "VoIP is not dead", we heard from Steve Hegg with a well written and insightful reply. Hegg is an independent consultant and is currently based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. We'd like to share some of Hegg's points and respond to his views. 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Sponsored by American Power Conversion Seeing IT and Beyond Looking for consolidated visibility and predictive planning for ALL your multi-vendor IT assets? Introducing the industry's only truly vendor-neutral management software suite that brings all your data into one place: InfraStruXure Central and InfraStruXure Change and Capacity Manager v 5.0. Check out the software on our FREE online multimedia tour! Avoid the SMB Technology Quagmire SMBs have concrete technology needs, but it's difficult to find cost-effective, easy to manage and secure solutions. Get real-world advice on how to complete this task in this Special Briefing, "Avoiding Techno-quicksand for Small and Medium Businesses." Find out how to select the right products for your organization today. Download this Special Briefing now. Take Control of Network TCO by Automating IPAM Join ESG and Infoblox to learn about reducing network TCO while boosting network availability by automating IPAM. Review this information-packed webinar today.   01/26/09 Today's most-read stories: Apple puts iPhone Nano and Netbook rumors to rest White House confirms: ObamaBerry is a go In Las Vegas, data center takes power, cooling to the limit Bull castration and snake eaters: the life of Dave Hitz Nortel chief flying in corporate jet as company files for bankruptcy Top 10 YouTube hacking videos Ballmer provides grim outlook as economy 'resets' First Killzone 2 reviews roll in Heartland breach raises questions about PCI standard's effectiveness Layoffs: Microsoft bent, but not broken Comparing Troubleshooting Tools. Better understand which network and application troubleshooting tools make the most sense for your IT shop. SNMP, NetFlow and packet analysis offer trending, network forensics, and server response time measurements. Learn the pros and cons of each and how they simply are not enough on their own. Watch this webcast now. 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