This one has seriously crept up on me; it’s only a week until the kickoff presentation for Networking Field Day 8 in Silicon Valley. I’m truly honored to be able to attend another Tech Field Day event, and this one looks like it will be yet another corker.

Sponsors

We’ve got a cool group of companies presenting to us.

A10 Networks

A10 make some pretty cool load balancers, and I’ve posted previously about their axAPI REST-based API. There’s a new release of the A10 operating system (ACOS) coming shortly, and I understand that it may include a rewrite of the API, CLI and web UI so that all of them are ultimately talking to the same backend API. This should help avoid the problem of unsupported REST API commands, because every CLI command is available via the central API. This has been Juniper’s approach too, where every CLI command is translated into a XML RPC call, for example.

Big Switch Networks

Another fascinating player, Big Switch makes a network OS that you can put on white box switches. I recently posted on Big Switch’s announcement of their “Big Cloud Fabric” product, and I’m hoping we get to dive even deeper on that and their other offerings next week.

Brocade

Brocade always puts on a good show and offers up some great speakers to offer insight into their own products as well as the wider Software Defined Networking (SDN) market. Whatever they bring to the table is bound to be interesting.

Cisco

Cisco are bringing along the folks from their Insieme spin out / spin in. Insieme is responsible for Cisco’s ACI architecture and the APIC chip, and I’m fascinated to hear some real technical detail about the ACI solution and Cisco’s vision for integration with the rest of the network, including their own other products.

Gigamon

Gigamon is all about network visibility, and I’ve even seen the words “Software Defined Monitoring” used on their website. This is a new presenter for me, so I’m not quite sure what to expect, but I’ve seen their products in the past and I’ll look forward to hearing about their latest and greatest.

Nuage Networks

I seem to recall that ‘nuage’ is French for ‘cloud’, so that’s nice. Best I understand, they offer an SDN-based cloud solution. But since I’m not up on their products quite yet (I’ll try to be before I get there), I think it’s safe to assume that we’ll get an SDN update from them!

Pluribus Networks

Pluribus presented at NFD7, and I looked at the Pluribus Server Switch products recently in the light of Facebook’s Wegde Switch announcement. Pluribus Networks’ biggest challenge, I think, is helping people understand what you can do with their product, because at first glance it’s not, I think, obvious. Still, it’s a cool product and I hope to hear more applications for it and the latest updates.

Spirent

Spirent is another old hand at the Tech Field Day presentation. Last time I saw them they presented the brand new Axon product, the iTest Lab Optimizer and Spirent Studio Security. Spirent seem to keep busy innovating, so they have a number of avenues they might pursue at NFD8; let’s wait and see!

Thousand Eyes

I missed Thousand Eyes when they presented at NFD6, but I got the impression from listening to some of the delegates that there was a degree of “shut up and take my money” once they had seen the product. I’m looking forward to an update on their product and seeing the latest features.

Schedule

Mark your calendars now!

Wednesday, Sep 10	09:30–11:30	ThousandEyes Presents at Networking Field Day 8
Wednesday, Sep 10	13:00–15:00	Big Switch Networks Presents at Networking Field Day 8
Wednesday, Sep 10	16:00–18:00	Pluribus Networks Presents at Networking Field Day 8
Thursday, Sep 11	08:00–10:00	Cisco Presents at Networking Field Day 8
Thursday, Sep 11	10:30–12:30	Brocade Presents at Networking Field Day 8
Thursday, Sep 11	13:30–15:30	Spirent Presents at Networking Field Day 8
Thursday, Sep 11	16:00–18:00	Nuage Networks Presents at Networking Field Day 8
Friday, Sep 12	08:00–10:00	A10 Networks Presents at Networking Field Day 8
Friday, Sep 12	10:30–12:30	Gigamon Presents at Networking Field Day 8

Remember, Networking Field Day events are live streamed in high definition, and you can participate by asking questions via Twitter; we do our best to pass the questions on when we can.

I’m looking forward to next week; I hope you’ll join us!