Global data center traffic is set to grow fourfold, hitting 6.6 zettabytes a year by 2016. And cloud traffic, the fastest-growing component of data center traffic, will grow 44 percent annually, or sixfold, in the same time frame. So says Cisco's second annual Global Cloud Index.

"The biggest driver is that the network has become a more cost-effective storage repository. With computing in the old days, the cheapest way to store data was to put it on a local hard drive," said Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research.

Juniper unveiled a new set of hardware and software products that run on the MX Series 3D Universal Edge router. By deploying the MX 3D, service providers can offer a number of revenue-generating, value-added services, such as load balancing, firewalls, content management, security services and content streaming right from the edge of the network. After a closer look, the range of services Juniper is offering is broader than what was available in the IP Service Switches of 10 years ago, but the concept is the same.

The MX 3D enables both consumer and business features including content streaming, security features and application network, as well as some operational tools in completely isolated, virtual instances as line cards within the router. So this raises a question: if so many companies failed at doing this before, why will Juniper be successful now?

I think the answer to this is that the industry is better aligned to network or cloud-based services. A decade ago, almost all enterprise IT infrastructure, and home infrastructure for that matter, was located on premise, so the concept of buying something like a firewall as a service was way outside the comfort level of corporate IT. Today that’s not the case. Cloud services are commonplace, and they are exactly what give network-based security and application delivery services a purpose. Also, when the concept of edge services was hot before, the value proposition was that a telco could tie these additional revenue-generating services to the other products it sells. What other products? An Internet pipe? That’s hardly game changing. Today if an enterprise is going to push a server into the cloud then it stands to reason that everything that surrounds the server should also be made available in the cloud. That’s the new telco opportunity. The shift to cloud computing opens the door for telcos to sell a wide range of other cloud services. The MX 3D is a much more cost-effective, scalable way of offering these servicescompared to deploying individual appliances on a one-off basis.

The one big challenge that I see here is the pricing model. Thinking back, the pricing model for something like a network-based firewall ranged from free to several hundred per month. Any work Juniper can do here to help its telco customers come up with pricing models will be well received, as I’m not convinced the service providers fully understand what to charge for these types of services.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know there’s no single technology trend that has more hype and mania around it than “software defined networks.” It’s this era’s “2.0,” or the technology equivalent of Andrew Luck. Lots of hype, plenty of potential, but has yet to produce anything. To date, almost every leading vendor has outlined an SDN strategy, but the one missing vendor has been the No. 2 market share leader, HP. After interviews with a number of HP customers and channel partners it appears HP is ready to unveil its SDN strategy.

From a vision perspective, there’s really nothing unique about what HP is doing - they’re focused on IT agility through the decoupling of control and data plane. HP has extended the value proposition of this to applications through a number of open APIs similar to what Avaya, Brocade and Cisco are doing. What’s not clear to me is who the application partners will be at time of launch, if any, but its support of applications is consistent with the rest of the industry.

Supporting the vision, HP announced OpenFlow support for the current 16 models of switches and released a new series of switches, HP 3800s that also have OpenFlow support. I believe there are 9 new stackables in the series, pushing HP’s number of OpenFlow-supported switches to 25. OpenFlow is widely supported today, so HP’s implementation of it is a logical move for the company.

To compliment the line of switches, HP plans to develop its own SDN controller, which appears to be scheduled for general availability in late 2013. This is a curious move as there are already so many controllers on the market. I’d rather see HP support as many controllers as possible, rather than build its own. However, as I’ve said before, the SDN wars have become a game of stacks, and HP is choosing to build an end-to-end stack. If you’ve got Cisco’s share this probably is the right approach, but HP’s No. 2 share position in networking is primarily made up of edge switching, meaning they’re a minority share player in the data center. HP’s best approach would be interoperability, which is something ProCurve has focused on since its inception.

The unique attribute HP can bring to SDNs, though, is a heavy services focus. HP has one of the largest services organizations in the industry and much of what will make a customer SDN deployment a success is the planning, deployment and ongoing management. Cisco’s approach is to train and certify its channel, whereas HP’s will be to leverage its massive service organization. This is the right approach for HP as its channel isn’t nearly as big or as well developed as what Cisco has. Cisco’s focus on channel partners, I believe, has greater long-term value, but HP could get some quick wins and rapid scale through its own services organization.

Cisco says its new system, the Nexus 3548, has latency measured at as little as 190 nanoseconds—billionths of a second—and is 60% faster than any competing products.

Cisco Vice President Hilton Romanski said acquisition of ThinkSmart Technologies will accelerate Cisco's vision for mobility solutions by making it possible for customers to analyze location data from wireless networks and provide insight that can be used to drive new commercial opportunities and enhance end-user experiences.

"The acquisition of ThinkSmart reinforces Cisco's commitment to deliver an intelligent network by providing customers with enhanced tools, such as location analytics, that increase the value of the network," Romanski said. "This aligns with the core; one of Cisco's five foundational priorities, by providing differentiated solutions within the infrastructure of the network."

Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research, said the ThinkSmart buy is indeed a strategic acquisition for Cisco on the mobility front because traditional mobile apps are falling short of the networking promise.

With its new security solutions, Cisco is working from the principle that security has to be integrated across the network to ensure protection of unified data centers. Cisco believes network policies should be unified across physical and virtual worlds, intra-virtual machine communication should be secured, and access to applications protected.

Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research, said this is the right move for Cisco. Despite the move toward virtual servers, virtual machine mobility and virtualizing a network, security has historically been deployed as an overlay technology.

"Cisco's vision of the data center is predicated on the concept of full automation of IT operations and automatic movement of virtual resources," Kerravala told us. "Security can no longer be an overlay. It has to be an integrated component of your infrastructure and it has to be as agile and as mobile as some of those other virtual resources."

Not only does Kerravala believe enterprise will embrace the new solutions, he thinks the shift is one enterprises have to make. It's not practical for enterprises to secure a virtual data center using legacy security models, which are meant more for a static world.