25 Top Network and IT Industry News Stories of 2011
What big news made a great impression on you in 2011? Well,
2011, a year full of unforgettable stories, will be remembered for the
death of Steve Jobs, Cisco’s refocusing, IPv6′s coming-out party, Google
Executive Go-Round, Android Market Feels Malware Pain and more…
2011 could be described as “The Year of…” many
things. The tablet market heated up beyond the Apple iPad. 4G wireless
took off with the emergence of big-time LTE networks. Governments and
hackers screamed for attention by taking down networks, while IPv6
generated interest for giving the Internet a way to carry on.
The shift to cloud computing sped up. despite hiccups.
Data centers took on new looks with the emergence of fabric switching
architectures and a revamped Cisco. And the shape and faces of the
industry changed as IBM, HP, Google and Apple all announced new leaders,
and Microsoft, AT&T and Google made blockbuster acquisition bids.
Here’s a look back at 25 stories that marked huge industry change in 2011.
LTE Everywhere
AT&T at the annual CES conference in Las Vegas formally announced
its plans to launch LTE services during the summer of 2011 and the
carrier followed through. AT&T also announced that it would be
launching around 20 different “4G devices” this year, although many
would actually run on its 3G HSPA+ wireless network. Separately, Verizon
at CES showed off 10 LTE devices it would be selling in the first half
of 2011, following its LTE network launch in December of 2010.
Meanwhile, Sprint and Clearwire steadily expanded their WiMAX network
but aired plans for LTE, too. All of this made for more of a
coming-of-age than coming-out party for 4G wireless at the 4G World
event in Chicago during the fall.
Verizon+Apple at Last
Following month after excruciating month of rumors, Verizon and Apple
finally got together in January and announced that the iPhone would be
coming to Verizon’s network in February. Surveys backed up the notion
that there was much pent up demand for the iPhone on a network other
than AT&T’s, which had been criticized by many for dropping too many
iPhone calls.
The Daily Show host Jon Stewart said the news put an end out our long
national iPhone nightmare. In October, Sprint too began selling the
iPhone. As of November, AT&T still dominated the market for both the
iPhone 4 and 4S.
CREDIT: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Google Executive Go-Round
Google announced in January that it was shaking up top management, with
longtime CEO Eric Schmidt becoming executive chairman and co-founder
Larry Page taking hold of the CEO reins all in the name of streamlining
the company’s top-level decision making.
Google’s performance certainly didn’t suffer in the short term from the
move, with the company posting big revenue and earnings increases in Q3,
and the company continued to roll out new offerings, such as social
networking service Google+, a new threat to Facebook. It’s hard to argue
that Schmidt, in coming to Google from Novell in 2001, didn’t make one
of the greatest career moves in the history of history.
Egypt Shuts Down the ‘Net
Egypt’s shutdown of the Internet and cell phone networks in an effort to
diffuse protests against the government not only burned free speech
advocates around the world, but it cost the country’s economy at least
$90 million, according to one report. It also raised the specter of an
Internet “kill switch” being put into the U.S. President’s hands.
Egypt’s government wasn’t alone in resorting to Internet or cellphone
network shutdowns in 2011, with Libya and Syria among the others
following suit.
CREDIT: Yannis Behrakis / Reuters
The Internet ran out of IPv4 address space in early February when the
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority assigned two of the remaining blocks
of IPv4 addresses – each containing 16.7 million addresses – to the
Asia Pacific Network Information Centre. This action sparked an
immediate distribution of the remaining five blocks of IPv4 address
space, with one block going to each of the five Regional Internet
Registries.
With IPv4 addresses gone, Internet policy makers ratcheted up the
pressure on network operators to migrate quickly to IPv6, and World IPv6
Day, held in June, showed off the capabilities and readiness of the
Internet Protocol update went off with nary a hitch. World IPv6 Day,
which involved 400 organizations including big name content suppliers,
carriers, hardware vendors and software makers, was said to be the most
watched tech-related event since New Year’s Eve 1999, when all eyes were
on the Y2K bug.
Nokia Embraces Windows Phone 7
Microsoft and Nokia both have a lot to lose — and gain — by their mobile
alliance, with the Finnish handset maker deciding to adopt Windows
Phone 7 as its smartphone operating system. Nokia initially said it
wouldn’t abandon its own platforms, Symbian and MeeGo, yet though even
MeeGo’s most ardent backers (Intel, Linux Foundation, Limo Foundation)
wound up taking a new direction with a technology called Tizen.
As for Windows Phone 7, reports of Microsoft momentum and lack of momentum seemed to alternate as the year went along.
Apple–and Steve Jobs–Intro iPad 2
The next generation of Apple’s iPad tablet computer is sleeker and more
powerful than the original, and boasts two cameras so that users can use
Apple’s FaceTime video chat. CEO Steve Jobs surprised the faithful in
February by making the iPad 2 product introduction himself. The iPad 2
unveiling both excited and frustrated enterprise IT pros.
The product has helped to maintain Apple’s tablet market lead and was
high on buyer wish lists for the 2011 holiday season, even as a nonstop
stream of competitors – some weak, some like Amazon’s Kindle Fire with
potential – flood the market.
CREDIT: REUTERS/Beck Diefenbach
HBGary Goes After Anonymous–and Loses
Security company HBGary Federal set off an ugly chain of events in
February when CEO Aaron Barr threatened to expose organizers of online
activist group Anonymous, which at that time was focused on defending
Wikileaks, but later in the year branched out to defend numerous causes.
Anonymous taught Barr a hard lesson by breaking into his company’s
network, publishing thousands of its emails (including details about
plans to create a new kind of rootkit) and exposing personal data on
Barr.
Barr had initially planned to expose Anonymous at the Security B-Sides
event in San Francisco, but wound up bailing out of that, and HBGary
wound up pulling out of the RSA Conference running at the same time in
San Francisco. Barr did resurface later in the year with a different
security company. Anonymous continued its assault on foes throughout the
year, threatening everyone from Facebook to a Mexican drug cartel.
Anonymous wasn’t the only game in town either, with another group called
LulzSec wreaking havoc in late spring/early summer via websites
belonging to the CIA, Sony and others.
Android Market Feels Malware Pain
More than 50 applications containing malware were discovered in Google’s
application market in March, a sign that hackers were hard at work
trying to compromise mobile devices running the Android OS. In fact, it
got so bad that Google threw a “kill switch” to remotely delete infected
Android apps.
As the year went on, security vendors issued reports citing a sharp rise
in mobile malware targeting Android devices, though Google countered
that much of the concern was being raised by security vendors simply
looking to hawk their wares.
RSA at Risk
EMC’s RSA Security division shook the industry in March when its
executive chairman announced that a sophisticated cyber-attack on the
company might have compromised its two-factor SecurID tokens. The
advanced persistent threat attack led some observers to call on those
using the tokens for remote access to sensitive information to stop
doing so until RSA clarified the extent of possible compromise.
RSA opened up somewhat about the breach as the year went on, disclosing
it took a $66 million charge to its financial results associated with
coping with the breach. The company said it found two groups were
responsible for the attacks, but declined to identify them.
Earthquake/Tsunami Devastate Japan
Beyond the devastating human tragedy that was the world’s main concern
in the wake of Japan’s earthquakes and tsunami disaster in March, the
high-tech industry was impacted greatly as well.
Taiwanese semiconductor suppliers faced serious raw materials shortages
from Japan and concerns were raised about Japanese suppliers to Apple
for the iPad 2 as well. Chip plants for Texas Instruments and others in
Japan faced months of disruption and undersea telecom cables in the
Pacific Ocean were damaged.
CREDIT: REUTERS/Kim Kyung Hoon
AT&T Bids for T-Mobile USA
AT&T’s proposed takeover of T-Mobile USA in March would have created
the biggest carrier in the United States, with some 129 million
subscribers. But the union also raised lots of big regulatory,
competitive and customer service questions, with plenty of people
unhappy about the prospects of this deal going down. Among them: The
FCC, which found the proposed $39 billion merger not to be in the public
interest and whose draft order in November convinced AT&T to pull
out of the original deal and take a $4 billion charge against earnings
for ending the original deal.
Meanwhile, carrier consolidation continued via several other deals,
including CenturyLink snapping up Savvis and finalizing its Qwest
buyout, plus Level 3 buying Global Crossing (See also: 2011’s top tech
M&A deals)
CREDIT: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud’s Bad Stretch
A major outage for Amazon’s EC2 service in April due to undisclosed
server problems resulted in customers’ websites being down and/or flakey
for days (even for those who took the precaution of signing on for
multiple availability zones, and raised all the usual concerns about
whether it’s still too early to trust your business to the cloud due to
shortcomings in failing over such systems.
Amazon, despite being plugged into social network systems such as blogs
and Twitter, was conspicuously quiet about what went wrong, perhaps due
to legal concerns. Amazon’s network took another hit in August, though
the outage was briefer.
Sony PlayStation Network: Game Off
A major hack of Sony’s PlayStation Network knocked the PS3 gaming
community offline for days in April and Sony revealed players’ personal
information, including credit card numbers, may have been swiped. With
more than 70 million people using the network, some called this breach
one of the worst ever and a possible ID theft bonanza.
OpenFlow Glows
The big Interop 2011 show could almost have been called the OpenFlow
show given that it served as one of the first significant exhibitions of
OpenFlow switches and controllers, including those shown off in a lab
at the event. The software-defined networking technology is designed to
enable users to define flows and determine what paths those flows take
through a network, regardless of the underlying hardware.
OpenFlow stems from an open source project borne of a six-year research
collaboration between the University of California at Berkeley and
Stanford University, which hosted the first ever Open Networking Summit
in October to hasten software-defined network development and further
spread the word about the technology. OpenFlow has momentum, but is far
from a sure thing or the only game in town, with heavy hitters such as
Cisco still weighing their options.
Microsoft-Skype $8.5B Blockbuster
Microsoft’s bold buyout of the voice and video IP company announced in
May is seen by analysts as an aggressive move to challenge Google,
Facebook and others for the hearts, minds and wallets of online users.
Some industry watchers say Microsoft actually had technology in its
portfolio to compete with Skype on many fronts, but that buying the
company gives Microsoft lots of customers fast.
The combination of the Skype buyout and advances on the Windows Phone 7
front also gives Microsoft its strongest mobile offerings to date.
Microsoft has also vowed to integrate Skype with its Lync communications
technology.
CREDIT: REUTERS/Susana Bates
Following disappointing financial results to start its fiscal year 2011,
Cisco CEO John Chambers this past spring and summer was forced to
acknowledge that the company had been caught off guard by dramatic
changes in its core switching and routing market.
Chambers pointed to lower profit margins as customers switched over to newerCisco products like
its Nexus line of switches that boast better price/performance ratios.
He said the company needed to make decisions faster and get leaner and
more focused, which translated into hiring a COO, laying off some 6,500
employees and ditching some of the businesses it had expanded into,
including Flip video cameras.
Microsoft Previews Windows 8; Heads Into the Cloud
While it might seem that we’ve only begun to know Windows 7, that
Microsoft software has been around now since 2009, so the company has
started cranking up Windows 8 hype. Steve Ballmer kicked off 2011 at CES
in January by announcing Windows 8 would run not just on x86 hardware
but also on ARM processors so common on tablet computers.
Microsoft has further tantalized potential users by demoing boot times
of less than 10 seconds for Windows 8 machines and previewing a user
interface dubbed Metro that borrows heavily from the company’s
touch-friendly Windows Phone interface.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is not oblivious to the move by many customers to
the cloud. Microsoft in June debuted its Office 365 cloud service — the
company’s answer to Google Apps — and the latest Microsoft offering
designed to expand the company’s reach beyond packaged software.
Microsoft is giving some organizations big incentives to use the new
offering. Office 365 complements earlier Microsoft cloud offerings,
including its Azure platform-as-a-service, which hasn’t caught on in a
big way yet. Microsoft said late in the year that Office 365 was proving
to be a big hit, especially with small businesses. (Also see:
“Microsoft Office 365 vs. Google Apps for Business”)
HP: Out With the Old, In With the New
HP, becoming more focused on software and services under new chief Leo
Apotheker, announced in August it was exploring the sell-off of its PC
market leading Personal Systems Group and shuttering its TouchPad tablet
business just a month after the tablet was launched.
Then in September, HP’s board ousted Apotheker after he was on the job
for just a year and brought in Meg Whitman as the new CEO. Whitman then
turned around in October and said HP wasn’t ditching its PC business
after all. Meanwhile, HP also announced plans to buy analytics software
company Autonomy for $10 billion.
Google’s Big Deal
Google announced in August its biggest acquisition ever, a $12.5 billion
deal for Motorola Mobility that turns out to be in large part about
obtaining oodles of patents that can be used to defend the Android
ecosystem against infringement lawsuits and countersue as well.
The deal raised plenty of questions regarding that ecosystem of
partners, however, such as whether Google would now be competing with
phone and tablet makers with its own Droid and Xoom offerings via
Motorola Mobility.
The Apple co-founder who resigned from the company in the mid-1980s and
returned a decade later to make Apple one of the most successful
technology companies in the world died at the age of 56 on Oct. 5.
While Jobs’ ill health was well known and he stepped down as CEO in
August, the timing of his death was jarring, taking place a day after
Apple introduced the iPhone 4S. Tributes to Jobs poured in from fans,
friends and the famous.
RIM Goes Dark
An outage on Research in Motion’s BlackBerry network for several days in
mid-October affected millions of customers and gave the company a huge
black eye just as Apple was coming out with its newest iPhone. The
outage brought lawsuits from customers and forced co-CEO Mike Lazaridis
to make a very public apology.
The outage was just the latest in a year of disappointments for RIM and
its customers, as the company’s PlayBook tablet met disappointing
reviews and sales have been weak, smartphone releases were delayed and
the company whacked 11% of its workforce.
Rometty Tapped to Lead IBM
IBM announced in October that 30-year veteran of the company Virginia
“Ginni” Rometty would succeed Sam Palmisano as CEO of IBM in January.
Industry watchers expect a smooth, drama-free transition to Rometty, who
has played a critical role in shaping IBM strategy.
Rometty is currently IBM’s senior vice president and group executive for
sales, marketing and strategy. Her promotion, following HP’s hiring of
Meg Whitman as CEO, puts women at the top of two of the technology
industry’s largest and oldest companies.
Smartphones, Tablets Rush the Enterprise
Many IT shops hemmed and hawed over the years about how to handle
employee-owned devices at work, but 2011 marked the year that many
employees forced employers’ hands and increasingly, organizations
decided allowing employees to use what they wanted might be a win-win
(See our “Network World’s Hottest Arguments piece on employee vs.
corporate owned devices”).
A wider variety of devices and useful apps, along with lower prices,
have put smartphones, tablets and other such devices into more people’s
hands (Gartner reported that smartphone sales to end users rose 42% in
Q3 from Q3 last year.). And a batch of new multivendor device management
tools from third-party vendors as well as device makers such as RIM
have made managing heterogeneous mobile environments more feasible and
secure.
Big Data Gets Bigger
Big Data is one of those terms that despite oozing of jargon and hype
did become the real deal in 2011, with major software vendors such as
Oracle and Sybase rolling out Big Data products (in fact, Oracle’s is
called the Big Data Appliance) and big name investors like Accel
Partners putting its money behind the concept, in the form a $100
million Big Data Fund for startups.
Big Data refers generally to the gobs of information generated by Web
sites, social networks, sensors and other sources apart from traditional
enterprise applications and that can be put to use for diverse business
purposes if organized and analyzed in a sophisticated way. Gartner even
added Big Data to its 2011 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, along
with gamification and Internet of things, and shows Big Data still has a
way to go before it hits the Peak of Inflated Expectations.
CREDIT: REUTERS/Susana Bates
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