

Network Break
Packet Pushers
Network Break keeps you informed with fast, focused analysis of IT news, products, tech trends, and business outcomes. Blending sharp commentary with a touch of humor, hosts Drew Conry-Murray & Johna Till Johnson sift through the weekly landslide of press announcements, product launches, financial reports, and marketing decks to find the stories worth talking about. You come away with the information and context to make smart decisions in your organization and career … all in the span of a (longish) coffee break.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Sep 7, 2021 • 32min
Network Break 349: T-Mobile Fails To Protect Millions Of Customer Records; Ciena Buys Vyatta Router
Today's Network Break podcast opines on why Ciena acquired the Vyatta router from AT&T (and why AT&T wanted to sell), how T-Mobile failed current and former customers via a breach that exposed sensitive details on millions of people, financial results from HPE and Dell Technologies, and more.

Aug 30, 2021 • 54min
Network Break 348: Ransomware Bedevils Cyber Insurance; TSMC To Raise Chip Prices
This week's Network Break examines how ransomware has insurers rethinking premiums and coverage limits, discusses the pros and cons of ISPs sharing flow records with security companies, digs into Arista's efforts to tackle the router market, pontificates on TSMC chip price hikes, and more tech news analysis.

Aug 23, 2021 • 55min
Network Break 347: Cisco Acquires Container App Monitor; Intel Unwraps Mount Evans IPU
It's the Network Break! This week we analyze Cisco's $500 million acquisition of a container-based and serverless application monitor, Intel's announcement of Mount Evans, an Infrastructure Processing Unit (IPU) for network and storage offload, and more tech news. Guest analyst Johna Till Johnson, CEO and founder of Nemertes Research, joins Greg Ferro.

Aug 16, 2021 • 43min
Network Break 346: Extreme Gets SDWAN, Huawei Struggles and SpaceX Swarms
The world of virtual donuts is supply constrained. Extreme Networks finally gets SDWAN buying Ipanema from Infovista at a bargain price. Research firms that does the numbers Dell'oro pitches that Education and Government markets will be spending big on WiFi6E - we aren't so sure that campus spending will be big just some spending but Dell'oro told us that government economic stimulus is the driver. Most will focus on distributed work.
Huawei posted 29% revenue reduction as the trade sanctions impact their overall business. A reminder that political solutions are slow if you have to make plans. And in space networking, SpaceX acquires pico-satellite company Swarm for IOT networking.

Aug 9, 2021 • 48min
Network Break 345: Marvell Acquires High-End Ethernet ASICs; Arista CEO Says Component Shortage ‘Worst I’ve Seen’
This week's Network Break podcat discusses Marvell's Innovium buy and its impact on the high-end Ethernet market, new Juniper security software for applications, Arista financial results and component concerns, and more IT news.

Aug 3, 2021 • 50min
Network Break 344: Zoom Expands Into Contact Center Biz; Will Devs Choose Cloudflare’s Green Compute?
Zoom buys its way into the contact center biz with the $14.7 billion purchase of Five9, Extreme announces Wi-Fi 6E APs, Cloudflare debuts Green Compute for scheduled workloads, and IT vendors report strong quarterly financial results. We analyze these stories and more IT news on today's Network Break podcast.

Jul 26, 2021 • 47min
Network Break 343: Ericsson, Verizon Ink $8.3 Billion 5G Deal; Intel Reports Flat Revenues
This week on the Network Break we examine an $8.3 billion 5G deal between Ericsson and Verizon, Microsoft's CloudKnox purchase to bolster cloud permissions management, research into microprocessors on flexible materials, Intel's underwhelming financial results, and more IT news.

Jul 19, 2021 • 46min
Network Break 342: SolarWinds Back In Security Hot Seat; In Defense Of The Fax Machine
Today's Network Break podcast delves into security issues at SolarWinds and SonicWall, discusses a new network offload capability between NVIDIA and Palo Alto Networks, comments on Japanese bureaucrats who refuse to give up their fax machines, and more tech news.

Jul 12, 2021 • 53min
Network Break 341: Ransomware Clobbers Kaseya Customers; HPE Buys Zerto For Cloud Data Protection
This week Network Break examines the fallout of the Kaseya breach, HPE's acquisitions of Zerto and Ampool to extend the value of its Greenlake platform, and Fortinet's purchase of a secure software development tool. We also discuss FTC accusations against Broadcom and what a court ruling could mean for Netflix and other content providers in South Korea.

Jul 6, 2021 • 38min
Network Break 340: Marvell Challenges NVIDIA With 5nm DPU; Startup WiteSand Tackles Multi-Vendor Campus Network Management
This week's podcast asks how many Data Processing Units (DPUs) the market can support, discusses a startup that wants to manage your multi-vendor campus network from the cloud, explores new security capabilities in Forward Networks' network verification software, and more tech news.