According to Illuminas and Cisco, a total of 970 CCIEs from 79 countries provided their opinions on industry trends:
And what was the top industry trend indentified by CCIEs?
"67% foresee virtualization as the top networking investment area."
To learn more about how Cisco CCIEs could potentially cash in by taking advantage of the virtualization trend, I asked David Messina of virtualization management vendor - Xangati, for pointers.
Please keep in mind that the following 5 pointers are strictly the views of only one virtualization management vendor, Xangati.
Nonetheless, hopefully these pointers will at least help create a healthy discussion about the other ways in which CCIEs can also cash in on the virtualization trend:
"The folks who have pole position on the virtualization opportunity today are Windows Server Admins, because of their background they have first crack at virtualization projects."
"Networking guys need to be worried, since much of the 'network communication' is being taken off the physical network and onto the virtual network.
"Multi-tier mission-critical apps per VMware recommendations, should ideally be on the same physical host and therefore are only having conversations that traverse a virtual switch.
"In many cases the vSwitch is the VMware version not owned by the network guy, instead it's owned by the guys with the Windows Server background."
"So to make sure you're on the right trajectory, make sure you're working on your virtualization certifications and studying tools like Xangati, which can uniquely show you the communication of these apps over the virtual and physical infrastructure."
"From your physical Cisco switched data center, NetFlow data feeds will supply Xangati with information on all the dependencies defined for a critical application. This information is essential to then aid in the design of an optimal cluster architecture which will ensure high levels of performance and availability in the virtual world. Also, Xangati provides continuity from the P world into the V world. So by familiarizing yourself with it, you can actually be in the heart of what is so critical within enterprise IT right now."
