Here's what I'm expecting for this year's Interop. I’ll be on an airplane in a few hours bound for Las Vegas and Interop 2012. Here’s what I’m expecting at the show:1. SDN, the sequel. With the Open Networking Summit (ONS) last month and Interop this week, software-defined networking is the gift that keeps on giving. Interop will feature an OpenFlow plug-fest and lots of rhetoric. What I’m looking for, however, are real use cases, mature products, and actual implementation. I’d like to see an SDN-based data center fabric for example — perhaps IBM and NEC will have something to show. 2. Speaking of fabric architecture. Fabric, fabric, fabric was all you heard at last year’s Interop. Brocade announced VCS, Cisco was touting Fabricpath, Juniper came out with QFabric and HP trumpeted IRF. I’ve seen progress with clustering of access layer switches but no end-to-end single-hop implementation. It will be interesting to see how the vendors asess their progress here.3. Network segmentation over distance. VMware and friends introduced VXLAN at VMworld last year to extend VLANs over distance. Good idea if you want to move VM-based workloads between data centers or to cloud service providers. Soon after the introduction of VXLAN, Microsoft, Intel, and Dell brought out a similar technology, NVGRE. Once again, I’m having a tough time finding enterprise organizations who even know what these standards are, let deploying them. I hope to hear more about how these technologies are progressing. 4. BYO LAN. Last year’s focus was on the data center but mobile devices and BYOD policies will drive a lot of campus LAN chatter this year. I expect to hear a good deal about network access control, wired/wireless convergence, application controls, location awareness, etc. These discussions will be worthwhile. Why? While technologies like VXLAN and OpenFlow remain theoretical for most enterprises today, they need help with the army of mobile devices already invading their networks. Cisco, Enterasys, Extreme, and Juniper have already made announcements in this area. It will be interesting to see the attendance and feel the vibe at this year’s Interop. Will it continue to be a technology industry star or will the focus on cloud computing, virtualization, and orchestration turn it into a mere infrastructure detour? I’ll let you know more this week. Viva Las Vegas. Related content analysis 5 things security pros want from XDR platforms New research shows that while extended detection and response (XDR) remains a nebulous topic, security pros know what they want from an XDR platform. By Jon Oltsik Jul 07, 2022 3 mins Intrusion Detection Software Incident Response opinion Bye-bye best-of-breed? ESG research finds that organizations are increasingly integrating security technologies and purchasing multi-product security platforms, changing the industry in the process. By Jon Oltsik Jun 14, 2022 4 mins Security Software opinion SOC modernization: 8 key considerations Organizations need SOC transformation for security efficacy and operational efficiency. Technology vendors should come to this year’s RSA Conference with clear messages and plans, not industry hyperbole. By Jon Oltsik Apr 27, 2022 6 mins RSA Conference Security Operations Center opinion 5 ways to improve security hygiene and posture management Security professionals suggest continuous controls validation, process automation, and integrating security and IT technologies. By Jon Oltsik Apr 05, 2022 4 mins Security Practices Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe