About W.R. Koss

http://siwdt.wordpress.com

I have been an entrepreneur (4 VC backed startups), a systems engineer, sales leader, business development leader, author, blogger and spent four years on buy side in L/S equity fund. I work at Plexxi.

Posts by W.R. Koss

Quick Equity Thoughts

. Longs, Portfolio, Product Cycle Theory, Shorts . Leave a comment

I received a number of emails, tweets and so forth regarding my last network posts.  I am traveling to SFO this week and that means I will have some time to write a post or two.  I was in a meeting this past week with a company who was presenting some technology to Plexxi regarding multi-flow commodity graph theory modeling of networks at scale.  They did some really interesting work on the efficiencies of networks at scale and I plan to write up some of their work in a post for all the people who sent me emails about virtues of Valiant load balancing.
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Guest Post: Technology Is Not Destroying Jobs Poor Policy Is

. Chain of Commerce, Economic Policy, Portfolio, Thought Leadership . Leave a comment

The following is from my friend and former investment manager Doug Rudisch.  The essay has already been reblogged on ZeroHedge.com  I asked Doug to post it to my blog a few weeks ago when I read an early draft.  Even though it is now replicated on few major financial sites, I thought it was worth posting here for the technology focus.

/wrk
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The Bigger Picture – Beyond Incrementalism

. Data Centers, Innovation, Networking . Leave a comment

I was on a panel (with Chris MacFarland of Masergy and Thomas Isakovich of Nimbus) at the Jefferies technology conference in NYC this past week, when a question from Peter Misek caused me to pause and think about the answer.  The question was about about the bigger picture of IT change, adoption, the next big thing, etc.  I provided an answer to the question and later had time to reflect on the answer through various airport delays and airplane rides.  I think the narrative goes something like this….
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SDN, It’s Free just like a Puppy!

. Data Centers, Doctrine, Innovation, Networking, Plexxi, Product Cycle Theory, SDN . Leave a comment

I have written both and will post at the same time because I believe we are conflating many issues when it comes to networking.  For example: SDN, ONF, OpenFlow, Overlays, Underlays, Tunneling, VXLAN, STT, White Box, Merchant Silicon, Controllers, Leaf/Spine, Up, Down, Top, Bottom, DIY, Cloud, Hybrid, NetContainers, Service Chaining, DevOps, NoOps, SomeOps, NFV, Daylight, Floodlight, Spotlight to name a few.  Both of these posts are intended to be read back to back.  I wrote them in two parts to provide an intentional separation.
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Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love SDN

. Data Centers, Innovation, Networking, SDN . 1 Comment

If you have not seen the movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, you should.  It is an important point of cultural reference in our contemporary history.  I have been thinking about all this SDN stuff and various technical and business strategies over the past few weeks.  Today, a colleague made reference to movie Dr. Strangelove in a passing conversation about network design.  It occurred to me that there are a lot of humorous parallels between the movie and networking.  This is a blog and I think it is a place between unfinished thoughts and longer form content.
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Self Similar Nature of Ethernet Traffic

. Data Centers, Innovation, Networking, SDN . 1 Comment

With all the debates around networking at ONS 2013, I found myself reading competitive blog posts and watching competitive presentations from vendors.  It was the most entertaining part of ONS and it has certainly invigorated InterOp this past week with a new sense of purpose.  Many vendors announced new switches and products ahead of the InterOp show.  There has also been a steady discussion post-ONS on the definition of SDN.  With all the talk around buffer sizes, queue depths and port densities, I think  something has been lost or I missed a memo.  I often hear people talk about leaf/spine networks, load-balancing, ECMP and building “spines of spines” in large DC networks.
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ONS 2013 Thoughts…

. Networking, ONS, Start-Ups . Leave a comment

I had every intention of producing several long posts about ONS 2013, but events in my hometown coupled with a busy meeting schedule at ONS resulted in not finding a lot of time to focus on writing.  I think my colleague Mike Bushong summed up much of my thoughts here and I would like to add a few other thoughts I have about SDN after ONS 2013.
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A River’s Role in History Never Ends

. History, Non-Work Related . Leave a comment

My ONS 2013 trip started unexpectedly on a sad note.  I was inbound to SFO, sitting on a Virgin America flight working on my computer when I first saw the tweets that there were explosions in Boston near the Marathon.  I scanned through the TV channels, but there was absolutely no coverage of any news out of Boston for at least ~20 minutes.  I was able to link to the marathon finishing line cam and when the picture came through it was full of emergency response people, no crowds, no runners and a lot of chaos.
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Commodity Sell Off…

. Portfolio, Shorts . Leave a comment

Tough day to be long GOLD.  It has taken out the 1437 that I wrote about last week.  As predicted 1300 could happen real fast.  I would not be surprised to see GOLD get to 1309 by tomorrow and then take a breather.  That would erase the the 2011 gold rally.   We should find some support around 1300.  We will need to test conviction at 1300 otherwise 1145 is the next stopping point.

 

/wrk

Equities, Technicals, Economics, CPI, Networking and other Assorted Off the Wall Thoughts…

. Longs, Portfolio, Shorts . Leave a comment

It has been a few weeks since I posted.  I have been traveling a lot (27k air miles so far in 2013) and have not found the time to write.  Here are some random thoughts I have been collecting over the past a few weeks.
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Demonstrating AWESOME in the Pursuit of the Optical Data Center

. Innovation, Networking, Optical Data Center, SDN, Start-Ups . Leave a comment

This week at OFC, Plexxi and Calient are showing the power of SDN and optics.  The idea to use some sort of optical or hybrid optical architecture for the data center has been pursued for years.  Here is a link to a 2010 paper called, Helios: A Hybrid Electrical/Optical Switch Architecture for Modular Data Centers, written by a number of people, but the most notable author is Amin Vahdat.
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How Does Change Occur?

. Change, Creativity, Innovation, Start-Ups . Leave a comment

I was having a DM conversation (140 characters at a time) the other day with network architect.  We were discussing the reluctance of networking people, especially at the CxO or leadership level to do something different.  Personally, I have heard from ~50 people at the leadership level over the past 18 months that state they want to do something different with their network infrastructure.  The network has not changed in twenty years and now the time has come to change the network.  What is the result of all the pent up desire to do something different?  More network incrementalism; at least in the near term.  The DM conversation I was having was around the subject of getting network people to do something different.  Why do people say they want to make big changes and fail to seize the day?  That is the subject of this post.
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It is all about Doctrine (I am talking about Networking and that SDN thing)

. Data Centers, Doctrine, Networking, Product Cycle Theory, SDN, Start-Ups, Thought Leadership . 4 Comments

Last year, I wrote a long post on doctrine.  I was reminded of that post three times this week.  The first was from a Plexxi sales team who was telling me about a potential customer who was going to build a traditional switched hieracrhical network as test bed for SDN.  When I asked why they were going to do that, they said the customer stated because it was the only method (i.e. doctrine) his people had knowledge of and it was just easier to do what they have always done.  The second occurrence was in a Twitter dialog with a group of industry colleagues across multiple companies (some competitors!) and one of the participants referenced doctrine as a means for incumbents to lock out competitors from markets.  The third instance occurred at the at the Credit Suisse Next-Generation Datacenter Conference when I was asked what will cause people to build networks differently.  Here are my thoughts on SDN, networking, doctrine, OPEX and building better networks.
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Talking SDN or Just Plain Next Generation Networking…

. Innovation, Networking, Plexxi, SDN, Uncategorized . Leave a comment

Tomorrow in SF, I will be talking about SDN, or as I like to call it next generation networking at the Credit Suisse Next Generation Data Center Conference.  It will be a panel discussion and each participant has a few minutes to present their company and thoughts on the market adoption of SDN.  Explaining the next twenty years of networking in fifteen minutes is a challenge, but I have been working with a small slide deck that helps make the point.  Here are those slides (link below).  I posted a variation of those slides few weeks ago that I used in NYC, but I tailored this deck to strict time limit of 15 minutes.  I will post more frequently after Plexxi is done at NFD #5 this week and around the time of OFC.

CS Next Gen DC Conference

 

/wrk

On the Road the Next few Weeks…

. Networking, Plexxi, Start-Ups . 1 Comment

I will be on the road a lot the next few weeks for Plexxi.
Plexxi will also be engaging in a host of events as well.
 Here is a list of events:

  • March 5: Credit Suisse Datacenter
Conference in SF.  I will be on an SDN panel with two friends
from Big Switch.
  • March 7: Plexxi presents at Network Field Day
#5.  I will be in NYC/NJ that day presenting to
customers.
  • March 13: I am on the Cloud & Software-Defined
Panel at the Pacific Crest Technology Forum event in Boston.
  • 
March 15: Plexxi and Boundary at SDN
Central Demo Fridays.

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Notebook 02.19.13: Merchant Silicon, Insieme, Controllers, Portfolio and stuff…

. CSCO, Innovation, Notebook, Portfolio . 1 Comment

Before the week is over, I am going to write a blog post entitled “Imagine that SDN Did Not Exist, What Would Do with All the Free Time?”  That is something I will find the time to crank out either on my current flight to SFO or the return flight.  Until then, here are a few things I have been collecting in my SIWDT Evernote to write about.
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Portfolio Update…

. AMT, AMZN, BRCM, CTXS, LNKD, Portfolio, QCOM, VMW . Leave a comment

I have made a few tweaks to the portfolio.  I tag all the stock picking posts with the “Portfolio” category.  That is the bit bucket if you need to review the past.  I have been buying VMW down here around $76-78 range.  There are many reasons for this, but first I SecondLife-User-Concurrency-ChartEMC-Buys.jpgwant to say I was not long into the print.
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