Rakesh Dubey

In this 2nd post Gurudatt Shenoy provides details about what makes the 8223 stand out and set new benchmarks. Versions for OSFP and QDD, support for multiple operating systems, etc. Enabling multiple use cases such as scale-across, DCI, Core & Peering. Read more in the blog below. https://lnkd.in/dSpG_dTn #Cisco8000 #SiliconOne #SONiC #IOSXR cc Gurudatt Shenoy, Rakesh Chopra, Satish Surapaneni, Anurag Agarwal, Krithika Moorthy

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It was a privilege to connect with our talented group of Palo Alto Networks interns today for an inspiring "Ask Me Anything" session. We covered a lot of ground, from my own journey to the transformational technologies, like AI, that are reshaping our world. I was so impressed with the depth of their questions, many of which centered on a single, critical theme: how to forge a meaningful career in the age of AI. My advice to them was this: While your technical skills and aptitude are what get you in the door, it’s your attitude that will define your long-term success. In an era of constant change, the most durable and valuable qualities are a relentless willingness to learn and adapt and an open mindset that embraces new challenges. These are the attributes that build resilience, foster innovation, and create true leadership. Seeing the passion and curiosity of this next generation was invigorating. They aren’t just preparing for the future; they are the ones who will build it. The future of cybersecurity is incredibly bright in their hands.

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𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗜 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗦𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗲𝗽 𝗞𝗮𝗶𝗽𝘂 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 Every once in a while, you come across a leader whose perspective reframes how you think about tech and leadership. I recently had the chance to speak with Sandeep Kaipu, on our Conversive Talk. Sandeep leads platform services for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) at Broadcom, shaping the private cloud and AI infrastructure that power some of the world’s largest enterprises. What stood out to me about Sandeep wasn’t just his deep technical knowledge, but 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆 𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲.  He says it best: “𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱 𝘪𝘴𝘯’𝘵 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘪𝘦𝘴, 𝘪𝘵’𝘴 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘴𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘮𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘭𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘩. 𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵’𝘴 𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘥𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦.” His upcoming book, 𝘈𝘐 𝘌𝘯𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱 (2025), explores that intersection beautifully: balancing logic and empathy, systems and storytelling, technology and trust. 𝗔 𝗳𝗲𝘄 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗺𝗲:  • Infrastructure is no longer plumbing, it’s the foundation of insight and creativity.  • Leadership is service, helping others see their own potential more clearly.  • Curiosity is the only sustainable strategy. If you’re passionate about AI, engineering, or leading teams through transformation, this conversation is a must-read. https://lnkd.in/guNgwqNQ #ConversiveTalks #Leadership #AI #Engineering #TeamCulture #AIEngineering

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Customers often ask how we manage the physical side of Extreme IX - ~50 POPs across India, close to 100 racks, and thousands of devices, cables, cross-connects, fiber pairs, power feeds, etc. It’s a fair question. Things move fast here. Racks fill up, circuits change, new devices are deployed every week. Keeping it all in your head, or scattered across spreadsheets, is a recipe for pain and a brewing disaster... That’s why we use NetBox. It’s our source of truth for everything in the network. Every site. Every rack. Every device, port, cable, and power feed. Every fiber pair and vendor cross-connect. Every server, virtual machine, IP address, Vlan. If it exists in our infrastructure, it exists in NetBox. Over time, it’s grown from being “just documentation” into something far more powerful - a living map of how Extreme IX is built. We track dark fiber routes, vendor details, and contract information, so we always know who provides which link, where it runs, and what connects on each end. Our monitoring systems pull device data directly from NetBox. So when an alert triggers, it doesn’t just say what’s down - it tells us where it lives, what it connects to, and who to call. That context changes everything. It turns a 20-minute investigation into a 2-minute fix. We’ve even mapped power distribution across every rack: how each PDU is wired, which breaker feeds what, and how redundancy is maintained. If a feed fails, we already know the impact. The result: - Faster troubleshooting because every alert has context. - Better planning because we can see capacity and dependencies clearly. - More confidence because our documentation isn’t an afterthought — it is the system. We don’t treat infrastructure knowledge as tribal wisdom that lives in people’s heads. We treat it as structured data that lives in one reliable place. That’s what NetBox gives us: a calm, accurate picture of a complex system. It’s how we manage scale without losing control. And btw Netbox is open source and has a rapid development and a vibrant community. Here’s a glimpse of what that looks like 👇 Would love to hear if some of the ISPs in India are also using Netbox or plan to use it?

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Praveen Jain presents the Juniper Networks 800G QFX5240 switch at OFC Conference this week highlighting the innovations in optics power consumption, and leading AI software features.

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Open RAN in Brownfield: A Step Forward, but the Journey Continues. The recent news on AT&T’s RAPP deployment in a brownfield Open RAN environment is an interesting step toward addressing one of the toughest challenges in telecom: modernizing existing networks without disrupting live services. Brownfield is where the real complexity lies—legacy systems, vendor lock-ins, and operational inertia make it far harder than greenfield deployments. RAPPs (RAN Applications) running on the RIC promise vendor-neutral innovation, AI-driven optimization, and faster feature rollouts. But success here isn’t about a single deployment—it’s about scaling intelligence and automation while ensuring SLAs stay intact. To me, this marks progress, but also raises an important technical question: How can we ensure RIC/RAPP integration delivers measurable performance gains at scale in latency-sensitive workloads without adding orchestration complexity in brownfield networks? Looking forward to your thoughts.  

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AI workloads are pushing every part of the network to evolve. SONiC is meeting that moment with an open, standardized model backed by a community committed to keeping the ecosystem aligned. In my Built for Trust discussion with Vishal Shukla of Aviz Networks, we explore how SONiC is enabling more automated operations and why it is quickly becoming a leading option for open, AI-ready networking. 🎧 Listen to the conversation on Built for Trust: https://hubs.li/Q03TzCdX0

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Do you have a renewal or refresh of your ADC infrastructure on the horizon? This IDC report reveals the real-world numbers around the benefit of #NetScaler across productivity, reduction in unplanned downtime, and helping your staff work more efficiently in terms of day to day admin and troubleshooting. In addition, Customers saw a remarkable **387% three-year ROI** Read the full report here for the specifics on how #NetScaler #ADC can help your organisation: http://spr.ly/6049f4QHL

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Telco Organizational Latency Is Worse Than Network Latency At Google Cloud, structure was the accelerator. Managers had 10 to 12 direct reports. Most employees sat within 3 layers of a VP. Alignment was not a meeting. It was built into the model. You owned the outcome or you did not. The result was speed, not from hustle, but from architecture. Telcos run on a different blueprint. Most still carry 8 or 9 layers. Manager spans an average 4 to 5. Departments like legal, billing, IT, care, marketing and compliance each protect their domain. But no one owns the full outcome. Work gets fragmented. Accountability disappears into the process. That used to make sense. Technology was modular. Switches stayed in the NOC. Billing systems ran on mainframes. Care followed scripts. Org charts mirrored technology silos. But modern business is horizontal. AI, analytics, and cloud cut across functions. Identity, security, personalization, and observability; none live in one team. Execution flows through the whitespace between roles. And that whitespace is unmanaged. Vertical structures now create drag. Layers multiply decision latency. Teams wait for approvals. Silos fail to align. Every extra step adds delay. The structure itself becomes the blocker. The numbers expose the gap. Meta generates over 1.5 million USD per employee. Microsoft sits at 1.05 million. AT&T is under 600 thousand. Orange is near 370 thousand. To generate 1 billion in revenue, Meta employs 650 people. Orange needs 2,700. That is a structural difference, not just a business model gap. STL reports that 70% of Telcos still follow strict verticals. Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found that digital-native companies launch products 40% faster. Bain & Company data shows flatter orgs double decision speed, even with the same headcount. In some Telcos, a prepaid plan update requires input from 12 departments. Every step adds latency. Every layer compounds it. Strategy may say agile, but structure still runs waterfall. So, how to create an "ultra low latency org chart"?: Eliminate internal SLAs. Replace with shared OKRs tied to real outcomes such as churn, NPS, ARPU, and conversion. Organize around squads, not functions. Each squad owns a product or journey end-to-end, with embedded tech, ops, marketing, care, and analytics. No handovers. No alignment meetings. One goal. One backlog. One accountable unit. Flatten the structure. Limit org layers to 3 or 4. Expand the manager spans to 10 or more. Remove matrix reporting. Push budget, scope, and delivery decisions to the squad level. Embed legal, finance, and compliance into teams or abstract them as internal platforms. Kill approval chains. Replace control with coordination through code, systems, and shared KPIs.

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