Netflash

Extreme Networks is previewing a technology that will let enterprise customers run AI applications locally using a mix of on-premises compute and spare network equipment processing capacity. With Extreme Exchange zones, enterprises will be able to pool compute resources, including spare capacity on Extreme access points and switches already deployed at branch offices and other edge sites, to run …

Cisco announced a new operational technology security certification designed to help network and security professionals develop the skills needed to secure industrial environments as IT and OT systems become more connected. The Cisco OT Security Practitioner certification targets early-career OT professionals, IT practitioners transitioning into industrial roles, and students interested in indust…

Microsoft has reportedly withdrawn from an agreement to become the anchor customer for a planned artificial intelligence data center in Loughton, England, after delays in securing an electricity connection delayed the facility’s expected availability into the 2030s. The news was first reported in The Telegraph, a London newspaper. The project was announced in 2025 during President Donald Trump’s …

Multiple factors are coming together to propel enterprise deployments of SONiC, the open-source network operating system (NOS) created 10 years ago by Microsoft to run on white box switches in hyperscale data centers. Alan Weckel, founder and analyst at 650 Group , is forecasting that data center switching revenue based on SONiC (Software for Open Networking in the Cloud) will exceed $5 billion i…

Microsoft expanded its sovereign cloud offerings on Tuesday, adding new security, governance and AI capabilities as customers, particularly in Europe, demand greater assurance over where data is stored, who can access it and how critical services operate during disruptions. The announcement builds on Microsoft’s ongoing digital sovereignty efforts, assisting organizations in applying appropriate …

Proponents of SONiC made a strong showing at last week’s Open Compute Project (OCP) Global Summit, where vendors including Cisco, Microsoft, and Nokia championed SONiC’s capabilities as an open Ethernet platform for AI networking. The Linux-based network operating system decouples network software from the underlying hardware and allows it to run on hundreds of switches and ASICs from multiple ve…

ThousandEyes, a Cisco company, monitors how ISPs, cloud providers and conferencing services are handling any performance challenges and provides Network World with a weekly roundup of events that impact service delivery. Read on to see the latest analysis, and stop back next week for another update on internet and cloud traffic performance. Note: We have archived prior-year outage updates, includ…

Gartner kicked off its IT Symposium/Xpo this week and unveiled its annual list of the top strategic technology trends that organizations need to explore in the coming year. AI systems today are operating in an architectural vacuum, “generating software faster than humans can review it, creating unmanaged credential paths and binding processes to single-source vendor monopolies,” said Gene Alvarez…

AI agents are driving up telemetry costs and complicating network management as enterprises struggle to monitor the technology and control unexpected expenses, according to new research from Cisco Splunk . The company’s State of Observability 2026 report found that 57% of organizations have observability costs that exceed the cost of the infrastructure being monitored. Another 60% said unexpected…

Investors are pouring more into AI data center infrastructure than they can hope to recoup by 2030, according to Gartner. “Enterprise and consumer AI revenue will be insufficient to support profitable returns on all planned AI capital expenditures during this period,” said Gartner Senior Director Analyst Will Sommer. AI data center owners would need to generate $8.5 trillion in revenue through 20…

The OCP Global Summit is taking place this week in San Jose, Calif., and the news is flowing. The summit is an annual conference of the Open Compute Project , an industry initiative focused on developing more open, efficient, and scalable hardware designs for data centers and other computing infrastructure. The summit covers the physical infrastructure behind cloud computing and AI data centers, …

The Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) is pushing forward to meet evolving networking needs with the release of UEC 1.1 on October 12. The UEC got its start in 2023 to help improve Ethernet for the growing needs of AI and high-performance computing (HPC) networks. The consortium published its 1.0 specification in June 2025. That release defined a transport protocol, congestion control mechanisms and…

SolarWinds this week introduced Avior, an agentic AI system, to help network teams automate operational tasks, reduce alert noise, and improve infrastructure management while letting administrators maintain control over autonomous actions. Avior builds on the company’s existing AI framework by adding goal-oriented agents that can execute tasks, not just provide recommendations. The technology wor…

The U.S. government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, is awarding up to $300 million each to four companies to help them get their quantum computing hardware ready for independent testing. These four companies—IBM, IonQ, Diraq, and Atom Computing—have officially entered “Stage C” of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, joining Microsoft and PsiQuantum, which were already …

When quantum vendor IonQ on Sunday announced a $1.2 billion all stock deal to take over cybersecurity vendor Elisity, it spoke of a near-term future where enterprise quantum cybersecurity needs will move beyond replacing to-be-outdated encryption. The acquisition brings together IonQ’s post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and quantum key distribution (QKD) capabilities and Elisity’s enterprise Zero Tr…