We heard the rumors back in November that the HPE deal to acquired Juniper Networks was getting a closer look from the Department of Justice. Last week we got confirmation that the DoJ will be filing suit to half the deal. The arugument from the government is that the result of the deal would be 70% of the market for networking equipment being held by just two companies. Specifically cited was the wireless LAN component, where the DoJ said there were only three major players. This was refuted quickly by both HPE and Juniper. The UK Competition and Markets authority and the EU have both cleared the deal. This and more on The Rundown.

The expansion of wireless spectrum technologies is affording new opportunities for growth. Existing areas are becoming more crowded as devices become more prevalent. This includes not only user devices but Internet of Things (IoT) as well. In this episode, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by Cheryl Connell, Ron Westfall, and Jason Beshara as they discuss how the growth of IoT has caused contention in the current Wi-Fi spaces. They also discuss how the opening of the 6 GHz spectrum band has the potential to create more room for growth, provided device manufacturers adopt these new areas with the guidelines the bring.

As we mentioned earlier, the early days of a US government change invovle a lot of new orders and announcements. After a week in office the current US administration announced a plan to impose import tariffs on Taiwan for a variety of goods, including pharmaceuticals, steel, and chips. The tariff was reported to be 25% but could be as high as 100%. In further comments the president said the goal of the move was to lure companies back to the US to manufacture chips domestically. However, the CHIPS Act was specifically called out as being problematic because it simply gave money away instead of punishing companies with additional taxes to change their behavior. This is definitely a developing situation but lets dive in. Al, what’s the ultimate goal here? This and more on the Gestalt IT Rundown.

The Biden presidential administration might be winding down but thre […]

IoT devices are growing by the thousands every day. Networks are gaining millions of devices every year and the total number is expected to top 31 billion by the end of 2025. Each of these devices are going to create complexity issues for networking administrators and engineers the world over. In this episode, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by networking legends Peter Welcher and Denise Donohue as they discuss the challenges that IoT is imposing on us all. This discuss the skills gap as well as security concerns as well as how to stay ahead of the deployment process.

At CES 2025, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang introduced Cosmos, a new AI model trained on 20 million hours of video to help machines better understand and interact with the physical world, available via Hugging Face and NVIDIA’s GPU Cloud. He also urged businesses to adopt a three-computer AI system, featuring tools like Project DIGITS for AI development and the Llama Nemotron models for autonomous agents. Meanwhile, Dell announced a full rebrand, replacing familiar names like XPS and Latitude with Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max, along with Plus and Premium tiers, aiming to attract customers seeking AI-powered PCs. Critics noted the naming is familiar, but it could help Dell appeal to new users. This and more on the Gestalt IT Rundown.

All marketing is aspirational. Quoted throughput and user counts are hopeful at best. All IT professionals know this. In this episode, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by Kerry Kulp, Scott McDermott, and Mark Houtz as they discuss the inflated claims of marketing teams and how they factor into buying decisions. They also discuss how Wi-Fi compares to other technologies and why the enterprise experience is vastly different from the consumer perspective. Lastly, they provide some ideas for keeping a grasp on reality when it comes to working with Wi-Fi numbers.

We’re looking back at our reporting on the biggest enterprise IT stories of 2024 and telling you the trends that will be discussion points well into 2025. We’re reconsidering Broadcom’s moves with VMware, the fall of Intel, HPE’s acquisition of Juniper, that fab CHIPS act, the evolution of data protection companies to security, power-hungry GPUs, Co-Pilot PCs, lots of AI infrastructure, a whole lot of hacks, including Snowflake and Salt Typhoon, and the government’s actions against big tech.

Enterprise IT has long been divided into silos. This is because of scarce resources and specialized knowledge required to perform some IT operations tasks. The world of today is much more focused on outcomes and the need for silos is waning. In this episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast, Stephen Foskett, Alastair Cooke, and Tom Hollingsworth discuss how enterprise IT has moved away from silos due to increased resource availability and cross training. They also look ahead to new challenges from advances like AI and quantum computing.

The biggest news of the holiday weekend dropped on Monday. Pat Gelsinger has retired from Intel, effective immediately. David Zinsner, CFO, and Michelle Johnston Holthaus, newly named CEO of the Intel Product subunit, have been named as Co-CEOs while the board searches for a permanent member. Gelsinger has been the CEO since 2021. He has been focused on returning Intel to dominance in the chip market while also facing headwinds from industry transitions to mobile and AI computing. Intel stock prices rose on the news. This and more on The Gestalt IT Rundown.