Former VMware CEO Gelsinger jumped to Intel; Cisco, VMware, Nutanix, headlined 2020 tech battles; and Cisco fought termination of $2.6B Acadia deal.

Broadcom unveiled an industry first; Palo Alto Networks pumped up Prisma; and AWS forked Elasticsearch.

ONF is targeting the RAN for the first time to address what it considers inadequacies in other open RAN projects, including those being led by the O-RAN Alliance.

Juniper Networks acquired Apstra; Cisco bought IMImobile, Slido to boost Webex; Microsoft security execs scored $100 million, launched Wiz.

Nutanix stole VMware's COO; Cisco’s SVP of security jumped ship for Google Anthos; and Nokia confirmed multiple C-suite departures.

IBM slashed thousands of jobs; Aruba Networks swept Cisco from the Pentagon; and Cisco workers were anxious.

The past year, in part because of the pandemic, has been a seminal one for the SD-WAN and SASE markets. Looking ahead, the highly competitive markets show no sign

Cisco, VMware scooped up Kubernetes startups in 2020; 5G gained and wained in 2020; and IBM, Nokia, and Cisco were among vendors that slashed jobs.

Tens of thousands of jobs were cut this year across the SDN and cloud ecosystem as vendors grappled with the financial fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The service provider transitioned 80% of Siemens' global network, spanning 1,000 sites in 94 countries, to its Flexible SD-WAN just two years into the six-year contract.

Nokia CEO touted a reorganization plan for growth; LF Energy targeted power grid virtualization; and the SolarWinds fallout got worse.

The update comes a month after rival VMware launched its own Kubernetes-focused networking update.

IoT won’t be converging to a point where specialized services are no longer required — quite the opposite, “it’s actually divergent,” AWS' Dirk Didascalou said.

Russian hackers exploited a VMware bug; Equinix stretched SDN, expanded edge; and Verizon tapped Silver Peak SD-WAN.

Cisco bought IMImobile, Slido to boost Webex; Juniper Networks acquires Apstra; and McAfee put $1 Trillion price tag on cybercrime.

The announcement addresses regional data center, co-location, and edge switching, while providing tools for orchestrating network fabrics, said Aruba's Steve Brar.

The acquisition should better position Juniper in the intent-based networking segment against rival Cisco.

Dell deepened hardware and supply chain security; AWS exerted container dominance; and ONF scored a $30 million deal.

DARPA's Pronto project, which supports research for secure 5G network infrastructure, is also funding ONF to deploy and operate an Aether network as a managed service.

Google says Anthos on bare metal gives customers more flexibility to run their workloads wherever they want: in Google Cloud, on-premises, in other clouds, or at the edge.

IBM ingested Instana; Palo Alto Networks tackled 5G security; and Google fortified its networking security portfolio with adaptive protection.

Cloud-based secure access service edge platforms aren't a perfect fit for every enterprise, Cisco's Ravi Chandrasekaran said.

“Enterprises won’t use 5G functions unless they have confidence that they have enterprise-grade security, visibility, and remediation,” Palo Alto Networks SVP Anand Oswal said.

Aruba bumped Cisco from the Pentagon; AMD bagged Xilinx for $35B; and Juniper paid $450 million to buy 128 Technology.