Author: Tom Nolle

When you have an architecture that set the standard for NFV, what do you to for an encore?  AT&T’s answer to that question is “Network 3.0 Indigo” or in short terms, just “Indigo”.  It’s another of those huge concepts that’s difficult to describe or to understand, and its sheer scope is certain to create healthy…

Operators have been fascinated by the public cloud opportunity, and new initiatives like that of Orange Business Services seem to promise that this fascination could be gaining some traction in the real world.  But Verizon at the same time is clearly pulling back from its public cloud computing commitments.  What’s really going on with operator…

It would be fair for you to wonder whether the notion of intent-based service modeling for transformed telco infrastructure is anything more than a debate on software architecture.  In fact, that might be a very critical question because we’re really not addressing, so far, the execution of the control software associated with virtualization in carrier…

One of the joke statements of the virtual age is “You can’t send a real tech to fix a virtual problem!”  Underneath the joke is a serious question, which is just what happens to test and measurement in a virtual world?  Virtualization opens two issues—how do you test the virtual processes and flows, and how…

If you like the idea of somehow creating a union between CORD and ECOMP then the next obvious question is just where that union has to start.  The answer, in my view, isn’t in a place where both architectures contribute something that could be united, but where neither does enough and external unionizing forces are…

The concept of carrier cloud has taken some hits over the last months.  Media coverage for network functions virtualization (NFV) shows a significant negative shift in the attitude of operators over the progress of NFV.  Verizon sold off the cloud business it purchased, and is now reported to be selling off its cloud computing business. …

Continuing on my recent theme of 5G assessment, I want to look today at the relationship between 5G, SDN, and NFV.  Because 5G evolution is considered a given in the industry, many vendors in the SDN and NFV space have been eager to link their wares to 5G as a means of insuring they’re not…

The announcement that Telefonica has turned to Huawei for its virtual EPC is certainly of major significance.  Huawei is the only major telecom vendor who’s managed to gain significantly in revenue over the last several years, largely due to its price-leader status.  Competitors like Cisco, Ericsson, and Nokia have hoped to wrestle away some market…

Cisco announced it was buying AppDynamics, an application performance monitoring (APM) company, snatching (literally) the company from an IPO that was already oversubscribed.  The price tag, $3.7 billion, raised a lot of eyebrows in the financial community.  Most agree that Cisco (like everyone in the IT space) needs to get more software-centric, but the question…

I blogged recently about the three categories of operators, categories divided by the operators’ thinking on the path to transformation and the role of things like SDN and NFV.  It’s only fair to do the same thing now with the network vendors, who also happen to divide into three categories.  Where the operators divide based…