Author: Tom Nolle

The future of networking, like the future of practically everything else, is largely dictated by return on investment, meaning the balance of costs and revenues for all the players.  I think 2017 is going to be a pivotal year, in no small part because network operators have predicted this will be the year where their…

Virtual functions and NFV are all about virtualizing network features, right?  Well, perhaps not.  There is increased interest in looking at application components as virtual functions, and this trend might be critical in justifying the carrier cloud, and even in supporting NFV’s narrower goal.  It might not be too much of a stretch for current…

Every network operator I’ve surveyed has some sort of wholesale/retail relationship with other operators.  Most fit into two categories—a relationship that extends geographic scope or one that incorporates one operator’s service inside another (like backhaul or MVNO).  Given this, it is natural to assume that services built on SDN and/or NFV would have to be…

If we need to apply advanced cloud principles to virtual network functions (VNFs), what exactly would that mean for VNF design, onboarding, and management?  This is an important question because the current VNF onboarding process is broken from the operators’ almost universal perspective.  Management, in my own view, is at least as broken.  Fixing these…

I hope that convincing you that having NFV evolve in sync with the leading edge of the cloud hasn’t proven too difficult.  If it has, then I hope the rest of this series will do the job.  If you’re on board, then I hope that the rest gives you a few action items to study. …

An article in Light Reading yesterday caught my eye, because it said that a survey of operators showed a lower level of confidence in their meeting virtualization goals.  This isn’t a surprise to me, given that my own contact with operators has been saying they had little confidence all along.  It does offer some insights…

The announcement that Verizon is truly selling its cloud data centers, we now know to Equinix, has to put fear in the heart of carrier cloud proponents.  It should, and it should even call into question the future of NFV.  But all is not lost here; the fact is that Verizon was premature in getting…

CORD, the new darling of telco transformation using open source, is a great concept and one I’ve supported for ages.  I think it’s a necessary condition for effective transformation, but it’s not a sufficient condition.  There are two other things we need to look at.  The first is what makes up the other carrier-cloud data…

I noted in my introductory blog in AT&T’s and Verizon’s SDN/NFV approach that Verizon has taken a totally different tack with its architecture.  Where AT&T is building open-source glue to bind its vendor-controlling D2 architecture, Verizon is defining an open architectural framework for vendor integration.  Standards from the ONF, TMF, and NFV ISGs fit deep…