Author: Tom Nolle

What exactly is the data center interconnect (DCI) opportunity, and how does it relate to cloud computing, SDN, NFV, and the cloud?  That’s a question that should be asked, isn’t asked often, and might have a significant impact on the way we build the most important part of our network.  Obviously it’s going to have…

Modeling is critical for both SDN and NFV, and I’ve blogged on the topic a number of times.  In particular, I’ve been focusing on “intent models” as a general topic and on the OASIS TOSCA (Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications) in particular.  The two, as we’ll see, have a relationship. A recent set…

Any time a Tier One decides to open the kimono a bit on their planning for transformation it’s important.  AT&T did that with its paper on ECOMP, which stands for “Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management, and Policy” and the topic makes the comments doubly important.  As operators seem to be looking to take on more of…

The interest being shown in ONOS’s CORD architecture (see this Light Reading piece) isn’t a surprise to me (see my own blog on it here) but it’s an indication that CORD might be even more influential because of a singular fact—integration and “packaged solutions” are much more in CORD’s DNA.  I don’t agree that it’s…

An important question in the NFV space is also a simple and obvious one; “What is a good VNF?”  This question is something like the rather plaintive question asked early in the NFV evolution; “Where do I start?” and it’s a close relative to the “What do I do next?” question that many vCPE pioneers…

There is absolutely nothing as important to a business as profits.  For large public companies in particular, profits are what drive stock prices and for the last decade they’ve also driven executive compensation.  If we want to understand businesses as a group, we need to understand how they profit.  Which is why some of the…

If my speculation is correct and operations vendors may take the lead in NFV, what happens to all the grand plans the technology has spawned?  Remember that my numbers show the ROI on an OSS/BSS modernization to improve operations efficiency and service agility is much better than network modernization based on NFV.  Would we strand…

You can’t have a market for next-gen tech without a business case for transformation.  As the famous saying of Project Mercury, the first step in the US space program went, “No bucks, no Buck Rogers.”  The news out of MWC, recent LinkedIn posts, and other more direct metrics are all showing that vendors and operators…

Cisco’s acquisition of CliQr (I hate these fancy multi-case names; they just make it harder for me to type and spell-check so I won’t use the name from here forward!) raises a whole series of questions.  Foremost, at the industry-strategic level, is the matter of the value of the hybrid cloud and how that value…

MWC generated a lot of ink, and some of the developments reported by Light Reading, SDx Central, or both create some nice jumping-off points for comments.  You’ll probably not be surprised if I have a different spin on many of the things I’ve chosen, and that I hope we can gain some overall sense of…