Author: Tom Nolle

More and more people are realizing that the challenge for next-generation networking is basically getting enough of it to matter.  Whether we’re talking about replacing switches/routers with white boxes or hosted instances, we aren’t going to justify much excitement if we do that for perhaps two or three percent of the operators’ capital spending.  There…

Everyone wants NFV to succeed including both vendors and operators, and surely the media and analyst communities will find themselves under revenue pressure if NFV fails and something else doesn’t emerge to hype up.  From the first, one of the most-promoted examples of NFV has been virtual CPE (vCPE), which propose to substitute hosted connection-point…

While there has certainly been a lot of interest in what the next-generation infrastructure of operators might look like, there’s some indication that operators are thinking less about infrastructure these days.  Transformation is still their goal, but more and more are setting their sights higher than the network, and this could have a major impact…

When I did a survey of operator priorities back in 2013, the top of the list was mobile broadband (88% of operators listed it) and second with 86% was cloud computing.  At the end of 2015, mobile broadband’s score was almost identical but cloud computing had fallen astonishingly—to only 71%.  Nothing in the history of…

What exactly might a next-generation network look like?  If we actually try to answer that question it becomes clear that there are two parallel visions to contend with.  On the physical side, we have to build the network with fiber transport and something electrical above it, whether it’s a set of special-function devices or hosted…

The number one issue with making an NFV business case is that of service automation.  Any talk about “operations efficiency” or “service agility” that doesn’t start with the assumption that service activity is automated is just a waste of breath.  In addition, if we don’t have very precise notions of how we’d manage the incremental…

The concept of serendipity is dear to everyone.  You find a winning lottery ticket, dig up a pipe and find a stash of buried treasure, and (if you’re a network vendor) do a bunch of stupid stuff that somehow adds up to putting you in the right place at the right time.  Well, it’s nice…

SDxCentral cites an important truth in an article and report (the latter from the MEF and the Rayno Report), which is that there’s a lot of dissatisfaction with OSS/BSS out there.  It’s more complicated than that, though.  I mentioned in a prior blog my own experience at a major Tier One, where I got a…

Most of those who follow topics in SDN and NFV will recognize the ONOS or Open Network Operating System project.  It’s been covered regularly in the media, but much of the coverage seems to present it as a kind of alternative OPNFV.  It’s true that ONOS and OPNFV, as projects, could be considered to have…

I know that in past blogs I’ve noted that we often create unnecessary problems in the industry by overloading hot new technology terms.  “Software-Defined Network” is a great example; some people have used the term to describe a major shift from distributed device-adapted networking to centralized software networking.  Others think you get to SDN by…