Author: Tom Nolle

I got a laugh at a conference back in the past when I commented that to the media, any new technology had to be either the single-handed savior of western culture, or the last bastion of international communism.  Anything in between wasn’t going to generate clicks on the pieces, and it was too complicated to…

Light Reading posted an interesting article on the commitment of network operators to NFV despite uncertainty about how they’d be expected to integrate with OSS/BSS.  There are some parallels between the comments made and my own interactions with the operators, but I’ve also had some discussions about the issue at greater depth, and I want…

There is no doubt that virtual CPE is the most populist of the NFV applications.  There are more vendors who support it than any other NFV application, and more users who could potentially be touched by it.  vCPE is also arguably the most successful NFV application, measured by the number of operators who have actually…

Verizon’s entry into the IoT space, via its “ThingSpace” API offering, has been covered by Light Reading and also released directly by Verizon.  The company is also opening its analytics engine for IoT use and making some network and pricing changes to accommodate IoT.  Verizon’s launch presentation on IoT properly characterizes IoT as a “Tower…

Before I took off on my vacation (just completed), I asked a bunch of my CFO contacts to review a document I prepared that outlined potential sources of NFV (or SDN) benefits.  They came back with some suggested changes and additions, and the result was a document with about 20 categories.  I’d also outlined some…

You all probably know how I love blog topics that present a contrast, and today we have a nice opportunity for one with the quarterly results from IBM and Juniper.  The former disappointed the Street and the latter made them happy.  The former has touted transition and the latter seems to be staying the course. …

OpenStack has been seen by most as an essential element in any NFV solution, but lately there have been questions raised on whether OpenStack can meet the grade, meaning “carrier-grade” or “five-nines”.  Light Reading did an article on this, and Stratus recently published an NFV PoC that they say proves that OpenStack VIM mechanisms are…

According to a recent piece on SDxCentral, “Operators don’t want the TM Forum to get lost in NFV technicalities.  They want the focus on making money.”  That’s an interesting and insightful couple of sentences, for several reasons, and it may be a signal of a sea change in NFV.  The obvious question is who’s going…

OK, I admit to liking old songs and poetry, so you’ll probably not be surprised if I quote a song title; “How deep is the ocean, how high is the sky?”  I don’t propose to blog on oceans or skies here, but depth and breadth is an interesting question posed to SDN and NFV.  We…

SDN came along well before NFV, and there are many SDN implementations compared with “real” (meaning actually complete and useful) NFV.  Despite this, SDN became a bit of a junior partner to NFV at least among network operators.  Even in my own deployment models, it’s clear that the easiest path to SDN deployment would be…