Author: Tom Nolle

I’ve noted in the past that it’s proven difficult to make a business case for NFV.  Rather than address that point now, I propose to ask “But what if it can?”  Remember that while I’m unimpressed (to say the least) with efforts to paint a plausible picture to justify NFV deployment, I believe firmly that…

Vice presidents of operations at the network operators, especially the telcos, think that the solution to NFV silo risk is to do a better job of “federation”.  That term is one often used to describe the interconnection of elements across administrative or technical boundaries.  If a network isn’t built in a truly homogeneous way, then…

Open architectures for IT have a profound impact on the sales process.  In the old days, when a vendor sold a complete proprietary IT ecosystem, you pitched your benefits holistically and when you won you won it all.  When things shifted to an open framework, with COTS servers and Linux operating systems, the “sale” was…

I blogged earlier this week about the “fall planning cycle” for network operators, and the issues and forces associated with that cycle this year.  An obvious follow-on question is how vendors will be impacted by the cycle.  Will some be hurt by events, others helped, and is there still time to move yourself from the…

The consensus among network operators who provide either wireline or wireless broadband is that they’ll cross over on the revenue/cost per bit by mid-2017.  Given the time it takes to make any significant changes in service offerings, operations practices, or capital infrastructure programs, something remedial would have to begin next year to be effective. In…

Cisco beat estimates in its quarter, coming in about where I’d suggested it might overall.  The Street is happy with the results, which they should be, and the question now is how the details of Cisco’s performance might signal us toward a view of the next year. I think one key statement from the call,…

Wall Street will be watching Cisco on their earnings call this week.  I will to, and so should you all, but probably with a different set of goals and looking for signals only slightly related to the Street interest.  Cisco is an important player whose behavior will tell us a lot about the timing and…

Arista’s quarterly results might be showing us something important about the evolution of networking.  The company reported stronger-than-expected revenue, but what surprised many on the Street and in the media was the comment that white-box switching wasn’t seen as competition.  That might even be why revenues were better than expected, I think. I also think…

Does the Street have it right when they say NFV could hurt Cisco?  A Barron’s blog suggests that SDN doesn’t pose much of a threat to Cisco but NFV does, citing a financial analyst’s report.  The perspective of Wall Street on tech is sometimes helpful because it exposes the issues that could drive stock prices. …

The question of how to secure SDN and NFV comes up all the time, and in my view it’s yet to be fully resolved.  I think we’re trying to achieve “security by dissection”, meaning that we look at things like VNFs or NFV Infrastructure and ask how to secure them.  Yes, you have to build…