Author: Tom Nolle

I had an interesting exchange with a big national carrier on the subject of management integration and unified modeling of services.  I’ve noted in past blogs that I was a fan of having a unified service model, something that described everything from the tip-top retail experience to the lowest-level deployment.  I pointed out that such…

I’ve blogged now about “edge-based” and “interior” NFV service opportunities, and in the latter I noted that I was going to treat the case of “interior nodes” separately.  Many of you will probably understand why that is the case, but I hope to show everyone why nodal services are different, and perhaps generate some discussion…

Virtual CPE (vCPE) is one of the hotter topics these days, and even though it has its roots in NFV the concept seems to be taking some tottering steps on its own.  As it does, it may be exposing some evolutionary trends that could supplement or replace aspects of the NFV value proposition, and even…

NFV is going to require deploying VNFs on something; the spec calls the resource pool to be used “NFV Infrastructure” or NFVI.  Obviously most NFVI is going to be data centers and servers and switches, but not all of it, and even where the expected data centers are deployed there’s the question of how many,…

I blogged yesterday about the need to create mission-specific “upperware” to facilitate the development of new services and experiences.  The point that was that NFV is not enough for that; you have to be able to develop and organize functional atoms for assembly according to some application model or all you’re doing is pushing VMs…

At Light Reading’s Big Telecom Event, Cisco SVP of Global Service Provider Delivery Cedrik Neike said that telcos have to transform themselves into platform providers.  Well, telcos would agree at least that they have to transform themselves into something other than what they are now—connection and transport providers.  Maybe platform providers would be better, but…

OpenStack is hot.  IBM is going to acquire Blue Box and Cisco is acquiring Piston.  You could look at this as a kind of consolidation signal, but I think it has other implications.  In fact, it might signal some SDN maturity, some NFV questions, and some cloud directions. OpenStack is obviously the premier approach to…

In a couple blogs last week I was critical of Alcatel-Lucent’s positioning of a new product (NSP) and their expressions of SDN/NFV opportunity in a white paper done in conjunction with AD Little.  I also raised questions about their positioning overall, and their ability to deliver on SDN/NFV benefit needs.  I had a chance to…

Hint:  It’s not how you think! HP is certainly at least one of the functionality leaders in the NFV race, and the fact that they’re an IT player is important to senior management at many operators.  They’ve won what’s arguably the most important NFV deal yet (Telefonica), and they’re on track to deliver convincingly on…

I often get emails on my blogs from network operators (and of course network vendors too, but those are another story).  One of the things I get from those emails that I find particularly fascinating is the difference in perspective on SDN and NFV between the pillars of power in operator organizations.  We talk all…