Author: Tom Nolle

The future of networking is being defined literally as we speak, but not by the companies who’d like to define it, or even the ones we’d think would be doing the defining.  We’re seeing a passing of innovation from the traditional network players to the OTT players, and from traditional network vendors to a collection…

Anyone who’s watching the networking market realizes by now that there’s a huge interest in open-source, especially among service providers.  Many attribute this to penny-pinching, but that’s not the case.  Operators know that moving from appliances to hosted elements is going to save less than 20% on their capital budget and have a so-far-unpredictable impact…

There’s a report circulating that Cisco’s long-time, charismatic, and some-say too-long-standing CEO John Chambers may be stepping down this fall.  Financial sources seem generally pleased with the notion, given that Cisco’s stock seems to be “range-bound”, offering little opportunity for either regular “long” investors or short-sellers.  There’s little question that Cisco is mired in something,…

It’s interesting to me that we’re starting to see focus on the key issues of the cloud, SDN, and NFV but not necessarily the kind of focus you’d expect.  To me, and to the enterprises and operators I survey, there is a clear need for some unifying vision because there is simply no appetite for…

Arista Networks had a very successful IPO last week, something that’s sure to raise the hopes of VCs and startups in the networking and SDN space.  Underneath, of course, are all of the usual questions—most significantly whether the strong showing in the stock can survive months of trading and the eventual release of restricted shares. …

Tech has always been a kind of swirling mix of trends (and hype), but any ecosystem necessarily supports symbiotic things best—positive feedback is after all “positive”.  We may be seeing some signs of symbiosis in some of the trends in IT and networking, and so we may be poised for better-than-average rates of change in…

The TMF event in Nice this week is a focus for an important issue in the evolution of networking, which is the way in which existing network and operations elements relate to newly introduced technologies like SDN and NFV.  The Forum promoted its “ZOOM” project, which is aimed at modernizing OSS/BSS models and introducing (hence…

According to a Light Reading article yesterday, Metaswitch’s CEO told an audience at their service provider event that operators needed to start thinking of themselves as software companies.  The comment provoked some backlash, on the grounds that it’s been said before.  True, but it’s also true to at least to a degree that the comment…

Read the stories about the IT world and you can’t escape a couple of truths.  One is that hardware is commoditizing; IBM sold its x86 business and everyone is talking commodity servers.  Another truth a bit harder to pick out but no less real is that platforms in the broader sense are definitely coming into…

Alcatel-Lucent became the latest network equipment vendor to announce their numbers, and the company made some very helpful progress in its “Shift” program to reorient its efforts into areas like mobile and IP, where future profit growth could be hoped for.  However, it didn’t have a breakout quarter, and that’s not unreasonable given the early…