This is always the time of year when you’re supposed to look into the crystal ball and talk about the near-term future. OK, one of the areas we need to be watching in 2014 is metro. I’ve noted in prior blogs that metro-area networks are critical because the majority of profitable traffic both originates and…
Author: Tom Nolle
Reading Oracle’s Quarter
Oracle’s numbers came out, and they were good after a run of misses. One of the obvious questions raised by Oracle’s success is whether it’s Oracle’s success or a sign of secular recovery in software or in tech. Let’s look at some of the signals to find out. This tends to be Oracle’s best quarter;…
Does Juniper Have a Magic Wandl?
Juniper announced it was buying its long-time network monitoring and planning partner, Wandl. Obviously this could indicate a strategic shift on Juniper’s part, particularly when you marry it with the departure of the “Microsoft camp” (CEO Kevin Johnson and software head Bob Muglia). It could also mean nothing much, and it’s too soon to call…
The World According to Cisco’s Analyst Event
I know I’ve blogged a lot this week about industry conditions, but there’ve been a lot of developments in that space and we’re all in this together, industry-wise, in any case. Cisco’s analyst event offers more fodder for the discussion and also I think some clarity on the choices that face us. At one level,…
Happy Holidays from CIMI Corporation
CIMI Corporation, and I, would like to wish all of you a wonderful Holiday Season and a happy, healthy, and professionally rewarding New Year! Please share our holiday card at the link below. Tom Nolle, President CIMI 2013 Holiday Card
IT Players Plans, and Buyers’ Thoughts, on SDN and NFV
One of the comments that was posted on one of my blogs (on LinkedIn) was that it was surprising that the IT vendors were not heard from much regarding SDN/NFV. I agree at one level; IT is the obvious beneficiary of this whole software-defined-stuff initiative set. However, there are IT vendors involved in the process…
Nudges that Could Add Up to a Big Push
Well, it’s catch-up Friday today, and there are a number of items that cropped up this week but didn’t make the cut for dedicating a blog entry. If you put them together you can see some forces acting to create industry change—not in a giant push but in nibbles. There’s a report that FCC Chairman…
Analyzing the Wall Street View of Networking
It’s always fascinating to get a Wall Street view of networking, so I was happy to review the William Blair tech outlook. While I don’t always agree with the Street, they certainly have capabilities that I don’t in analyzing the financial trends. Even where we disagree, there’s value in contrasting the Street view with the…
Could Cable Operations Modernization Make the Industry an NFV Power?
“Cable” has always been seen as different from “telecom”. The industry is regulated differently, it’s primary profit sources are different, it has very different infrastructure, and it’s OSS/BSS/NMS tools and strategies are also different. Most insiders in the SDN world say that cable operators are less interested in SDN than telcos, and virtually everyone says…
SDN and NFV Benefits: It’s a Matter of Scope
Stories about network transformation tends to focus on capex, despite the fact that network operators have consistently indicated that opex is likely more important. One reason for this is that opex is one of those giant fuzzball sort of areas where you can make almost any claim and get the numbers to work in your…