Author: Tom Nolle

If you’re a cloud fan, which I am in at least the sense that I believe there’s a cloud in everyone’s future, it’s been a mixed week for news.  VMware has announced its Nicira-based NaaS platform aimed I think at cloud data centers, and the move has gained a lot of traction among the “anybody-but-Cisco”…

I’ve been reading a lot of commentary on network functions virtualization (NFV) and I’m sure that you all have been too.  Most of it comes from sources who are not actively involved with NFV in any way, and since the NFV ISG’s work isn’t yet public it’s a bit hard for me to see how…

HP is scheduled to report earnings tonight after the US markets close, and in keeping with my practice with Cisco, I’m going to focus today on what HP should be doing, uncluttered by the way the numbers fall.  Again as with Cisco, I may blog a bit about what actually happened. HP is an IT…

Carol Wilson raised an interesting point in an article in Light Reading on SDN and NFV—that of collaboration.  I’m happy that she found the approach CloudNFV has taken to collaboration and openness credible, but I think some more general comments on the topic would be helpful to those who want to assess how “open” a…

Well, if you thought that a telecom spending spree or an enterprise market flush with unexpected cash were going to drive Cisco and the industry to unprecedented growth, Cisco’s call likely disabused you of that notion.  While Cisco beat most estimates very slightly, its guidance was considered tepid and certainly the continued references to “challenging…

We have a bit of an interesting counterpoint story this morning, involving the future of networking and how we navigate transitions.  Let’s open with Blackberry, who has announced they will be forming an activity to seek bids for JVs, acquisitions, or whatever. Blackberry was the darling of the mobile phone space prior to the iPhone,…

NSN has changed ownership but not its name, it’s simply changed what the acronym decodes to.  “Nokia Solutions and Networks” is actually kind of appropriate at two levels.  First, obviously, it conveys Nokia’s sole ownership of the venture.  Second, it conveys that what NSN has been turning into is a “solutions” or professional services player. …

There are always two components to any software-based solution to a problem—the software that implements the solution and the platform that software runs on.  It’s not uncommon for us to take the latter for granted, but in the world of virtualization that’s a big mistake.  For SDN and NFV in particular, platforms are really important…

Remember the concept of NGN—the “Next-Generation Network?”  Some people think the Internet is it, but the Internet is a service and not really a network.  Some think that it was accomplished by IP convergence, but if that’s true then what’s all the fuss about SDN and NFV about?  So are we anywhere near the NGN…

Yesterday I blogged a bit about mobile video and mobile viewing behavior, and today I want to follow up with some commentary and data on the fixed-line side of OTT video.  The industry data shows convincingly that channelized consumption of video isn’t dropping even for fixed-line customers, but my own modeling and research shows that’s…