Author: Tom Nolle

The big flap today is yet another resurfacing of the notion of an aggressive move by Apple into the TV space.  On one hand, the move seems not only logical but inevitable.  Apple’s future obviously depends on its ability to keep launching new spaces to counteract the fact that its high-end model will always lose…

I want to wish all those who have read my blog through 2012 a happy and prosperous holiday season and wish you the best for 2013! Tom Nolle, President CIMI Holiday 2012

I got an email on the Emulex/Endace deal, making among other things the obvious comparison between the move and deals like NetScout/OnPath and Riverbed/Opnet.  I think some of Cisco’s recent deals, as well as moves by VMware/EMC, could also be called “related”.  The problem I have at this point is deciding just what the common…

One of the problems with the whole SDN thing is that it’s so abstract.  We have a combination of a few dedicated researchers who are doing the usual egghead stuff, and a lot of media types picking at the topic.  The good news is that this is coming to an end; we’re getting actual SDN…

NSN is selling its optical transport assets to the same private-equity firm who bought Sycamore’s technology assets, and the move doubles down on a bet that NSN is making—namely that broad product lines aren’t valuable in networking any longer.  I think that at one level that’s true; my research shows that buyers are much less…

Verizon’s Enterprise Solutions group thinks that hybrid clouds will be one of the top trends, and a telling comment is that they see the cloud supplanting the VPN as an enterprise service.  While this may seem outlandish on the surface, I think there’s a lot of logic/truth behind the statement, and it also explains some…

Google has decided to drop its prices for cloud service and expand its IaaS offerings, apparently to compete better with Amazon or to respond to a cloud market that seems to be racing for the bottom.  Another possibility is simply that there’s a lot of “undifferentiated interest” in the cloud, meaning that buyers don’t know…

I’ve said for months that Cisco needs to be a definitive cloud player and to do that, a software player.  Cisco has now demonstrated it’s serious about being a cloud player with its acquisition of Cloupia, a fairly impressive player in the growing space of provisioning/DevOps, particularly for the cloud.  I think this is a…

Cisco’s earnings calls are almost always an education, and this one may be of particular significance given that the industry (and the global economy) is teetering on the edge of maybe-good, maybe-bad.  Cisco showed some good, and some of Cisco’s lessons are even applicable to other companies in the space.  Some aren’t and shouldn’t offer…

Most everyone who uses telecom these days knows that we’re not in our mothers’ network anymore, but the changes have come somewhat gradually and it’s hard to realize now that we’re only 60 years from the first coast-to-coast non-operator-assist call.  Some recent events may help us come to terms with reality, though. Verizon and AT&T…