Author: Tom Nolle

Juniper’s MX has been one of its most successful products, and it’s not surprising that the company wants to build on that success.  On Tuesday they announced a series of enhancements to the MX “Universal Edge”, all designed to host service intelligence close to the network edge.  That’s a worthy goal, and in my view…

Despite all of the recent interest in cloud computing, the darling of network operator monetization in dollar terms is still content.  In addition, content represents the largest risk to the operators, particularly to the cable MSOs who provide more than half the Internet service in the US.  OTT video is both a target of opportunity…

Red Hat announced its numbers, and as one Street report said, “the streak is broken”.  The company was light on revenue and net income, considerably below both the average of its performance over time and its prior year.  The result was that the Street has bumped them after hours, but the Street’s judgment may in…

Oracle is one of the most interesting companies in the industry, I think.  Not only is it a tech giant and bellwether for the space overall, it’s innovative and it’s got one foot on each side of quite a few of the critical industry divides; cloud versus data center, open-source versus proprietary, software versus hardware. …

There’s been a lot of discussion about Cisco’s ceasing development of its Application Control Engine elements for some of its most popular switches and routers.  More, given that the company has also cut investment in WAAS.  Some are taking this as Cisco’s abandonment of the spaces to more agile competitors, but I don’t think so….

The iPhone 5 may not be revolutionary (well, let’s be fair—it’s not) but there’s never been much doubt it would be successful, and in fact the early allotment sold out in no time and much faster than earlier models.  The question for the industry now is how to deal with this phenomenon.  It’s not the…

It’s obvious that software defined networking is the “next big thing”, at least from the perspective of the media and those few VCs prepared to invest in infrastructure.  In the last couple weeks we’ve seen some new details on SDN plans from Plexxi, a long-standing stealth startup in the space, and news that “MPLS fiend”…

In this blog I’ve noted many times that service providers have been searching for years for a true “service layer” architecture, one that could help them enter the new age of OTT or hosted services.  Network equipment vendors have been curiously backward in supporting this transformation, even though many of them have most of the…

Cisco reported its numbers, and they were pretty much on target with expectations.  The company announced a large increase in its dividend, and the Street is saying that Cisco is continuing to progress toward becoming a “mature company”.  I think that’s a bit overstated, but there’s no question that Cisco is facing that sort of…

S&P added its voice to Moody’s and downgraded Alcatel-Lucent to a negative outlook.  The rating agency cited the combination of slower capex growth among telcos and increased competition.  They’re right about the problem, but I remain convinced that Alcatel-Lucent and the others in the industry have created this mess for themselves by sticking their heads…