Author: Tom Nolle

Cisco is said to be announcing a new white-label managed service offering that’s designed to be resold by network operators (presumably Cisco customers) to rebrand for the SMB space.  Cisco would provide the actual remote management resources.  The move is yet another interesting slant on how Cisco thinks it can help operators, make more money…

TMF’s Management World conference continues to show itself as a kind of cross-section of market and technology issues for the NGN.  This particular body, unlike most standards bodies, has long been almost a business, a marketing powerhouse that’s jealously guarded and effectively promoted its prerogatives.  The question is whether it can now overcome some of…

Verizon has taken yet another “leadership” step in defining how operators see their revenue futures.  The company has indicated it would be likely acquiring small software companies to create SaaS offerings hosted on the Verizon cloud.  I don’t think that the significance of this move is being appreciated, and so I want to open this…

The optical networking conference this week is opening some interesting issues about the future of “the core”, and probably even more interesting issues regarding networking overall.  While the focus of media coverage has been 100G Ethernet, the real question is how networks are valued, or made valuable. We might call the current situation in the…

HP has lowered its forecast for the year, and the threat of that move that broke yesterday caused tech stocks to shudder.  It raises a serious question about just what’s going on in tech, a question that doesn’t have any easy answers.  That means the future of tech as we know it may be…well…uneasy.  To…

Cisco reported its results, which the Street has described as those of a “company in transition”.  I disagree; they’re the results of a market in transition and a company not yet transitioning.  The signs of the conditions that have dumped Cisco’s stock and fortunes have been clearly visible for over four years, and alarmingly visible…

Skype and Microsoft?  Well, apparently it’s more than just a possibility.  There have been rumors swirling around a buyer for Skype for a week or more, but they’ve been just rumors.  The possible deal with Microsoft is a lot more than that—Microsoft confirmed it at about 8 AM today.  So now, the question is “why?” …

Today begins with more negative comments on Cisco, and it’s hard not to wonder at the way a company that was once a model of tech success (“I want to be the next Cisco”) is now seen as a model of a transition failure.  The idea of breaking Cisco up into pieces so that valuable…

There are conflicting reports on the progress of the mobile operators’ Isis project to provide mobile/NFC transaction processing in competition with credit cards.  Some of the media are saying that the initial link with Discovery for the actual transaction handling was an error in judgment, and the operators themselves admit that merchants say that Visa…

Verizon’s Digital Media Services initiative has been somewhat of a yawn to the press but it’s of great interest to other operators and also to some vendors.  Verizon is now launching another program, called the Verizon Strategic Initiatives Council, and this one could be even more important.  Perhaps the most significant thing about it is…