What we have here is a failure of abstraction. Yes, a stylistic variant on the famous “failure to communicate” line in “Cool Hand Luke”, but true, and never more so than at this dawn of a new decade. In 2020, we need to fix some of the problems we’ve fixed in the past, and in…
Lies, hype, truths, and 2020. I guess that’s the sort of thing I’d be expected to write to open the New Year, and so that’s what I intend to do. The bad news is that all these descriptive words will apply to some of what we hear this year, and the good is that I…
Can a monolithic application be cloudified? That’s one of the critical questions for network operators, because so much of their operations/management software inventory is monolithic. To make matters even more complicated (and, arguably, worse), most of the implementations of management tools for things like NFV and even zero-touch automation, are in large part monolithic. Are…
It may be that Cisco still has more to show us in their network transformation. Their Acacia announcement, followed by Silicon One, was IMHO a big step toward a new model of networking. It just could be that their Exablaze deal was another. Exablaze is a company specializing in low-latency networking, meaning building networks that…
Perhaps is the biggest technical barrier to cloud-native in telecom is reconciling microservice behavior with network service behavior. If service QoS is limited by microservice and cloud-native implementation, then cloud-native suitability for telecom is in doubt. If service setup, change, and restoration is limited by the way microservices are orchestrated, then cloud-native suitability for telecom…
Every network operator worldwide faces profit challenges. Some face challenges more acute than others, of course, and we need to watch those operators to get an advance look at what may be coming for the industry overall. AT&T is such an operator. They have a challenging demand density, they made some mistakes in their early…
If open networking is a challenge to vendors, what’s the solution? One possible pathway is to try to guide your buyers to better benefits, thus justifying higher costs. That’s not an easy sell, and particularly problematic for Cisco, whose sales-driven approach to networking is legendary. That leaves the other pathway; steal someone else’s money. By…
Is virtualization already obsolete? Or, at least, is it heading in that direction? Amazon would like everyone to believe it is, as this SDxCentral Article shows, and they may be right. What Amazon and others would do about it could be a benefit to both cloud and data center. Amazon’s own answer is its “Nitro”…
Cloud providers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have been tuning their strategies to conform to the evolution of the hybrid cloud model. Telcos have been trying to tune or transform their business model to wean themselves away from dependence on bill-for-bits services, all of which are commoditizing. Is it a surprise that the two groups…
Years ago, I was involved in early work on ISDN (remember that!). Since CIMI Corporation had signed the Cooperative R&D Agreement (CRDA) with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), I had a chance to review many of the early use cases. I remember in particular a day when a vendor technologist burst into…