SDxCentral raised an interesting point in an article on how Nokia thinks operators would use savings created by virtualization and automation. The point is that operators, having saved on both opex and capex with these strategies, would then spend more on innovation. I believe that the potential for this shift exists, but I also think…
You might be wondering whether perhaps NFV is getting a second wind. The fact that Verizon is looking at adopting ONAP, whose key piece is rival AT&T’s ECOMP, is a data point. Amdocs’ ONAP-based NFV strategy is another. Certainly there is still interest among many operators in making NFV work, but we still have two…
Comcast has started to push in earnest at business services with SD-WAN, and they’re far from the only play in the space. In fact, one question that’s now being raised in the space is whether the future of SD-WAN will be tied more to service providers than to CPE products bought directly by enterprises, or…
Everyone wants service lifecycle automation, which some describe as a “closed-loop” of event-to-action triggering, versus an open loop where humans have to link conditions to action. At one level, the desire for lifecycle automation is based on the combined problem of reducing opex and improving service agility. At another level, it’s based on the exploding…
According to AT&T, 5G will promote low-latency edge computing. Is this another of the 5G exaggerations we’ve seen for the last couple of years? Perhaps there is a relationship that’s not direct and obvious. We’ll see. This is a two-part issue, with the first part being whether low latency really matters that much, and the…
One of the issues that should be driving the fall operator planning cycle, carrier cloud, isn’t making a really strong appearance so far. Those of you who’ve read my blog on what is likely to be a big planning focus no doubt saw that carrier cloud wasn’t on the list. Many would find this a…
The ETSI NFV ISG is having a meeting, one of which’s goals is to explore a more cloud model of NFV. Obviously, I’d like to see that. The question is what such a model would look like, and whether it (in some form) could be achieved from where we are now, without starting another four-year…
What exactly is “service automation” and who does it? Those are the two questions that are top of the list for network operators and cloud providers today, and they’re ranking increasingly high on the list of enterprises as well. As the complexity of networks increases, as technology changes introduce hosted elements in addition to discrete…
Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) has been a focus for operators for five years now. Anyone who’s following my blog knows I have disagreed with the approach the NFV ISG has taken, but it took it. The current model will never, in my view, be optimal, as I’ve said many times in past blogs and media…
Network operators generally do a fall technology plan to frame their following-year budget. The timing varies with geography and operator, but most are active between mid-September and mid-November. This year, a fair number of operators have done some pre-planning, and we can actually see the results in their quarterly earnings calls, as well as the…