If fog or edge computing is the future, then what kind of future is it? We have a tendency to think of distributed compute power or cloud computing as being a form of traditional computing, based on traditional hardware and software. Is that the case? If not, what model or models might really emerge? The…
Wall Street has been framing Cisco’s recent technology announcements as less technology than business. The thesis is that Cisco sees the future as being revenues from services and a subscription model, rather than from hardware. This, in response to industry efforts to create commodity hardware platforms and in the growing tendency of buyers to keep…
Everyone tells us that service composition based on software tools is critical. Operators say that “agility” in service creation would help them address opportunities faster and better, and vendors think it would promote their products in a market that’s increasingly price-competitive. Perhaps it’s surprising, then, that there doesn’t seem to be a unified position on…
There has been a lot of recent discussion about SD-WAN technology and its potential. Not surprisingly, most of it has been marred by our industry tendency to over-generalize, to seize on a term that describes a host of options and presume that all the options are really the same. SD-WAN is really important, but not…
After my blog on Cisco’s intent networking initiative yesterday, I got some questions from operator friends on the issue of modeling. We hear a lot about it in networking—“service models” or “intent models”, but typically with a prequalifier. What’s a “model” and why have one? I think the best answer to that is to harken…
Cisco has announced it’s going to support, and perhaps even focus on, “intent-based” networking. At one level this could be viewed as a vindication of a widely held view that intent-modeling is the essential (and perhaps under-supplied or even missing) ingredient in the progression of virtualization. At another level, it could be seen as another…
Back in the days of the public switched telephone network, everyone understood what “signaling” was. We had an explicit signaling network, SS7, that mediated how resources were applied to calls and managed the progression of connections through the hierarchy of switches. The notion of signaling changed with IP networks, and I’m now hearing from operators…
Every vendor wants to sit astride the critical value propositions, and in networking that’s particularly true. With capital spending under pressure, it’s crucial to have some strong value propositions you can spout to impress buyers. The problem has been that “value” really means either cost or revenue, and much of networking is insulated from both…
In past blogs, I’ve said that there were three dominant drivers for transformational change in networking. One is carrier cloud (which of course has its own drivers), one is 5G, and the last is IoT. Given that the industry is fast-paced, it’s a good time to look at where we stand on each, based on…
If networks are truly software-defined, what defines the software that defines them? This is not only the pivotal question in the SDN and NFV space, but perhaps the pivotal question in the evolution of networks. We knew how to build open, interoperable networks using fixed devices like switches and routers, but it’s increasingly clear that…