One of the most important questions in network-building today is the role “white-box” technology will play. It’s a fundamental precept of operators and even many enterprises that they’re being gouged and locked in by network vendors. The obvious solution is to adopt an “open” technology, meaning something that doesn’t include proprietary elements and is subject…
Cisco has been a powerhouse in networking for decades, so when CEO Robbins says something at a big Cisco event, you have to pay attention. Most of the Cisco Live event seemed to focus on partnerships and opening of APIs for its Digital Network Architecture and intent-based networking initiatives, but there was a parallel move…
You probably know all about the stages of grief, or the stages of project post-mortem examinations. How about the stages of SD-WAN? The fact is that SD-WAN is undergoing a series of parallel revolutions, and the way they interact will shape both the opportunity and the competitive landscape, at both the product and service levels….
It seems like zero-touch automation (ZTA) is everyone’s goal but also that it’s mired in the usual standards-group molasses. The recent announcement that the first use case would be 5G network slicing, and the bias of the process toward earlier work on NFV, seem to combine to set the wrong goal and the wrong approach. …
Everyone has heard of augmented reality, and it’s often mentioned as a driver for everything from 5G to new phone technology. There’s no question that it could create a whole new relationship between us (as workers and consumers) and our technology, but the space is a lot more complicated than just putting on some kind…
Most of you know I think IoT is overhyped, with the popular vision being a whole bunch of new sensors put on the Internet for people to exploit, misuse, or hack, depending on their predisposition. The real IoT opportunity has to face two realities. First, most sensors will never be on the Internet directly; they’ll…
The MEF has been doing a kind of reboot, transitioning to something other than pure carrier Ethernet. One effort, the “Third Network” apparently confused a lot of people (what, they wondered, were the first two), and so the current efforts are titled more conventionally, as MEF 3.0. It’s more explicit about its vision, and in…
I offered operators’ criticisms of transformation views, and a few of you wanted to know what my own views of transformation were. Do I have something that operators wouldn’t criticize? Probably not, but I do have a view based on my absorbing of their views and the running of my market model. It’s actually not…
I just had a chance to read the Light Reading story on NFV (“Down But Not Out”) and it’s a nice summary of the NFV situation. It also documents my own frustration with the issues, because while everything the article says is true, every issue that the article presents was well-known in 2013. I know…
What will our next-generation network devices really look like? I know we’ve heard a lot of stories about the future, but are they all true? Are any of them, in fact? I had some interesting operator discussions on this point, and they yielded some surprising information. The best way to review it is to list…