The network operator technology planning cycle that typically happens annually between mid-September and mid-November is just getting underway, and I want to share some of the “talking points” operators have told me about. None of these positions are firm this early, but in past years a decent number of the early positions were solidified into…
For the decades where IP dominance was a given, we have lived in an age where service features were network features. When Nicira came along, driven by the need to scale cloud tenancy more than physical devices tended to support, we learned about another model. Overlay networks, networks built from nodes that are connected by…
If software is driving networks and infrastructure, perhaps we need to look more at software architecture in relation to things like the cloud, SDN, and especially NFV. We’re seeing some indication that real thinking is happening, but also some suggestions that further thought is required. Many of you know that I write regularly for Tech…
Just as we enter a critical period for the role of servers in networking, we’re seeing some of the major server players enter a period of transformation. Dell has finalized its EMC/VMware acquisition, and HPE has announced they’re selling off their enterprise software business. These two decisions seem to cement both vendors into a position…
The Huawei announcement of new “Agile Controller 3.0” for SDN raises some interesting issues in the transformation game. Huawei’s press release offers comments like “provides the capabilities of on-demand network resource pool reservation, automatic deployment, intelligent optimization, and bandwidth adjustment on-demand for enterprise customers across campuses, carriers and data center networks” and “The AC 3.0…
Last month I laid out a number of points on the network implications of “fog computing”, and now is a good time to take those implications and mix them with vendor positioning and opportunity to judge how well vendors will be able to address the new issues. There are four classes of vendors to look…
I had an interesting exchange with a vendor recently, talking about the future of and leadership in NFV. What made it so interesting was that the vendor echoed a sentiment I’d heard from some operators. His point in essence was that “modernization” was the driver for NFV, that the operators now needed only to prevent…
Many vendors have found hope in NFV opportunity, including network vendors, software vendors, server vendors, and chip vendors. At VMworld the CEOs of Dell and VMware held a kind of NFV love-fest, and Intel has long been promoting NFV for the obvious reason that hosting anything consumes hosts, which consume chips. At the same time…
Rackspace knows a lot about the cloud. Maybe they know more than the pundits do, and very possibly more than the consortium of investors (led by Apollo Global Management) that are taking them private. The question now is whether they know more than those who think that the managed cloud services space is a great,…
There have been a number of online articles recently on the relationship between testing and monitoring and NFV. In the CloudNFV project I headed in 2013 to early 2014, I did some work defining these issues in more detail, and though the results were never incorporated in the PoC they do offer some input on…