One of the most logical places for operator interest in open-source software to focus is in the area of virtual network functions (VNFs). Most of the popular functions are available in at least one open-source implementation, and operators have been grousing over the license terms for commercial VNFs. It would seem that an open-source model…
These are the times that try the souls of networking sales management. Most of you know that I have an ongoing dialog with salespeople in many companies, and that dialog says that network spending overall is under pressure. Legacy infrastructure investment is slow-rolling because of ROI issues, and vendors who have presented next-gen architectures have…
How can we best accommodate the notion of virtualization to the application of IoT? That’s a question that more and more operators and vendors are wrestling with, and it’s a good one. The answer might be interesting and disruptive—think less about virtualizing the network and more about virtualizing the “things”, the sensors and controllers. I’m…
Let us suppose for a moment that the goal of operators is to reduce equipment and operations cost in concert and at the same time increase their ability to provision current services quickly and flexibly, and develop new services just as quickly. Let us further suppose that they have addressed the higher-level operations/portal implications of…
With the exception of Huawei, network equipment vendors are facing tightening spending by operators. The reason, obviously, is that compression in profit-per-bit that I’ve been talking about—the compression that’s led to operator support for “transformation” and their interest in SDN and NFV. Since SDN and NFV have not evolved fast enough and far enough to…
The issue of operationalizing next gen networks and services is critical for operators, and it’s thus fitting to close this week’s review of the Verizon architecture with comments on OSS/BSS integration. There are two questions to be answered; can the approach deal with the efficiency/agility goals that will have to be met to justify SDN/NFV,…
It has always been my view that NFV would be better and more efficient if there were a common modeling approach from the top layer of services to the bottom layer of infrastructure. I still feel that way, but I have serious doubts on whether such a happy situation can now arise. The service-centric advance…
Getting closer to the buyer and to the dollars is always good advice in positioning a product or service. For network operators, that means looking at what services they sell, and for network operators reviewing the potential of SDN/NFV, it means looking at how these new technologies can improve their services. But “services” doesn’t necessarily…
Verizon has just released a white paper on its SDN/NFV strategy, developed with the help of a number of major vendors, and the paper exposes a number of interesting insights into Tier One next-gen network planning. Some are more detailed discussions of things Verizon has revealed in the past, and some new and interesting. This…
I got back from a holiday to a flood of data from both enterprises and network operators/service providers—the former group focusing on cloud and network service views, and the latter group focusing on NFV. Because all the data is so interesting I thought it was important to get it into a blog ASAP, so here…