IBM and VMware both reported their numbers and the results look like a win for the cloud. The question remains whether a win for the cloud translates into a win for vendors and for IT overall, though. Neither of the two companies really made a compelling case for a bright future, and when you combine…
One of the problems with hype is that it distorts the very market it’s trying to promote, and that is surely the case with the Internet of Things. The notion of a bunch of open sensors deployed on the Internet and somehow compliant with security/privacy requirements is silly. But we’re seeing announcements now that reflect…
You always hear about service agility as an NFV goal these days. Part of the reason is what might cynically be called “a flight from proof”; the other benefits touted for NFV have proven to be difficult to validate or to size. Cynicism notwithstanding, there are valid reasons to think that agility at the service…
Cisco has always been known for aggressive sales strategies and cynical positioning ploys. Remember the day of the “five phase plan” that was always in Phase Two when it was announced (and that never got to Phase Five)? When SDN and NFV came along, Cisco seemed to be the champion of VINO, meaning “virtualization in…
One of the questions that seems to get asked annually is “When Google is going to build its own network?” After all, Google has deployed fiber in some areas, and from time to time it’s said it was going to bid on mobile spectrum. Is it just a matter of time for Google to take…
For decades, there’s been a view that a one-stop IT shop or full-service vendor was the best approach. Now it seems like nobody wants to be that any more. IBM, once the vendor with the largest strategic influence of any vendor, has seen its product line and customer base shrink. Dell and HPE seem to…
From almost the first meeting of the NFV Industry Specification Group, there’s been a tension between NFV and the cloud. Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) are almost indistinguishable from application components in the cloud, and so platforms like OpenStack or Docker and tools like vSwitches and DevOps could all be considered as elements of NFV implementation. …
In a couple of past blogs, I’ve noted that operations automation is the key to both improved opex and to SDN/NFV deployment. I’ve also said that to make it work, I think you have to model services as a series of hierarchical intent models synchronized with events through local state/event tables. The goal is to…
Is “the latest and greatest” always great? There are definitely many examples of fad-buying in the consumer space. In business, though, it would probably be a career-killing move to suggest a project whose only benefit was adopting “the latest thing”. That doesn’t mean that there’s not still a bit of latest-thing hopefulness in positioning new…
One of the useful trends in network services these days is the trend to retreat from the technology basis for a service and focus on the retail attributes. You can see this in announcements from operators that they’re supporting “network-as-a-service” or “self-service”, but in fact these same trends are a critical part of the “virtual…