Chris Lauwers is one of the thought leaders on the TOSCA standard, and he has a nice blog on the way that TOSCA might fill the role of defining intent models. I’ve advocated the use of TOSCA and also the use of intent models in both SDN and NFV, and so I want to look…
The news that AT&T and Orange are cooperating to create an open SDN and NFV environment is only the latest in a series of operator activities aimed at moving next-gen networks forward. These add up to a serious changing-of-the-guard in a lot of ways, and so they’re critically important to the network industry…if they can…
Every year in the middle of September operators launch a technology planning cycle. By mid-November it’s done, and the conclusions reached in the interim have framed the spending and business plans for the operators in the coming year. We’re about two months from the start of the cycle, and it’s at this point that vendors…
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. …