In my blog yesterday I talked about the need for something “above” SDN and NFV, and in the last two blogs about the need for an architecture to define the way that future cloud and NGN goals could be realized. What I’d like to do to end this week is flesh out what both those…
Why Crossing the Benefit Border is So Hard
Yesterday I blogged about the current state of our technology-side revolutions in telecom—SDN, NFV, and the cloud. All three of these have taken a bottom-up approach to solving the problems of the industry, and while it’s premature to say that any have failed it’s certain that none have succeeded either. The reason why, I suggest,…
Why Crossing the Benefit Border is So Hard
Yesterday I blogged about the current state of our technology-side revolutions in telecom—SDN, NFV, and the cloud. All three of these have taken a bottom-up approach to solving the problems of the industry, and while it’s premature to say that any have failed it’s certain that none have succeeded either. The reason why, I suggest,…
Climbing the Benefit Ladder Above SDN, NFV, and the Cloud
Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is one of several technologies that operators are hoping will improve their profit on infrastructure investment. NFV itself was launched to reduce capex by substituting generic hosted functions for embedded-appliance-based functions. NFV’s benefit expectations have evolved since to include, and even emphasize, operations efficiency and service agility. The evolution of expectations…
Climbing the Benefit Ladder Above SDN, NFV, and the Cloud
Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is one of several technologies that operators are hoping will improve their profit on infrastructure investment. NFV itself was launched to reduce capex by substituting generic hosted functions for embedded-appliance-based functions. NFV’s benefit expectations have evolved since to include, and even emphasize, operations efficiency and service agility. The evolution of expectations…
Apple, iDevices, and the New Age of the Cloud
Apple “crushed estimates” according to the headline of a financial website, and they surely did. In fact Apple turned in what was perhaps the first unabashedly great quarters of tech companies in the current earnings season. iPad sales were slightly below estimates and some analysts thought outlook was less positive than the current quarter, but…
Stepping Beyond the Cloud as We Know It
There are few who doubt that we are in the Internet Age. Few doubt we’re entering the Cloud Age and maybe even the SDN/NFV Age, but I wonder whether there’s broad understanding that the cloud and related technologies like SDN and NFV are going to be as transformative as the Internet was. When the Internet…
The Tale of Three Vendors
There’s no denying that networking is changing, but different people or companies see the change differently. For consumers, it’s mostly about replacing wireline phones and maybe cable TV with the Internet and wireless broadband. For network operators it’s about sliding profits on basic connection/transport services and growing competition from traditional and non-traditional sources. For network…
What Hath Google Fi Wrought?
Google has unveiled its long-awaited MVNO offering, Google Fi. Right now, Fi is in what Google calls “Early Access” so you have to apply for an invite and wait to get it. It might be worth the wait. Working in partnership with carriers in over 120 countries (Sprint and T-Mobile in the US), Google has…
Alcatel-Lucent Takes a Contextual Route with Rapport
I’m a fan of the notion that the future of communications, in fact of applications, is contextual services. I’ve used that term to describe applications/services delivered to users/workers in part or whole based on their geographic, social, or other context. It’s not just a matter of answering a question, but a matter of understanding that…