The cloud is surely a popular topic with the media and also with enterprises, but despite the agreement of these two groups that the cloud is interesting, they don’t agree much on what exactly is happening with the cloud. Perhaps even more significant is the fact that they don’t agree about the future of the…
This year has brought the world and our industry many challenges and delivered some wonderful moments as well. We at CIMI Corporation wish all of you, and those you love, a Happy Holiday season, and we hope that 2016 will bring only joy to you, and to everyone worldwide. http://www.cimicorp.com/Holiday2015.jpg Tom Nolle, President Email and…
We’re closing in on 2016 and what will surely be a pivotal year in terms of network operator strategy. I’ve already blogged about the results of the operators’ fall planning cycle, and I think that offers a pretty clear view of their technology plans. Because even the best of plans can be contaminated by internal…
NFV trials are not exercises involving the same set of players, or reflecting the same issues or service goals. I noted in a blog earlier this week that operators had decided (often by default) that they would pursue evolving PoCs toward services even though it would likely result in silos based on the large difference…
Light Reading has published the first of what they promise will be a series of NFV tests, run in combination with EANTC, and the results are summarized HERE. I think there are some useful insights in the results, but I also think that there are fundamental limitations in the approach. I’m not going to berate…
Operators have recognized from the first that video probably represents their largest incremental opportunity. There’s also been a lot of hype around the video market, particularly focusing on the notion that Internet OTT delivery of video would displace all other video forms. Like most popular notions, this is almost completely unsupported and even illogical, but…
There are a lot of technical questions raised by NFV and even the cloud, questions that we cannot yet answer and that are not even widely recognized. One of the most obvious is how the component elements are stitched together. In NFV, it’s called “service chaining”. Traditionally you’d link devices using communications services, but how…
The fall is an important time for operators, because they have traditionally embarked on a technical planning cycle starting mid-September and running forward to mid-November. This is the stuff that will then be used to justify their budget proposals for the coming year. We’ve now finished that cycle for the 2016 budget, and I’ve been…
All networking reduces to getting connected to your services, which means access. In the past and in a business sense, the “divestiture” and “privatization” trends have first split access from long-haul, then combined it. The Internet has also changed access networking, creating several delivery models inexpensive enough to serve consumers. Today, virtualization is creating its…
Revolutions have their ups and downs. “These are the times that try men’s souls,” said Tom Paine before the American Revolution, and the current times are probably trying the souls of many an SDN or NFV advocate. For several years, we heard nothing except glowing reports of progress in both areas, and now we seem…