The most fundamental question that we in networking faced is not whether we’ll see a transformation of the network, but what form that transformation will take. As I suggested yesterday in my blog, fundamental changes in what a network delivers to its customers will always require changes in how the network operates. We’re seeing those…
Sometimes it seems like companies miss the simplest truths. A market, over time, has to either change or stay the same, right? Why then do we seem to have a problem accepting that in the networking space? We presume change and static markets, seemingly, at the same time. Juniper’s recent quarter, and the steps the…
I’ve commented in prior blogs that the output of what we call “SDN” or “NFV” would, in a functional sense, but a kind of network-as-a-service or NaaS. NaaS implies that services are created through some API process (the service API) rather than being simply in place as an attribute of cooperative device behaviors. Since you…
IBM and Google both reported their quarterly numbers, with both companies beating on the revenue line but short on profits. The markets this morning took disconnected view; IBM’s shares were off pre-market and Google was up, though both movements were modest. Google’s revenues beat slightly, with decent guidance, and this is probably what the Street…
According to practically everyone, video is the fastest-growing and most disruptive of all the Internet traffic sources. Were it not for video we’d probably not have neutrality debates, and most of the return on infrastructure issues operators are bemoaning would disappear. And despite the fact that surveys in both the US and Australia have recently…
We have a couple of important developments on the business side of networking that taken together could signal something significant—but not unexpected. Intel reported numbers that were just consistently good, and Apple and IBM are entering into a mobility partnership. The common thread offers some insight into what’s really happening with the cloud, the PC,…
If you’re a poetry fan like I am, you may be familiar with a poem by John Milton, “On His Blindness”. The poem ends with the phrase “They also serve who only stand and wait”, and I wonder if we could apply Milton’s theory to SDN by changing “serve” to “win”. The prevailing SDN model…
Last week, Netsocket announced its “Virtual Partner Program”, which is hardly the first ecosystemic announcement made by vendors in the next-gen services and SDN/NFV space. The program’s value raises some interesting points about network evolution and also about ecosystems and partner programs in general. I blogged about Netsocket’s approach to NFV when they announced it. …
Over the last year, we’ve seen a significant transition in expectations for things like SDN and NFV that are aimed at transforming networks. Where once it was believed that moving to white-box switches and functionality hosted on cheap servers was a major driver of change, it’s now broadly accepted that something else has to drive…
Everyone surely knows the old saw about the difficulty in pushing spaghetti uphill, and it occurs to me that we’re in danger of trying to do something very like that with changes created by SDN and NFV, perhaps even the cloud. The expression is usually applied to tasks that are made difficult not by the…