The TMF event in Nice this week is a focus for an important issue in the evolution of networking, which is the way in which existing network and operations elements relate to newly introduced technologies like SDN and NFV. The Forum promoted its “ZOOM” project, which is aimed at modernizing OSS/BSS models and introducing (hence…
Mary Meeker is probably best known for her role as advocate-in-chief of the dotcom bubble, but she’s produced some respectable research since then, and her latest has some interesting points, particularly when considered in light of SDN and NFV evolution. In fact, she suggests that there may be an emerging set of missions for both…
Cisco reported their numbers last night, and while their results were better than expected, they showed both a drop in profits and in revenues. That’s not the kind of indication that Cisco likes, and so it was pretty certain that Chambers would be raising the hope of change. In the call, his “keynote” statement was:…
According to a Light Reading article yesterday, Metaswitch’s CEO told an audience at their service provider event that operators needed to start thinking of themselves as software companies. The comment provoked some backlash, on the grounds that it’s been said before. True, but it’s also true to at least to a degree that the comment…
At their conference yesterday, Red Hat announced an expansion of (or redefinition of) its deal with eNovance that takes aim at the carrier cloud and (explicitly) the NFV space. The deal is aimed at contributing to OpenStack to make it a more suitable platform. So, yes, this is a data point in my “platformization” theme. …
Read the stories about the IT world and you can’t escape a couple of truths. One is that hardware is commoditizing; IBM sold its x86 business and everyone is talking commodity servers. Another truth a bit harder to pick out but no less real is that platforms in the broader sense are definitely coming into…
Alcatel-Lucent became the latest network equipment vendor to announce their numbers, and the company made some very helpful progress in its “Shift” program to reorient its efforts into areas like mobile and IP, where future profit growth could be hoped for. However, it didn’t have a breakout quarter, and that’s not unreasonable given the early…
Alcatel-Lucent became the latest network equipment vendor to announce their numbers, and the company made some very helpful progress in its “Shift” program to reorient its efforts into areas like mobile and IP, where future profit growth could be hoped for. However, it didn’t have a breakout quarter, and that’s not unreasonable given the early…
When Cisco proposed a policy-exchange protocol as a piece of OpenStack, it raised yet again the profile of the notion of policies as the solution to our network ills. Since then, I’ve had some pretty high-level people suggest that in the critical area of cloud, SDN, and NFV network evolution we could solve all our…
One of the (many) implicit contradictions in SDN, NFV, and even cloud deployment is the conflict between infrastructure capital cost and infrastructure TCO. The issues are created by a well-known truth, which is that it’s more expensive to make something work well than to just make it work. How much more? How good is “well?” …