We’ve surveyed buyers since 1982 for enterprises and 1991 for network operators, both to find out what they’re planning to do and to find out what they think of vendors. I’ve been sharing some of the findings on plans and attitudes, and this seems a good time to share some on vendor influence. You’ll see…
One of the comments that was posted on one of my blogs (on LinkedIn) was that it was surprising that the IT vendors were not heard from much regarding SDN/NFV. I agree at one level; IT is the obvious beneficiary of this whole software-defined-stuff initiative set. However, there are IT vendors involved in the process…
With news that Intel is announcing a platform (“Highland Forest”) for hosting network functions for SDN and NFV and an HP exec is taking the role of chairing the ONF’s “northbound API” group, it would seem that our world of “software-defined-everything” is taking on new life. I hope so, but there’s still a question of…
Well, it’s catch-up Friday today, and there are a number of items that cropped up this week but didn’t make the cut for dedicating a blog entry. If you put them together you can see some forces acting to create industry change—not in a giant push but in nibbles. There’s a report that FCC Chairman…
Hardware, whether network or IT, is commoditizing in the view of most in the industry and on Wall Street. Software licenses now make up less than a quarter of the revenue of some major “software companies” and the open source movement is making credible progress toward making a big chunk of it free. What’s left? …
It’s always fascinating to get a Wall Street view of networking, so I was happy to review the William Blair tech outlook. While I don’t always agree with the Street, they certainly have capabilities that I don’t in analyzing the financial trends. Even where we disagree, there’s value in contrasting the Street view with the…
I mentioned yesterday that the cable industry was regulated differently from telcos, and one of the differences is that cable is “capped” on maximum subscribers per provider. Many would like to see that regulation lifted to support M&A more broadly. In the telco space, there’s also an effort for regulatory change underway, this one linked…
“Cable” has always been seen as different from “telecom”. The industry is regulated differently, it’s primary profit sources are different, it has very different infrastructure, and it’s OSS/BSS/NMS tools and strategies are also different. Most insiders in the SDN world say that cable operators are less interested in SDN than telcos, and virtually everyone says…
Stories about network transformation tends to focus on capex, despite the fact that network operators have consistently indicated that opex is likely more important. One reason for this is that opex is one of those giant fuzzball sort of areas where you can make almost any claim and get the numbers to work in your…
Transformation in telecom means investment in something not currently being invested in, but it doesn’t likely mean “new” investment. Most operators have capital budgets that are based on return on infrastructure, which means that the sum of services supported by a network determines how much you spend to sustain or change it. One of the…