We can call today the “Tale of Two Quarters” because both IBM and Verizon reported this week, and there’s some interesting parallels…and differences. Verizon is showing semi-expected strength and IBM continues to show strategic and semi-unexpected weakness. I’m seeing signs I never thought I’d see, signs of rust on that iconic IBM logo. IBM’s revenues…
Here at SDN World Congress, just a year ago, ten global operators created the framework of NFV with their Call For Action paper, and a new white paper was released here that renews and refines that call. I had the opportunity to read the new paper and to talk with many of those who authored…
I’ve not gone to trade conferences for a while and I forgot how exhausting they can be! Yesterday I had a chance to peruse the booths at SDN World Congress, and I met with Charlie Ashton of 6WIND for a demo of their technology. I’ve blogged a bit before about the importance of data path…
What will SDN and NFV be when they grow up? That’s a question we often ask children, but infant technologies ought to be prepared to answer it too. Kids don’t find answering easy nor do they get it right often, and it may be that technologies don’t do any better. If you define what you…
Since it’s the Monday before an SDN/NFV show, Columbus Day in the US, and a day when there’ll likely be no earnings announcements or much news, we can take a look at a few items that didn’t make the “news” cut last week. It’s not that they don’t show something interesting as much as something…
Barclays released a note on Cisco yesterday, based on an interview with David Ward, and there are some interesting comments and views, most of which I think are consistent with how I see Cisco’s evolution. The key point, I think, is that in a technical sense Cisco is moving to become a cloud company in…
We’re seeing some indications in IT spending, particularly on personal computing, that suggests businesses are cautiously restoring some of their budgets for technology. The numbers also show that the PC isn’t totally without friends, which is important both for the computer space and for networking. If you look at the PC market, you’ll find it’s…
I noted yesterday in my blog that vendors and operators alike were guilty of what might be called “Oldthink”, the practice of honing in on today’s problems through the mechanisms of past solutions and thus simply reinforcing the past instead of creating a future. We have other examples of that phenomena today, and in other…
We’re now hearing that Alcatel-Lucent’s “Shift” may not be shifting enough and that the company is planning to lay off 15,000 and hire back 5,000 new employees for a net loss of about 10,000 workers. There are lessons here for Alcatel-Lucent, obviously, but also I think for the industry. Alcatel-Lucent’s problems fall into two simple…
Ever since Blackberry turned in its abysmal numbers, stories have vacillated between “Blackberry goes private and becomes a 900 pound gorilla behind the cloak, then emerges to terrorize the industry” and “Blackberry gets bought by somebody who terrorizes the industry.” You probably see the common denominator here. Blackberry in any non-dead state is a terror…