The Carrier Ethernet Forum isn’t where you’d expect to find things like SDN and Network Functions Virtualization, but there was plenty of both there, and that’s likely an important step for both the group and the two technology initiatives. SDN and NFV are getting the buzz, enough that groups like CEF think it’s important they…
In yet another sign that there’s a LOT of SDN maneuvering going on, Brocade has announced the acquisition of open-source routing/switching software platform provider Vyatta. Sometimes seen by the media as a Cisco rival, Vyatta has in fact not been a serious threat to Cisco or any other equipment vendor—until lately. With the advent of…
I’ve blogged a lot over the last couple weeks on the transformation of service provider infrastructure that’s being driven by the economic imperative of monetization and the technical mechanisms of the cloud, SDN, and NFV. I’ve also noted that this transformation will surely impact network equipment, and that one such impact will be commoditization of…
Alcatel-Lucent reported its quarter, and the results were disappointing to say the least. The company suffered from margin pressure, caused no doubt by the competition from arch-rival Huawei. The devil here is in the details, which in some ways are much better for Alcatel-Lucent, and in some ways worse. When you’re a very broad-based supplier…
Supply and demand shape our industry, like they shape pretty much everything in every market, and we see some signs of them both operating today. We also see signs that they often create long-term change after short-term disorder. On the demand side, corporate raider Carl Icahn has taken a 10% share in Netflix, embattled OTT…
We’re starting yet another trade show in what’s always been the “trade show season” of the fall; this time it’s 4G World. The timing may be trite in a calendar sense but it’s fitting in a market sense because we’re certainly on the cusp of some major changes in wireless. The changes may in fact…
The east coast had its “superstorm” and as is often the case people’s view of Sandy varied considerably depending on where they were. Some areas, including where I happen to live, saw little more than a brisk northeaster, and we were only perhaps 40 miles north of landfall. Other areas had major damage even though…
The latest story on Juniper/EMC is that there’s not going to be an acquisition but there will be some dancing, primarily aimed at certifying Juniper’s QFabric as an EMC data center switch. The move is billed by CRN as a “reference architecture” which would imply a much more significant level of integration, but neither the…
The parade of misses continues, so it seems, with Acme Packets, Amazon, Apple, and Ericsson joining in. One might think this proves that economic conditions (those “macro” factors I blogged about yesterday) were to blame after all. I still don’t buy it, and if you look at these companies you see a mixture of root…
The earnings reports from F5 and EMC make it clear that tech in general, and networking in particular, and enterprise most particularly, has serious challenges to face. The largest one, I think, is that people have gotten used to the idea that networking was somewhat immune from macro conditions; clearly it isn’t. But macro conditions…