Cisco’s earnings calls are almost always an education, and this one may be of particular significance given that the industry (and the global economy) is teetering on the edge of maybe-good, maybe-bad. Cisco showed some good, and some of Cisco’s lessons are even applicable to other companies in the space. Some aren’t and shouldn’t offer…
Big Switch today announced the release of its SDN products, and while there’s no question the company has some good stuff, I’m still not convinced they have ENOUGH stuff. The fundamental question of SDN isn’t how control of devices is exercised, it’s how a system of devices can be organized into the coordinated behavior we…
Most everyone who uses telecom these days knows that we’re not in our mothers’ network anymore, but the changes have come somewhat gradually and it’s hard to realize now that we’re only 60 years from the first coast-to-coast non-operator-assist call. Some recent events may help us come to terms with reality, though. Verizon and AT&T…
The end of a week is a good time to reflect, and there’s nothing better to reflect on than that huge, complex, disorderly transition of global IT and network services that we call “the cloud”. It’s wonderful to be fuzzy, I guess, because when you are your boundaries can be smeared around at will to…
Joyent, a cloud provider and cloud software vendor I’ve talked about a little in the past, has released a new version of its SmartOS stack (Joyent7) that is making the distinction between the Joyent approach and that of traditional clouds like Amazon or OpenStack a bit clearer. Not clear enough, though, I think. There’s still…
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…