It’s one of those days of a buffet of items that missed the cut during the week. There’s a theme though, which is the evolution of broadband and Internet. Microsoft announced it’s going to buy Yammer, a company who specializes in creating a kind of social workplace, a collaborative framework based not on evolved voice…
Cisco’s SDN: Real or Cynical?
Never one to shun conflict or controversy, Cisco has probably created both with its announcement of its SDN strategy at its “Live” event yesterday. It would be fair to say that Cisco didn’t even blow a kiss at OpenFlow, it only promised to blow a kiss at some point in the future. Needless to say,…
Cisco’s “Architectures” and Networking’s Future
Cisco’s annual event kicked off, and while all these events aren’t necessarily a window into the strategic future of Cisco, this one might well be. Cisco came out more strongly in favor of the notion of strategy and architecture than I’d ever heard them. It’s too early to say that this change is going to…
A Tale of Two “i’s”
There may be nothing that so starkly presents the two very different visions of the future of networking than the “two i’s”. By this I refer to the contrast between Apple’s i-software-focused WWDC and the investment discussions of two key network vendors—Alcatel-Lucent and Juniper. Apple’s WWDC was a disappointment if you believe that every one…
Some Random Tech Shots
It’s potpourri Monday, folks, and I’ve saved some items that didn’t make the topical cut last week for treatment. Don’t look for too much of a theme today, other than that I’m looking for “news” that’s not being treated comprehensively. If you think you’ve heard everything try this one out; the UN’s ITU is proposing…
What Oracle’s Teaching Us About the Cloud
The Oracle vision of the cloud is late, for sure. Ellison waffled on the value of the cloud for sure, even though he doesn’t want to admit it. Despite this all, though, the Oracle Public Cloud is important for the cloud market, for three basic reasons. Reason number one is that it demonstrates yet again…
SDNs Find their Niche?
Big Switch, one of the most active and interesting of the OpenFlow players, has announced a number of new things that may help the market better understand the value of OpenFlow. In particular, they help understand how OpenFlow might be used in conjunction with “normal” network protocols. To start with, it’s important to understand that…
Appliances in the Driver’s Seat: To Where?
Every day we seem to get more signals that the complex market we call “the Internet” is getting more complex. All markets are ecosystems, all ecosystems are symbiotic relationships among elements, and what’s happening is that the number of elements in the ecosystem of the Internet is exploding. Not every organism survives a sudden broadening…
Consumer Changes May Drive Networks in New Directions
Google’s augmented reality glasses have captivated people, but there are other aspects of blending of potentially live material with gaming and other experiences that may be realized faster. There are other changes in the consumer space that appear to have some potential to create broad impact, and that’s what I propose to talk about today….
More Network Tea Leaves to Read
Guess what? Optical companies are hot again. Ciena reported better-than-expected earnings, Alcatel-Lucent says that people are pushing it for delivery of its new 400G stuff…it seems like the days of fiber transport slumps are gone. They may be, and for two kind-of-orthogonal reasons. If you think about the comments I got from EU network operators,…