As you all know, I like to read the earnings reports to spot critical trends, both with the companies themselves and for the markets they play in. Microsoft and Google both reported earnings yesterday, and both gave the markets an upside surprise. So what does that mean? Media coverage of Microsoft has missed the point. …
More Earnings Tea Leaves
The markets seem encouraged by earnings reports that aren’t as bad as expected, and in tech there’s been a similar move—Intel comes to mind. Yesterday we had a couple of big network firms report, Ericsson and Nokia, and also the tech giant of all, IBM. What can we glean from these reports? I find Ericsson’s…
Earnings Bring Clarity to the Cloud?
Intel reported its quarter, and the numbers were better than many had feared, though sales in the PC market grew only 4% while they grew by 15% in the data center. In some ways, the picture is a bit of a poster-child for the cloud, and there were aspects of the earnings call that also…
Tales of Alcatel-Lucent, Yahoo, and Microsoft
Alcatel-Lucent became the first network vendor to suffer in the latest quarter, with a profit warning that sent its shares down sharply. The company, like most in the space, faces a deadly combination of competition from price leader Huawei and pressure on operators created by their own ROI and profit woes. What’s sad for me…
New CIMI Video-Based Information Site is UP!
We promised to let you know when material is available for our new video information service, and today is the day. The website is live at http://www.ohnayitshay.com/ and we’ve posted our first video. Our next step is to start doing hangouts, and we’re soliciting interest in doing a hangout (as a participant) on the topic…
Content, Delivery, and Public Policy
At this point, nobody can doubt Comcast’s determination to become the big ecosystemic player in content. The company already owns NBCU and now it’s bought out Microsoft’s stake in MSNBC.com. Microsoft had already dropped out of the cable network venture and now it’s apparently ready to get out of the whole deal. That may be…
A New (Free) Video Information Service from CIMI Corp!
Many of you know that we’ve done surveys of enterprises for thirty years now, and surveys of network operators for more than twenty. In that time, we’ve seen a disturbing trend, a loss of strategic information readily available to early-stage planners to guide them in adopting new technology paradigms. They used to get this from…
Content Lawsuits, B2B Disappointments, and Cloud Misconceptions
Well, it’s Recap Friday again, and today we can start with the Aereo situation. The online video provider has been streaming over-the-air material in what the owner networks say is a clear violation of copyright. They asked for Aereo to be shut down, and a judge ruled they could operate while the suit progressed. That’s…
When Tablet Meets Phone Booth?
The mobile phenomena, our gadget-coupled love affair with ubiquitous broadband, is hitting the market in a variety of ways, some expected and some a bit strange. There are likely stranger ones on tap, too, which is what you’d expect of a revolution. And for sure, the big revolution of the decade is mobile broadband. One…
Two Almost-Cloud Tales
There are a lot of things that skirt the line between revolution and over-promotion, and the cloud is surely one of them. The thing I believe distinguishes the categories is the presence or absence of a comprehensive cloud model. If you believe the cloud is an architecture for delivering applications/features from a large flexible resource…