Friday’s usually a bit of a slow news day, and so it’s often a good day to recap some things that were pushed to the rear of the interest queue by other events. There are a couple that fit this category that I’d like to explore a bit today, and the first two come from…
Seeking Direction: HP and MSOs Both Struggle
HP has been having its problems, obviously, and they’re interesting from a whole-industry perspective because HP is both a broad-based player and a potential major contender for leadership in the future network/IT fusion. The problem right now is that they’re locked up in a restructuring mess and there’s a real risk they’re not going to…
Did Oracle’s Quarter Have Clouds or Need Them?
Oracle is one of the more interesting tech companies, if you’re looking for an indicator of where markets might be heading overall. They have a broad exposure across hardware and software and also a nice combination of “offensive” and “defensive” products, meaning those that do well when confidence is high and those that are more…
A Zero for NetZero, a Hope for Microsoft
The media is having a bit of a problem coming to terms with the NetZero proposal for “free” wireless broadband, and what’s sad is that their writers’ block is for the wrong reason. They want to say “everything is free” because that will get a lot of reader attention, but they’re skeptical that NetZero is…
An Example of an App-to-Cloud-to-Flow Ecosystem
I mentioned in a blog last week that there was some important progress being made in the fusion of cloud development and deployment—what the industry calls “DevOps”. There are also important developments in the area of cloud networking, another topic I’ve blogged about recently. One indication of a unified approach to these critical problems was…
Cisco Spin-In and Ciena Praise Equals Cloud Network
There are more indications this week of a sea change in networking that goes beyond the simple question of whether you switch or route or whose boxes you use. One data point comes from a Credit Suisse story and the other from a Cisco rumor. Credit Suisse is saying good things about Ciena, a company…
TV: Everywhere, Network-Where, or Nowhere?
Amazon has cut a deal with Discovery to stream its programming, and the announcement has spawned a serious question about the future of TV in general, and of TV Everywhere in particular. Like just about everything else in video, this is complicated. Let’s start off with some data. The largest segment of viewing that flees…
Why Cisco’s NDS Deal Could be Huge
Cisco, no slouch in the world of streaming video to start with, may have made an over-the-top (no pun intended—or maybe a little one!) move by announcing it’s acquiring OTT video software company NDS. The move, I think, may be one of the biggest Cisco has made in the last decade, and it poses a…
DT and Pew: The What and Why of the “Cloud Network”
DT has become what’s possibly the first major carrier to show us what the network of the future is going to look like, though the description is still a bit cryptic and not always being picked up correctly in stories. All of the factors I’ve been blogging about for the last week, both the demand-side…
New Models for Streaming and the Cloud?
It’s a surprise to some (the media, at least, is pretending surprise) but Intel is looking to get into the streaming video space. My cynicism here regarding “surprise” is of course related to the fact that they’ve been working on that for some time, and probably Intel has little choice. It really gets back to…