I’ve talked about the profit problems of network operators for years now, simply because they’ve talked to me about those problems for years. In rough terms, revenue per bit has declined by 50% per year for five and a half years running, and this decline means that profits on infrastructure have dropped sharply even though…
Cisco is making a big play in the cloud, or for the cloud, with CloudVerse, an architecture that in some ways has the same goals as the one that Alcatel-Lucent announced last month (CloudBand). Everyone is trying to get a place in the cloud, hoping in part no doubt that the inherent fuzziness of the…
It’s a kind of day of change in technology, particularly if you believe some of the speculation that’s floating around. Certainly 2011 has been a challenging year for vendors, and it may be that the challenges will be only more formidable in 2012. Given that, it wouldn’t be surprising if we saw some dramatic market…
SAP announced it was buying a US web/cloud software company (SuccessFactors) that provides human resource management and productivity tools, a move to boost its total cloud repertoire and thus be more competitive as a cloud provider. The decision shows that the SaaS business is starting to create problems with product scope that didn’t exist for…
Alcatel-Lucent continues to develop their cloud vision, announcing a partnership with HP that demonstrates Data Center Network Connect and CloudBand. From a business perspective it’s a win for both companies. HP needs (badly needs, in fact) a relevant public cloud position that integrates networking and computing, because of its competition with Cisco. Alcatel-Lucent needs a…
Enterprises are coming to terms with the cloud, according to my most recent survey, but they are also recognizing that there are things that “classical wisdom” says they can do in the cloud that simply don’t work out. This is going to change the risk/benefit profile for cloud computing for the providers because eventually the…
Microsoft’s Xbox will now feature the ability to stream 26 FiOS channels and access (presumably the same network) content on VoD. The step isn’t a technological revolution because AT&T’s U-verse has been a streaming IP video service from the first (and it’s also available on Xbox, but in the same form; FiOS for Xbox is…
Wall Street is speculating on Huawei’s future in enterprise networking as the company prepares to make what everyone (including Huawei) says will be a major push there. In some ways, the move is a validation of the thesis that service provider networking is not a growth market; constraints on transport ROI are simply too great…
The retail holiday season got off to a good start in the US according to all reports, with significant gains over last year and a particular focus on consumer electronics. One hot space is the tablet market, where Apple cut iPad prices and where Android devices continue to gain overall market share. A new group…
Business changes in networking are often more significant than technical changes even though networking is ostensibly a tech market area, and that’s the case this AM in my view. NSN has announced a major refocusing/restructuring that will cut about 17,000 jobs worldwide and concentrate company efforts on mobile broadband. Obviously this is a big deal…