Google has always been a technology byword, the source of things like Kubernetes. One of its ideas, a project called “Loon” was supposed to provide Internet services through a network of balloons, a notion that sure sounds outlandish and didn’t get far. Now, some of the Loon concepts are reappearing in a Google spinout, Aalyria….
Should We Plan to Bypass Cloud Management for Virtual Functions?
The idea of stepping around or beyond the cloud seems almost heretical these days, but the fact is that if we consider “the cloud” to mean cloud platforms and infrastructure, we already step around/beyond it every day. The question is the best way to do that for network services. The technology that deploys, redeploys, scales,…
Are We Thinking too Small on Network Services and Models?
For decades, it’s been clear to many that the way we use addresses on the Internet and in other IP networks may be less than ideal. An address represents a network service access point, but we tend to use it (or want to) as a reference to an application, user, or database. In the real…
Virtual Networking: The Missing Piece of Network Evolution
There is probably no issue more important to the future of networking than the union of networks and hosting. It may seem that’s a simple one; we have the Internet and the stuff that’s on it (including the cloud) and the stuff that’s in it are working globally at significant scale. In fact, though, that’s…
How Hybrid Cloud Thinking Can Lead Toward (or Away) From Edge Computing
We live in a polarized world, as a half-hour spent watching any news channel will show. It goes beyond politics, though. Even in technology, we tend to see things in an either/or way. Take the cloud and the data center. Many believe that the data center is the past and the cloud the future. Even…
Ethereum After the Merge: The Good and the Risky
There may be no more difficult space for people to understand than the “crypto” space. Blockchain technology is well beyond most people; even technology types I deal with are uncomfortable with the details. Cryptocurrency has been hailed as the savior of modern finance and at the same time the biggest bubble of all time. Now,…
To Plot the Course of Network Change, Follow the Money
Last week, I mentioned that my input from enterprises suggested that 26% of enterprises had shifted their view of how to optimize network purchases from “new technology” to “hammer for discounts”. Monday, Nigel, Maven, and did a podcast about Juniper versus Cisco and about Arista and Palo Alto, and I commented that you can’t go…
The Real Reasons the Cloud Doesn’t Always Save Money
Why aren’t we saving money with cloud computing? If you chart the trajectory of IT spending, it’s not trending lower but higher. Given that “you save money adopting cloud computing” is the mantra of the age, why aren’t we seeing the savings? InfoWorld did an article on the topic, and what I found interesting was…
What Kind of Place will the Metaverse Be (and When?)
I think it’s pretty clear that Meta knows its “social metaverse” concept has a few too many moving parts to be available quickly, and so to help their bottom line. I think that competitors like Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon know that, which is why gaming companies are getting M&A attention. I think that a different…
Casa, Google, Carrier Cloud, and Edge Computing
Google and Casa Systems are partnering to create a cloud-native 5G Core and also a strategy for multi-access edge computing (MEC). The service/offering will be available to network operators (telcos, cable companies) and also to enterprises who want private 5G. To say that this raises some interesting questions is an understatement, so let’s dig in…