The SD-WAN space has been percolating for years, and there are some recent signs that it may finally be sticking its head out beyond the old extend-the-VPN-to-small-sites mission. One thing that seems to stand out in two announcements is a managed services connection. As always, though, there’s no shortage of competitive intrigue in the mix,…
In the two earlier blogs in this series on as-a-service and runtime modeling, I looked at how the lifecycle modeling of services could facilitate the handling of service events and support lifecycle automation. I then looked at expanding the modeling to include the orchestration of event-driven applications, and at how the two models could be…
We tend to think of transformation as a proactive process, meaning that some technology shift has the effect of transforming things. It’s a nice picture for the industry, and it’s easy to understand, but the biggest transformation in networking may be happening a different way, and we may be missing it. From its earliest days,…
In the first part of this series, we looked at the possibility of modeling “as-a-service” offerings using a data model, with the goal of deciding whether a common approach to modeling all manner of services could be created. That could facilitate the development of a generalized way of handling edge computing applications, both in terms…
Abstraction in any form requires a form of modeling, a way of representing the not-real that allows it to be mapped to some resource reality and used as though it was. We have two very different but important abstraction goals in play today, one to support the automation of service and application lifecycles and the…
While the bipartisan infrastructure bill isn’t law (or even finished) at this point, we do have some reports on its content. Light Reading offered their take, for example. I downloaded and reviewed the bill, so let’s take a look at it, what it seems to get right, and what it may have missed. The goal…
One of my recent blogs on 5G generated enough LinkedIn buzz to demonstrate that the question of 5G and hype is important, and that there are different interpretations to what constitutes 5G success. To me, that means I’ve not explained my position as well as I could have, which means I need to take a…
Applications aren’t possible without application development, and in today’s hosted-feature age, neither are advanced services. That makes the question of how to implement edge and telecom applications critical, but it’s a difficult question to answer. Applications will typically have an optimum architectural model, set by the way the application relates to the real world. That…
Tech news, like political news, often tries to cover all the bases, so it would be reasonable for me to be cynical about Light Reading’s recent story on 5G “standalone”. 5G’s “next big flop” sure sounds negative, but in truth LR has shown a healthy level of 5G skepticism in the past. The reason this…
SD-WAN has undergone a number of transformations, driven (for a change) more by a recognition of new missions than by simple technology evolution. What we may now be seeing is a completely new network model emerging, one that separates connectivity from bit transport in a decisive way. That new model could empower new competitors in…