I keep getting notes about the bargains in tech and telecom stocks, followed by the promise that stocks could dip another 30%. I keep seeing stories about how we could hit 20% or 30% unemployment, which would surely make anything you’d pay for almost any stock today the furthest thing from a bargain. The recovery…
NFV: The History of Wrong and Right
We may need a summary of my cloud centric view of network infrastructure. I blog four days of every week and I don’t want to repeat myself, but some who don’t follow me regularly may have a hard time assembling the complex picture from multiple blogs. It is a complex picture too, one that can’t…
We Don’t Need to Modernize NFV, We Need to Move Beyond It
It seems impossible to shake the debate on “containerized” virtual network functions for NFV, even as we should be debating the generalization of cloud-ready models. Red Hat and Intel, both with a considerable upside if network devices were suddenly turned into hosted virtual functions, has launched an onboarding service and test bed to facilitate “CNFs”. …
Vendors Fight the Kubernetes Wars
Containers and Kubernetes rule, which makes it unsurprising that they figure in a lot of recent announcements. In fact, VMware and HPE have both launched major initiatives that focus on the “dynamic duo of IT”. Both of them show why the combination is important, but they also show that it’s still possible to undershoot the…
Can Vendors Counter Open Network Models?
A lot of companies in the networking space are “reorganizing” or “refocusing”, and most of them say they’re getting more into “software” and “services”. Their intentions are good, but their plans might be as vague as I’ve summarized them to be. In 2020, every company in networking is going to have to face significant pressures,…
Obviously, It’s Time to Think More about Remote Work
What lessons should tech be learning from COVID-19? Not the personal lessons that employees and employers learn about contagion and how to prevent it; we know most of them by now. Not the supply-chain lessons, which in the end could be resolved only if everyone made everything themselves. Not even lessons relating to statistical analysis…
Three Steps to Maximize 5G (That Nobody will Like!)
I think there are three steps to 5G success. Some of the steps are intuitive, some are counter-intuitive, and one may be downright offensive to some of the 5G proponents. I’m sorry about that, but I have to call things as I see (or, in this case, model) them. The first step is to recognize…
The Best Job and Industry Targets for Productivity Empowerment
If business services are as critical as they seem (to the cloud, 5G, IoT, AI, and more), then we need to understand as much as possible about them, and how they’re a candidate for driving technology change. As I noted in an earlier blog, there’s a trend today to jump on business services as the…
Are Carriers Giving Up on Carrier Cloud?
ATT and Google have partnered in a cloud venture, but it’s just an indicator of a broader strategy by operators and cloud providers, and one that could impact cloud software players like IBM/Red Hat and VMware. The move is a further indication that network operators are not rushing out to deploy carrier cloud, and that…
For 5G and Edge, Specific Target Applications for Productivity Improvement
Business productivity improvement should be the target for a lot of the tech initiatives we hear about, including things like 5G, AI, and edge computing. In a PRIOR BLOG I talked about the importance of business productivity enhancement in the 5G business case. At some future point, I’ll dig into the details of how and…