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…
Can We Help 5G Reach Its Potential?
It should be obvious that 5G is in trouble, at least in terms of fulfilling all the hopes operators and vendors (in particular) have pinned on it. Nokia’s CEO stepped down, and there was a rumor last week that Ericsson and Nokia were considering a merger (the rumor was squashed, however). Huawei, who claims to…
A Deep Dive into Intent Models, and What they Need to Include
It may be time to look deeper into intent models. I’ve used the term in a number of blogs, and while the sum of those blogs probably gives an acceptable picture of what the approach could bring to both computing and networking, there seems to be a lot of pressure to rethink both IT and…
Is VMware on the Wrong Track with the Best Tools?
VMware disappointed the Street in its earnings call last Thursday. That’s not all that surprising; they’re hardly the first. The company actually turned in decent revenue numbers, but earnings and guidance fell short of expectations. That’s not new in today’s tech market either. So why talk about them? Because if the future is the cloud,…
Balancing the Forces Driving IP into the Future
We live in an IP world, at least insofar as the way the network appears to users. IP remains a largely adaptive protocol, one that makes traffic engineering more difficult. Some of the proposals to modernize IP networks, including SDN/OpenFlow, have focused on centralizing route control for the purpose of improving traffic engineering and potentially…
When Augmenting Reality Loses It’s Touch
Augmented reality is a viable focus for a new model of worker empowerment. That’s one reason why it’s important to look at places where the model appears to have failed, even before the concept of AR in empowerment got started. Protocol gave us an opportunity to do that with an article on Daqri, a company…
Can AT&T Navigate its New Content-Centric Path?
Barron’s ran an interesting interview with ATT heir-apparent John Stankey, now CEO of WarnerMedia, and it offers some views on how streaming and 5G might transform the telco space. I think these same factors will influence the direction of cable companies, and of course will then pull through influence on the vendor space. We have…
Two Rules to Make Microservices and Cloud-Native Work
Oversimplification is never a good thing, and sometimes it can be downright destructive. One of those times is when we look at “distributed” application models, which include such things as serverless and microservices. Classical wisdom says that distributing applications down to microservices is good. Classical wisdom says that hosted service features are best when distributed…
Cisco’s State of the Internet: A Promise or a Fable?
Cisco released their Annual Internet Report, and it’s the typical mixture of interesting stuff, insight, and blatant hype. With Cisco, though, even their hype is interesting, so I want to look at the report and sort out the angles, hopefully adding some analysis that will clarify just what pieces of the report fit in which…