We may be heading for a solid white-box architecture, which is good. We may have two distinctly different paths that could get us there, which is both good and bad. It does seem clear that we’re setting up for a bit of competition among open-source giants in networking overall, and for the white-box stuff we…
SD-WAN remains a very hot topic, and say the enterprises I’ve chatted with, a very confusing one. The biggest source of the confusion is the fact that we use the single term “SD-WAN” to describe what are actually three different architectural models. Not only do those three models differ in capabilities and focus, they can…
AT&T shared their vision for an open-source, white-box, and 5G future in a blog post, and any time a major Tier One does that it’s worth a look. It’s fair to say that AT&T has been the most proactive of all the Tier One operators in the use of open technology to reduce network costs…
Last week at the Open Networking Summit, we got our first look at the concept of “Lean NFV”. This initiative is the brain-child of two California academics, and they have an organization, a website, and a white paper. Light Reading did a nice piece on it HERE, and in it they provide a longer list…
Intel’s “Data-Centric Innovation Day” announcements take specific aim at 5G and NFV, seemingly at a time when operators themselves are doubting whether they really want to deploy their own clouds for hosting features in either area. There is no question that Intel, server vendors, software vendors, and practically everyone else would love to see operators…
One of the truths about carrier cloud is that it might be more cloud than carrier. I noted in THIS blog the possibility that some network operators might prefer to have their carrier cloud hosted by one of the public cloud providers (IBM specifically in the referenced blog), and according to Light Reading, there’s a…
In yesterday’s blog, I opened two points that I think are particularly critical for lifecycle automation. The first is the notion of event coupling to processes via the service data model, something that came not from me but from the TMF’s NGOSS Contract work. The second is the notion of service/resource domain separation, which you…
The TMF has done some very insightful things in the last decade. One of the places where I split from the TMF is the boundary point between operations support systems (OSS) and network technology. My view has been that OSS/BSS should be dealing with functional entities, high-level service-related intent models, and never dig into the…
One of the early points of interest for NFV was “virtual CPE”, meaning the use of cloud hosting of features that would normally be included in a device at the customer edge of services. I’ve blogged a number of times on the question of whether this was a sensible approach, concluding that it isn’t. The…
Smart cities are an idea that generates lots of excitement, perhaps in part because everyone has their own view of what the term means. I’ve been surprised to find that many of the technologists I’ve talked with see a smart city as one where practically everything is measured or viewed by a sensor open on…