There has recently been a lot of media attention focused on the cable providers, not only because they’ve been emerging as players in some next-gen technologies like SDN, NFV, and the cloud, but because they’ve been gaining market share on the telcos after losing it for years. All of this seems tied to trends in … Continue reading Who’s Winning the Telco/Cable Battle?
In a blog last week, I mentioned the notion of an NFV infrastructure concept that I called a “modular infrastructure model”. It was a response to operators’ comments that they were most concerned about the possibility that the largest dollar investment in their future—carrier cloud—would end up creating a silo. They know how to avoid … Continue reading How Can We Get to Modular Infrastructure for the Carrier Cloud?
We had a couple of NFV announcements this week that mention onboarding or integration. Ericsson won a deal with Verizon that includes their providing services to integrate VNFs, and HPE announced an “onboarding factory” service that has the same basic goal. The announcements raise two questions. First, does this move the ball significantly with respect … Continue reading Just How Much of a Problem is VNF Onboarding and Integration?
Operators have been fascinated by the public cloud opportunity, and new initiatives like that of Orange Business Services seem to promise that this fascination could be gaining some traction in the real world. But Verizon at the same time is clearly pulling back from its public cloud computing commitments. What’s really going on with operator … Continue reading Cloud Computing Service Success for Operators: Can It Be Done?
The concept of carrier cloud has taken some hits over the last months. Media coverage for network functions virtualization (NFV) shows a significant negative shift in the attitude of operators over the progress of NFV. Verizon sold off the cloud business it purchased, and is now reported to be selling off its cloud computing business. … Continue reading The Evolution of the Carrier Cloud
Continuing on my recent theme of 5G assessment, I want to look today at the relationship between 5G, SDN, and NFV. Because 5G evolution is considered a given in the industry, many vendors in the SDN and NFV space have been eager to link their wares to 5G as a means of insuring they’re not … Continue reading Could 5G Promote SDN and NFV?
CORD, the new darling of telco transformation using open source, is a great concept and one I’ve supported for ages. I think it’s a necessary condition for effective transformation, but it’s not a sufficient condition. There are two other things we need to look at. The first is what makes up the other carrier-cloud data … Continue reading Taking the Carrier Cloud Beyond CORD and the Central Office
Network operators have accepted open source software. Or, sort of accepted. I don’t want to minimize the fact that operators have indeed made the culture shift necessary to consider the adoption of open-source software, but that’s Step One. There are other steps to be taken, and you can see some of the early attempts at … Continue reading Is an Open-Source Framework For Next-Gen Network Software Possible?
There has been a lot of talk about service modeling, and I’ve contributed my own fair share. However, there have also been some developments in the space and I’ve gotten some questions from operators too. Given this, a re-examination of the key points seems to be in order. My conception of a service model is … Continue reading Service Modeling and Lifecycle Management: Where We Are
Across the various places I write on networking topics, the topic that consistently outperforms the rest is OSS/BSS. I also get more comments and questions on that topic, and operators tell me that it’s become the most important issue. That all means that this is a good time to look at just where we are … Continue reading An Operations Modernization Perspective on Software Automation and Orchestration