At the TMF event in Nice Verizon opened yet another discussion, or perhaps I should say “reopened” because the topic came up way back in April 2013 and it was just as divisive then. It’s the topic of “microservices” or breaking down virtual functions into very small components. NetCracker also had some things to say … Continue reading Network Feature Composition, Decomposition, and Microservices
One of the most logical places for operator interest in open-source software to focus is in the area of virtual network functions (VNFs). Most of the popular functions are available in at least one open-source implementation, and operators have been grousing over the license terms for commercial VNFs. It would seem that an open-source model … Continue reading The Critical Open-Source VNF: How We Could Still Get There
With the exception of Huawei, network equipment vendors are facing tightening spending by operators. The reason, obviously, is that compression in profit-per-bit that I’ve been talking about—the compression that’s led to operator support for “transformation” and their interest in SDN and NFV. Since SDN and NFV have not evolved fast enough and far enough to … Continue reading How Equipment Vendors Can Counter Cautious Operator Spending
Getting closer to the buyer and to the dollars is always good advice in positioning a product or service. For network operators, that means looking at what services they sell, and for network operators reviewing the potential of SDN/NFV, it means looking at how these new technologies can improve their services. But “services” doesn’t necessarily … Continue reading Lessons from Taking a Service-Inward View of NFV
If you look at or listen to network operator presentations on next-gen networking, you’re struck by the sense that operators don’t trust vendors any more. They don’t come out and say that, but all the discussions about “open” approaches and “lock-in” demonstrate a healthy disdain for their suppliers’ trustworthiness, and just the fact that major … Continue reading How Did SDN/NFV Vendors Lose the Trust of their Buyers (And Can they Reclaim It?)
Any time a Tier One decides to open the kimono a bit on their planning for transformation it’s important. AT&T did that with its paper on ECOMP, which stands for “Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management, and Policy” and the topic makes the comments doubly important. As operators seem to be looking to take on more of … Continue reading Learning Some Lessons from AT&T’s ECOMP
At the service level we all know that mobile broadband gets most of the capex. In topology terms, the big focus of capex is metro networking. It’s so important it’s even been driving operator M&A. If you look at “opex” in the most general terms, meaning non-capital expenses, you find that paying for backhaul and … Continue reading The Metro Dynamic in Services and Infrastructure
More and more people are realizing that the challenge for next-generation networking is basically getting enough of it to matter. Whether we’re talking about replacing switches/routers with white boxes or hosted instances, we aren’t going to justify much excitement if we do that for perhaps two or three percent of the operators’ capital spending. There … Continue reading What DOES Get Us to the Magic Optimum Number of New NFV Data Centers?
While there has certainly been a lot of interest in what the next-generation infrastructure of operators might look like, there’s some indication that operators are thinking less about infrastructure these days. Transformation is still their goal, but more and more are setting their sights higher than the network, and this could have a major impact … Continue reading Transformation from the Top is Gaining Ground with Operators
Cisco’s announcement it was buying Jasper Technologies for its IoT cloud service platform created a lot of buzz, not all of it favorable. Many on the Street think Cisco is paying too much for a market entry play, given that Cisco already has IoT offerings. My view is that there’s good and bad in the … Continue reading Just How Serious is Cisco about an IoT Transformation?