We are starting to see earnings reports from technology giants and the results so far aren’t particularly pretty. We are what we sell, in this industry as in all industries, and so it’s important to look at the trends reflected in quarterly reports to see what’s really happening in our industry. Today I want to … Continue reading What Three Earnings Reports Show Us About Tech Progress
Most of those who follow topics in SDN and NFV will recognize the ONOS or Open Network Operating System project. It’s been covered regularly in the media, but much of the coverage seems to present it as a kind of alternative OPNFV. It’s true that ONOS and OPNFV, as projects, could be considered to have … Continue reading Could ONOS Be the Right Way Forward for SDN and NFV?
Over the last year I have been trying to understand how network operators make a business case for a migration to SDN and NFV. It’s easy to see how you can build them into a few services or projects here and there, but we seem to be lacking the impetus to drive a wholesale shift … Continue reading What Projections Can Tell Us About Opex Efficiency and its Impact on Network Modernization
Sometimes really important things reach the news but in pieces, and that may be the case with two items in SDx Central. Huawei, says one article, is beefing up its open source credentials with new hires. Fujitsu, according to a second article, has announced a new SDN controller that uses two levels of abstraction. It’s … Continue reading Signs of Progress in some SDN/NFV Announcements
The big question for network operators is less how they might use SDN or NFV but how they might build their next-gen infrastructure to support an evolved business model. That question has been asked for a full decade now, and tellingly it was first called “transformation”. The term reflects a top-down vision that’s absent in … Continue reading Putting “Services”, “Networks”, “Agility”, and “Transformation” into Perspective
NFV trials are not exercises involving the same set of players, or reflecting the same issues or service goals. I noted in a blog earlier this week that operators had decided (often by default) that they would pursue evolving PoCs toward services even though it would likely result in silos based on the large difference … Continue reading How the “Trial-Silo” NFV Strategy of Operators for 2016 Impacts Vendors
If you go to the website of a big vendor who sells a lot to the network operators, or read their press releases, you see something interesting. The issues that these vendors promote seem very pedestrian. We hear about things like “customer experience”, “unified services”, “personalizing usage”, “traffic growth”, “outages”, and even “handset strategies”. Where’s … Continue reading Can We Find, and Harness, the Real Drivers of Network Change?
It’s obvious that there’s a relationship between NFV and the cloud, but for many the relationship is simply one of common ancestry. You host apps in the cloud and with NFV you host features there. Well, there’s a lot more to the cloud than just hosting apps or features. The cloud is the model of … Continue reading We Know We’re Building Clouds and not Networks in the Future; We Just Don’t Know How
Here is an interesting question for you. If the gazelle evolves, does the lion also have to change? Of course, you’d say. A food chain generates a chain reaction to any significant alterations. Well, then, how about this one. If network services evolve to something very different, does enterprise network equipment also have to evolve? … Continue reading Cisco: Facing their Past to Save their Future
Google has unveiled its long-awaited MVNO offering, Google Fi. Right now, Fi is in what Google calls “Early Access” so you have to apply for an invite and wait to get it. It might be worth the wait. Working in partnership with carriers in over 120 countries (Sprint and T-Mobile in the US), Google has … Continue reading What Hath Google Fi Wrought?