Cisco, one of the vendors we’ve been watching on the path toward what we think is the critical symbiosis of the cloud and OpenFlow/SDN, has blogged (http://blogs.cisco.com/news/is-it-just-sdn/) about their view of the subject. I’m happy they did, but I confess to being a little confused by what they said. It seems that Cisco is arguing … Continue reading Reading Cisco’s OpenFlow Blog Tea Leaves
Euphonic, huh? Well, earnings season is about to take off, which means we’ll likely have more financial results to review than tech bombshells. Some companies are working to get their stuff out before they go quiet in their pre-earnings period, though, and one of them is HP. After seeming to ignore the cloud, they now … Continue reading Taking Tech Temperature, Pre-Earnings.
Comcast is joining with the telcos in offering a hosted PBX and UC product, and the move is significant both for the overall competition in the UC space and for the evolution of voice and UC overall. Cisco is expanding its Jabber UC, and also linking it better with telepresence. Sprint is partnering with Cisco … Continue reading Two Market Lessons from Comcast
Well, Apple has finally quashed (most of) the rumors and announced its “new iPad”. It has the quad-core A5X processor, Retina display with photorealistic resolution, and is much faster on cellular wireless—21Mbps HSPA+, DC-HSDPA at 42Mbps, and LTE at 73Mbps. However, the notion of a fully software-define radio capable of supporting anyone’s service isn’t in … Continue reading Reading the “New iPad” Tea Leaves
Networking is the business of traffic and capacity, supply and demand, and we have some news in both of these spaces. I’d love to say that we had news suggesting that the balancing of these two factors—critical for any market—was being achieved. I can’t. Like politics, business often bogs down in posturing and fails to … Continue reading Fiber, “Fixed” LTE, and Privacy: Our Complex Future
AT&T has decided to drop its attempt to acquire T-Mobile, citing regulatory opposition. Some on the Street are putting a good face on the deal’s breakup, saying that it will encourage AT&T to spend more on infrastructure and help vendors. Alcatel-Lucent is up in early trading in Europe as an expected recipient of all this … Continue reading What Now: For AT&T and for the Cloud
Alcatel-Lucent is working to improve its position in the enterprise with an OmniSwitch story that links to its carrier cloud story, a combination it calls “Mesh”. The step is a smart one because the cloud is the largest driver of data center change, but it’s just a bit late in the market timing because enterprises … Continue reading Clouds and Chips
If we had to pick the parameters of a really big rumor in networking it would be hard to top the one that started circulating Monday afternoon. Verizon, says the rumor, may buy Netflix! Here’s a telco, one with FTTH and telco TV, picking up an OTT video player! Is this the beginning of the … Continue reading A Transformational Rumor
Some of the changes in networking that are looming on the horizon may start a lot closer to the couch if you read the right hints from current trends. The battle between Google and Apple for TV position may be driving some other players to change their plans. For example, Verizon has been offering more … Continue reading Wireline: Too Many Hands, Not Enough Pockets
I’ve talked about the profit problems of network operators for years now, simply because they’ve talked to me about those problems for years. In rough terms, revenue per bit has declined by 50% per year for five and a half years running, and this decline means that profits on infrastructure have dropped sharply even though … Continue reading A Warning Signal on Mobile/Carrier Capex