And we thought Wednesday’s business-level announcements created tumult in the market! Thursday was even more complicated, exciting, and potentially disruptive, and in addition may present even more widespread impact. The story that Apple may buy Hulu is certainly the most disruptive of all. Apple has been the major disruptor of the broadband market, by being … Continue reading What Would Apple/Hulu Wrought?
Google looks like it’s facing more anti-trust angst; the FTC is reported to be launching an investigation into Google’s advertising and search business, and former and current CEOs Schmidt and Page have decided they don’t want to appear before a Senate Committee hearing on roughly the same topic. All of this comes as Google, the … Continue reading Google, Monetization, and Carrier Clouds
Verizon is now rumored to be preparing to move to tiered pricing for mobile data in early July, and there’s a growing conviction among operators that everyone will be charging for usage on mobile networks by the end of this year and that everyone will be charging for wireline usage by the end of 2012. … Continue reading Caps, Content, and Clouds
It’s been a week of events and activities, and the only common thread I can find is that they were all pretty much over-hyped. Apple’s big announcement, the one they trotted Steve Jobs out to keynote, was really nothing more than a locker service with a few tweaks. Cisco’s event was a capacity upgrade. IPv6 … Continue reading Welcome to Hype-Week Hell
We have an interesting counterpoint today in the evolution of technology. HP’s user conference has been a not-unexpected cloud love-fest, with the company pushing itself as a leading cloud architect and even provider. And Wall Street is trashing Ciena because they’re not holding onto revenue and profit growth. At one level, this stuff seems pretty … Continue reading The Market Sands: Shifting or Hiding Ostriches?
Cisco is said to be announcing a new white-label managed service offering that’s designed to be resold by network operators (presumably Cisco customers) to rebrand for the SMB space. Cisco would provide the actual remote management resources. The move is yet another interesting slant on how Cisco thinks it can help operators, make more money … Continue reading Rumors: Cisco, Juniper, and Apple
We’re continuing to see more developments in the cloud space that go beyond the obvious (the hype) and address some of the important issues. One in particular is also demonstrating some important facts about the cloud and cloud services; it’s the “Database.com” offering from Salesforce. Cloud databases have been an issue of increasing importance because … Continue reading Cloud Services, Service Clouds
Verizon has taken yet another “leadership” step in defining how operators see their revenue futures. The company has indicated it would be likely acquiring small software companies to create SaaS offerings hosted on the Verizon cloud. I don’t think that the significance of this move is being appreciated, and so I want to open this … Continue reading Carrier Clouds, Amazon Tablets
Some data from Nielson suggests that tablet users are perhaps more focused on social media than on streaming video. The data shows that while e-readers outnumber tablets by an enormous margin, people are relatively unlikely to be e-reading while watching TV, but are rather likely (presuming they have a tablet) to be using a tablet. … Continue reading Taking the Pulse of Tablets
The optical networking conference this week is opening some interesting issues about the future of “the core”, and probably even more interesting issues regarding networking overall. While the focus of media coverage has been 100G Ethernet, the real question is how networks are valued, or made valuable. We might call the current situation in the … Continue reading The Network Core: Opto-Electrical Wars