November 15, 2013

Summary Bullets:

Alcatel-Lucent’s Technology Symposium revealed much more coherent messaging around SDN and NFV than at its Nuage launch from earlier in the year.
In justifying its LTE overlay strategy, a focus on customer demands took center stage.
In each case, the story behind Alcatel-Lucent’s strategy decisions and messaging points to an encouraging company evolution.

There wasn’t much to tweet about during the welcome reception and dinner on the night before Alcatel-Lucent’s 2013 Technology Summit. The plenary sessions on Day One, however, provided plenty to comment on. While not intentional, a colleague from another analyst firm noted that my running commentary seemed rather negative. You can be the judge (check me out at @pnjarich), but here are some highlights. Continue reading “Alcatel-Lucent Technology Symposium: Day One (The Value of a Good Story)” →

A month or so ago, when Amdocs announced its Actix acquisition, I wrote a blog post hinting that the BSS specialist was treading into waters that many folks would say were way out of its depth. Even with Actix, the Amdocs heritage is decidedly NOT telco network-centric. To think that acquiring a RAN optimization platform would give it the chops to compete with the likes of Ericsson, NSN, Huawei or Alcatel-Lucent – even Samsung or NEC – was borderline crazy.

This week, I traveled to San Diego for the Amdocs InTouch customer event. I ate and drank in the Southern California sunshine, and I came back with a different perspective. Seriously, sunshine and fruit of the vine notwithstanding, I got to speak with folks from Actix. I got to hear from Eli Gelman (Amdocs’ CEO) and other Amdocs subject matter experts on why the combination of Amdocs, Actix and, most recently, Celcite will form a potentially sharp thorn in the side of the aforementioned radio network equipment providers (NEPs). Continue reading “Amdocs InTouch Put Operators on Notice That It Is Serious About Networks” →