Month: September 2014

Measuring Market Share or Assessing Deployability? NFV Increases the Stakes

by , posted in Net Transformation, SDN/NFV
David Snow
David Snow

Summary Bullets:

  • Market share has always been a blunt instrument in assessing a product’s ‘deployability.’
  • NFV raises the product deployability stakes and the transition to NFV will raise it even more.

One of the occupational hazards of being a Current Analysis analyst is the flak you attract when designating a vendor’s product a ‘leader’ in a particular segment. Sometimes, and usually very shortly afterwards, a company whose product is not given leader status challenges the call, and more often than not, it’s on the basis of better market share. They say, “If we sell more stuff, then we must be better, OK? The market thinks so, even if you don’t.”

This reaction needs unpicking a little, especially in the light of NFV. Continue reading “Measuring Market Share or Assessing Deployability? NFV Increases the Stakes” →

Do Small-Cell Vendors Have WiFi Deployment Envy?

by , posted in Het Nets, Ultra Broadband
Ed Gubbins
Ed Gubbins

Summary Bullets:

  • Enterprises are likely to base small-cell deployment expectations on the ease of WiFi AP intalls.
  • Vendors may approach this issue differently based on their services-business strategies.

“Base stations are deployed by RF engineers. WiFi is deployed by interior decorators.”

I don’t know who said that first; I know I heard it first from Teclo Networks’ Jane Walerud.

In any case, the distinction expressed in that quote comes up a lot these days in discussions about deploying small cells, especially since small cells often double as WiFi APs and, in some cases, even plug into existing APs. The tasks of RF engineering and interior decorating are increasingly falling upon the same people. Much has been said about the challenges of deploying small cells outdoors. When it comes to deploying them indoors, folks in the WiFi world, who are generally more accustomed to indoor environments, could offer some advice. That advice is: Whether you are trying to penetrate homes or businesses, if you’re trying to deploy small cells indoors, they need to be very easy to deploy. This is partly because even enterprise IT folks have been spoiled by the ease of deploying WiFi. Small cells can’t help but be compared to their more easy-going cousin. Continue reading “Do Small-Cell Vendors Have WiFi Deployment Envy?” →

Ericsson and SAP: Putting the Cloud in Managed EMM Services

by , posted in OSS/BSS/CEM
Ron Westfall
Ron Westfall

Summary Bullets:

  • The Ericsson-SAP alliance yields the global telco and IT channels to accelerate business adoption of enterprise mobility management (EMM) apps
  • The alliance advances SAP’s strategic competitive objective of countering Oracle, IBM and HP in both the IT and telco realms

Ericsson and SAP extended their alliance to target the burgeoning EMM market segment. The new EMM solution combines Ericsson’s IT managed services with the SAP Mobile Secure product to enable cloud-based implementations of Mobile Secure. The move supports operator objectives in winning more enterprise mobility business as consumer mobility revenues become less predictable due to factors such as expanding OTT consumption and intensified competition. However the Ericsson-SAP EMM alliance needs to navigate three channel challenges in order to be successful in the EMM space over the next three years. These include: Continue reading “Ericsson and SAP: Putting the Cloud in Managed EMM Services” →

IBC 2014: After Years of 4K and Cloud TV Hype, Will We See Anything New in Amsterdam?

by , posted in Net Transformation
Erik Keith
Erik Keith

Summary Bullets:

  • After years of marketing buzz about 4K and cloud-enabled TV, OTT, multiscreen, and the future of the set-top box (STB), there are tangible signs of forward progress on all of these fronts.
  • Silicon, per usual, is the catalyst for actual mass market implementation of new, advanced technologies and services, including 4KTV and the virtualization of STB functionality.

Several weeks ago I was in a major U.S. electronics retailer to buy some memory, i.e., USB drives and an SD card. After the purchase was complete, I stopped by the TV section to take a quick look at the 4KTVs. Not even 30 seconds passed by when a sales clerk approached me, and said something to the effect that 4K is so much better than current HD technology, implying it does not make sense to buy anything else. Having been around the block a few times at various TV/video industry events over the past decade or so, there were of course a number of things I could have said to the salesman, but I simply replied, “There is no doubt that 4K is the next big thing in TV, but the fact that so little content is accessible is a fairly major hurdle.” And as any well-trained sales guy should do, he responded accordingly, citing the impending wave of 4K content, as well as the fact that 4K TVs also up-scale HD content. But the bottom line is that linear broadcast 4K is years away, unless one lives in Japan. Continue reading “IBC 2014: After Years of 4K and Cloud TV Hype, Will We See Anything New in Amsterdam?” →

SDN and NFV Product Assessments – How to Boil the Ocean Using Small Pots?

by , posted in SDN/NFV
Jason Marcheck
Jason Marcheck

Summary Bullets:

  • Current Analysis is known for side-by-side product comparisons; this can be problematic when comparisons need to be made between broadly varying solutions.
  • The first step in making meaningful comparisons is framing broad, yet meaningful dimensions for comparative analysis.

In the large and complex realm of telecom networking, seemingly overwhelming tasks are often related in daunting and, sometimes, gross metaphors. Case in point, “boiling the ocean” seems like a hard, but perhaps not completely distasteful task (especially if armed with some coconut oil, a large-brimmed hat and, ideally, a frozen drink). On the other hand, making the analogy to “how to eat an elephant” just seems nasty. Even hungry lions tend to shy away from that job. Nevertheless, however it gets epitomized, the concept of dealing with a monumental task is common in the telecom world. What’s more, it’s something the telecom world is faced with as we enter the home stretch of 2014. Continue reading “SDN and NFV Product Assessments – How to Boil the Ocean Using Small Pots?” →