2014: The Technologies, Themes, Topics (and Reports) You Spaced On!

Summary Bullets:

• Every year, we write many analyses which “get lost in the shuffle” – read many fewer times than our average report.
• The topics of these reports are varied – SDN/NFV, video, OSS/BSS, services, small cells – but all include important insights for telecom vendor and operator success.

Where we looked at some of our most read reports from 2014 in an earlier report, it may be even more important to look at the reports that weren’t so well read. Just like the “cool kids” back in school, the top reports showcase what everyone was paying the most attention to. Those reports at the bottom of the list, however, tell an equally important story – specific topics that may be getting ignored, at the peril of telecom stakeholders (think the “not so cool kid” from high school that ended up changing the world).

What follows are 14 reports (14 for 2014, of course) falling well under the average readership for analysis across our Service Provider Infrastructure service, along with an explanation of why they deserve more attention than they might have gotten. These all represent important themes that shaped 2014 and will remain relevant into the new year.

1. Alcatel-Lucent Launches its Virtualized Service Router: Capacity – Check, Control Plane Scalability – Check. First Mover Advantage? Not So Much. Virtualization was a big topic in 2014, with router virtualization creating early worries of commoditization. How an IP leader like Alcatel-Lucent treats the space is important.
2. CTIA’s Super Mobility Week: Should You Care? The U.S. remains one of the most important mobile broadband markets in the world and CTIA’s Super Mobility Week was reborn to be the market’s biggest mobile-focused conference. Everyone in mobility SHOULD care what happened there.
3. TVS September 2014 Contract Round-Up: Managed Services Rule in Support of Smaller-Scale LTE and BSS Networks. The managed services space continued its transformation in 2014, which included a movement into (and integration of) new technologies and market segments. For anyone interested in where operator CapEx is flowing, these reports are like a regularly refreshed roadmap.
4. Alcatel-Lucent Technology Symposium 2014: Software Defined Networking – Cloud SDN Set to Go, but WAN SDN Solution Lags. Alcatel-Lucent continues to earn high marks in our SDN/NFV operator surveys. As an IP heavyweight, this makes sense. Why, then, wouldn’t you want to know what it’s up to in the SDN space?
5. AT&T Analyst Conference – The Three Networking Things Vendors and Carriers Need to Know. There’s a handful of service providers well-known for being aggressive in how they’re re-thinking their networks. AT&T is one of them.
6. Small Cells World Summit 2014: What Was Missing. Along with SDN and NFV, small cells were one of just two technology topics that made it into our top-read reports list. Where deployments have been slower to take off than many people had hoped, it’s critical to understand where the industry is falling flat.
7. Altiostar Exits Stealth Mode with Potentially Disruptive NFV C-RAN Play, a Distinguished Team and Cisco Muscle. It’s not every day that the mobile RAN gets a new vendor – particularly one backed by Cisco and playing to the near-universal interest in virtualization.
8. NetCracker 360: Portal to Operator Business Challenge Solutions or Nowhere? Products aside, marketing and customer outreach are key to a vendor’s success – especially in a software-centric space like OSS/BSS.
9. ItsOn: Is It On or Is It Off? Just like Altiostar in the RAN, ItsOn speaks to the idea that new entrants in the OSS/BSS space aren’t an everyday occurrence – and can’t be dismissed as inconsequential.
10. Specialized Network Devices Will Not Be Going Away (Anytime Soon). With virtualization getting so much attention of late, it’s important to remember how (and why) non-virtual functions will get used.
11. TMF Digital Disruption 2014: HP Elevates Its NFV Game with New VNF Solutions. With NFV playing to service provider interest in bringing IT assets and operations, along with new vendors, into their networks, HP deserves attention as a potential competitor.
12. Forget “One” – At Best It’s “Unified” and It’s Not Going to Survive “One More” Anyway! If marketing is a critical component in how telecom products and vendors compete, it’s important to know what works and what doesn’t.
13. Revisiting Gigabit Broadband: Will 100+ U.S. Telcos Light a Fire Under Cable Operators? Gigabit Broadband has evolved into a capability that operators are beginning to compete around – thanks to moves by folks like Google. How fixed access vendors are positioned to support could be critical to their successes.
14. IBC 2014: TV Forecast is Increasingly Cloud-y, with a Chance of 4K (Eventually). IBC 2014 seemed to tick all of the boxes of something that should be interesting to anyone in the telecom market: cloud, virtualization, a solid showing by telecom heavyweights (Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson), missteps by Huawei.