My parents acquired a Samsung SmartTV a year ago without paying much attention on the ‘smarts’ of the device. A few weeks ago, after a (never ending) family lunch at their home, I started to play with their new TV and configured the SmartTV section. Only after them alerting menot to break anything, they suddenly discovered a window to a brand new world that I just enabled. How long did it take last time they tried to unsuccessfully connect their laptop? With the magic of the SmartTV button, they found an easy way to connect to Internet content, VoD and even family pictures, although the system is still far from perfect.

Looking at the MPLS & Ethernet World Congress agenda, I’m still amazed how after 15^th years our industry can still innovate in this area. Well, the (L)abel (S)witching basis of MPLS remain the same but the (M)ulti(P)rotocol piece is, after 15 years, it is much more important now, than ever before. It’s not just IPv4 or IPv6 over MPLS. In fact is not even IP or packets, but also circuits over MPLS. It is also fascinating how over the 15 years MPLS has been here to solve different problems: ATM transport, IP VPNs, Carrier Ethernet, Multicast, Data Center and Cloud connectivity, mobile networks... and now MPLS is getting ready for SDN.

It is not a secret that mobile operators are accelerating their plans for LTE (4G) deployments. Every time a new city is connected to LTE, service providers appear in the news and this seems to translate ‘great’ marketing and awareness on this new development. 

Pick your favourite website and count the number of advertisement opportunities that a single page has... it is probably limited to 3 to 4 per page. Normally, the number of ads is larger than the available space in the siteso clearly, there must be an intelligent mechanism to pick the right adverts to display for each visitor: targeted advertisement.

What value will Service Providers add? 

A conference sponsor's summary of at the recent EPF7 peering event, hosted by LINX, DE-CIX, Netnod and AMS-IX.

As mega trends such as Consumerization of IT and Bring Your Own Device fuel the demand for cloud services, we see an increasing number of enterprise customers for whom the ‘center of gravity’ of the service – the point that is equidistant to all applications and service hosts, is beginning to fall outside of the enterprise network.

Traditional data center networks cast shadows in which security appliances must operate. Modern data centers don't just need new architectures to increase performance, they need them to increase the ability to apply and manage security services.

A shift is happening in managed enterprise services that puts the new centre of gravity firmly within the grasp for the communication service provider. And it’s driven by three macro trends...

I’ve discussed in previous blogs about one of the top issues of the telecom industry today. In this blog I'm trying to answer the following questions:

What is the secret sauce of that success at the OTT side?

What are the strategies Network Service Providers have taken?

During the first half of 2011, IPv6 was a hot topic, not just in the industry but also covered by the mass media. I was surprised to see IPv6 being mentioned on the TV News opening highlights along with the news of the Arab Spring. However, according to the news, it seems now we moved to a quite period, but what’s happening behind the scenes?

(Read more...)

 Security is oft touted as the number one inhibitor to cloud adoption, but is there grounding for this in technology terms?

The answer lies within us, not the technology...

I recently attended the Carrier Ethernet World Congress Europe in Amsterdam, once more an interesting reality check of this industry segment. It is a great to hear from the Service Provider community the way they are using the Carrier Ethernet technology.

In this blog I share my observations in how this industry is evolving.

Traditionally, the network has been the main revenue centre for Service Providers (SPs). With the growth of the Internet and especially the Over-the-Top (OTT) services, SPs have been forced to throw additional resources to support the traffic growth and are rapidly being forced to build unsustainable business models were the network becomes a cost centre.

The New Network Technical Forum 2011 in Barcelona is almost upon us (25/26^th October).

As the lead marketer at an event that targets the technical leaders from our key EMEA customers and partners, I feel like the guy that was invited to a fancy dress party only to turn up and find everyone soberly dressed whilst I am left looking for the safety pins to hold my toga together.....

What a difference a year makes! If the Cloud World Forum¹in London earlier this summer was anything to go by, CIOs have completed their first phase of cloud deployment and now looking to expand and enhance  their services to deliver a greater contribution to the business. In effect, transforming  the IT department as we know it today into a business innovation center. Indeed, some would argue that the IT department will dissapear as a result of cloud adoption².

So how should cloud providers align with the evolving needs of the CIO as the very role of IT departments changes?