Carl Ford
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Longview IoT Boosts Energy and Wireless Efficiency
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Hallmark's Simple, Inexpensive Way to Boost Customer Satisfaction
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Huawei Places the World's First 5G VoNR Video Call
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IGEL Advances Future of Work
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Tata Communications and Cisco Collaborate on SD-WAN
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How to Win the 50-Year-Old China Trade War
Today and this week in-fact is historic - the left and right in the U.S. agree that we have a major trade...
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Extreme Elements Enables The Autonomous Enterprise
Extreme Networks just announced Extreme Elements which in-turn enables the autonomous network and subsequently the autonomous enterprise. In a dynamic webinar, Dan...
Full Story »Nortel Enterprise: Two Buyers (Together) are Better than One
June 29, 2009
First of all congrats to Nokia Siemens. I always wondered why the domain is NSN. From now on this will be Nokia Siemens Nortel in my head.
Here is a thought about the rest of Nortel. Nortel Enterprise is not just about voice, its about transport and other tools that are within an enterprise. So who is the logical choice to acquire?
The rumor mill says that Avaya and Siemens Enterprise are already in the bidding war. However, hedge fund companies adding more distress to the mess is not their normal strategy (think of Chrysler / Cerberus). I can make a case for both and of course Cisco, but I have another idea.
Digium has a very strong relationship with Adtran. While it looks like Adtran is losing people the beginnings of Digium started with Adtran.
The reason I suggest this two partner acquistion is based on the remaining assets of Nortel Enterprise. The PBX part of the company is only 1/3 of the asset and its a hardware intensive solution. If Digium were to acquire, an Asterisk adjunct box, (aka app server would be a great add on particularly if it included SkypeIn SkypeOut support). Heck, Ebay might even put some money in.
Now comes the other parts. Over 2/3rd of the value is in rock solid government and networking equipment and for Adtran this would represent a new energy into a company that has been strong but needs to augment the porfolio for government contracts. For the Nortelians this would be a great fit too since it would not be a mashing of personel but an LOB within Adtran that augmented with very little overlap.
Mind you if the dollar numbers I am hearing are true this is kind of a stretch, but I have seen the numbers rumored and the numbers signed to vary greatly. It may be worthwhile for Adtran and Digium to jump in.
Here is a thought about the rest of Nortel. Nortel Enterprise is not just about voice, its about transport and other tools that are within an enterprise. So who is the logical choice to acquire?
The rumor mill says that Avaya and Siemens Enterprise are already in the bidding war. However, hedge fund companies adding more distress to the mess is not their normal strategy (think of Chrysler / Cerberus). I can make a case for both and of course Cisco, but I have another idea.
Digium has a very strong relationship with Adtran. While it looks like Adtran is losing people the beginnings of Digium started with Adtran.
The reason I suggest this two partner acquistion is based on the remaining assets of Nortel Enterprise. The PBX part of the company is only 1/3 of the asset and its a hardware intensive solution. If Digium were to acquire, an Asterisk adjunct box, (aka app server would be a great add on particularly if it included SkypeIn SkypeOut support). Heck, Ebay might even put some money in.
Now comes the other parts. Over 2/3rd of the value is in rock solid government and networking equipment and for Adtran this would represent a new energy into a company that has been strong but needs to augment the porfolio for government contracts. For the Nortelians this would be a great fit too since it would not be a mashing of personel but an LOB within Adtran that augmented with very little overlap.
Mind you if the dollar numbers I am hearing are true this is kind of a stretch, but I have seen the numbers rumored and the numbers signed to vary greatly. It may be worthwhile for Adtran and Digium to jump in.
Out in the Open Oracle
June 29, 2009
Reading the Wall Street Journal, I saw the Justice Department is extending the review of the Sun acquistion by Oracle. Ben Worthen, pointed out in the article, In April, Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison called Java "the single most important software asset we have ever acquired."
This is the critical issue in the Justice department mind. Hardware no worries, Databases no worries. JAVA not so fast.
SUN has done a great job enabling the third parties to adopt the JAVA and as they have said continually, IBM is the largest JAVA developer.
Given the ecosystem of JAVA, I am not sure there is much to worry about. I can imagine some optimization for Oracle and as long as the Java Community Process continues. Having said that, it would be nice if JAVA became more stabilized as a standards effort. This is the one place I would focus as the Justice Department.
After that I am hoping that Larry gets his Internet Toaster. Back when I was in the carrier, I kicked the Oracle folks out since they had an expectation that I was going to provide local loop Ethernet.
Today the vision can be accomplished and Larry should bring it back and with an Open API. You would be surprised what things are available when the database can be networked. New federation opportunities exist and SUN asset will prove its value..
This is the critical issue in the Justice department mind. Hardware no worries, Databases no worries. JAVA not so fast.
SUN has done a great job enabling the third parties to adopt the JAVA and as they have said continually, IBM is the largest JAVA developer.
Given the ecosystem of JAVA, I am not sure there is much to worry about. I can imagine some optimization for Oracle and as long as the Java Community Process continues. Having said that, it would be nice if JAVA became more stabilized as a standards effort. This is the one place I would focus as the Justice Department.
After that I am hoping that Larry gets his Internet Toaster. Back when I was in the carrier, I kicked the Oracle folks out since they had an expectation that I was going to provide local loop Ethernet.
Today the vision can be accomplished and Larry should bring it back and with an Open API. You would be surprised what things are available when the database can be networked. New federation opportunities exist and SUN asset will prove its value..
The Dead Zone: The realities of Coverage
June 27, 2009
While roaming the Internet, looking for things to make my Blogging more interesting to you the reader, I came upon Jeff Cohn's Coverage maps.
I am sure you have seen the Verizon Dead Zone commercials.
Looking at Jeff's maps you come to understand that living in an NFL city skews your perspective on coverage and makes the stimulus goal of unserved areas easier to grasp. Mind you the economics are hard. After all the Alvarion / Open Range announcement talked about 6M people in 17 states. Its hard to get critical mass in some areas.
When I worked for what is now Verizon in NY I was struck how much of New York State might as well be US West territory. When my pal Mark Hewitt showed me the plans to connect the fiber rings in NY I immediately recognized the holes that were being filled by their plan.
As will be discussed at 4GWE, If we are going to make the Internet available on broadband to everyone its going to take more than any one carrier can give us.
One last point about the maps. If you look at them you can see that unserved is a much greater problem then underserved. It will be possible for the competitive providers to claim they need stimulus, but my hope is that Chairman Genachowski will focus on the unserved. They are a greater need and more important to the greater good imho. I base this on the believe that economies of scale work in our favor where people are served, I would venture a guess that whoever is servicing the area might be open to enabling wholesale.
I am sure you have seen the Verizon Dead Zone commercials.
Looking at Jeff's maps you come to understand that living in an NFL city skews your perspective on coverage and makes the stimulus goal of unserved areas easier to grasp. Mind you the economics are hard. After all the Alvarion / Open Range announcement talked about 6M people in 17 states. Its hard to get critical mass in some areas.
When I worked for what is now Verizon in NY I was struck how much of New York State might as well be US West territory. When my pal Mark Hewitt showed me the plans to connect the fiber rings in NY I immediately recognized the holes that were being filled by their plan.
As will be discussed at 4GWE, If we are going to make the Internet available on broadband to everyone its going to take more than any one carrier can give us.
One last point about the maps. If you look at them you can see that unserved is a much greater problem then underserved. It will be possible for the competitive providers to claim they need stimulus, but my hope is that Chairman Genachowski will focus on the unserved. They are a greater need and more important to the greater good imho. I base this on the believe that economies of scale work in our favor where people are served, I would venture a guess that whoever is servicing the area might be open to enabling wholesale.
Natural Selection and Evolutionary Process
June 27, 2009
Investor's Daily has a nice article on how wireless operators in the US have hit the saturation point. While I keep trying to talk about nothing but the broadband wireless network of the future, consumers are selecting an alternative direction.
Prepaid services are on the rise with companies like Boost (Sprint brand), MetroPCS and LEAP. These services are strictly voice and text, with very little intention to use the wireless Interent at the moment. One exception is American Movil which is testing a $30 a month plan that includes browsing.
For the large players world wide the story is a mixed bag. On the positive revenue side the smartphones are on the rise to by 12% worldwide. On the negative side the overall worldwide market fell by 9%. (statistics courtesy of IDC in the article).
While almost half of the market lost revenue worldwide domestically ATT is up almost 10% and its all thanks to Apple. Mind you I am not sure those dollars translate to the net given the contract with Apple but we have to tip our hats to them. Solid growth and from what I can tell loyalty. I have not see the numbers, but I am guessing that 3GS has a lot of first generation iPhone users coming back.
Its seems for a great many consumers we should have a sign that says "Its the text stupid". Their connectivity is about SMS. For me, this feels like a market ripe for arbitrage which brings me back to the real value of the Internet. The ability to evolve applications that grow the community.
From a 4GWE perspective the obvious question is what should we expect for the data needs. As people are texting like crazy should we expect the data side to segment into low end services as well? That will on my mind with our community in September 1-3 in Los Angeles.
Prepaid services are on the rise with companies like Boost (Sprint brand), MetroPCS and LEAP. These services are strictly voice and text, with very little intention to use the wireless Interent at the moment. One exception is American Movil which is testing a $30 a month plan that includes browsing.
For the large players world wide the story is a mixed bag. On the positive revenue side the smartphones are on the rise to by 12% worldwide. On the negative side the overall worldwide market fell by 9%. (statistics courtesy of IDC in the article).
While almost half of the market lost revenue worldwide domestically ATT is up almost 10% and its all thanks to Apple. Mind you I am not sure those dollars translate to the net given the contract with Apple but we have to tip our hats to them. Solid growth and from what I can tell loyalty. I have not see the numbers, but I am guessing that 3GS has a lot of first generation iPhone users coming back.
Its seems for a great many consumers we should have a sign that says "Its the text stupid". Their connectivity is about SMS. For me, this feels like a market ripe for arbitrage which brings me back to the real value of the Internet. The ability to evolve applications that grow the community.
From a 4GWE perspective the obvious question is what should we expect for the data needs. As people are texting like crazy should we expect the data side to segment into low end services as well? That will on my mind with our community in September 1-3 in Los Angeles.
Wireless Backhaul is Fiber?
June 26, 2009Our pal Gary Kim highlighted up the In-Stat report on Wireless Backhaul.
Its an interesting report and helps to show some segmentation in the marketplace. For Verizon the LTE build out has them moving as much as possible to fiber and MetroEthernet.
Outside of majority the base stations are taking advantage of the Microwave which means Fixed WiMAX is a winner for a lot of implementations.
MetroEthernet is going to claim about half of the market place according to In-Stat because the migration to support data means circuit switch trunking is no longer viable, and the equivalent costs associated with Special Access is becoming a bone of contention in Washington.
As the network data traffic grows the relevance of the circuit switched models using T-1s is reduced. Mind you the commitment to bring voice on to the data side is limited at best.
A very real benefit of MetroEthernet to the links between the RAN and the core network is the ability to have better distributed redundancy and QoS for traffic shaping.
Apple Peals - Bob Borchers leaves.
June 26, 2009Yesterday Bob Borchers informed the world that he was going to Opus Capital Ventures. The Opus website says "Early-stage venture investing is what we like to do. And we're good at it. The team at Opus Capital has been active in the seed and Series A funding of technology companies for more than 20 years, having invested in such companies as Airgate PCS, EFI, Galileo and Harmonic at their very early stages." Borchers experience is definitely the valued proposition for Opus. Perhaps their is an Internet App market that is vendor neutral in our future as a result.
As for Apple.
I keep getting told that Steve Job has made a legacy group that survives him, but the departure of Borcher and Rubinstein indicate some shake up is happening. Is this about the internal politics of Apple, has Steve's heirs been selected and that is why the departure?
Best Buy Gets Smart about Mobile
June 25, 2009
Yesterday, Scott and I were busy traveling to meetings in the city with companies in three separate sections of town. At one point we past the Best Buy Mobile store at Union Square. I wanted to jump in, but we were in a time crunch.
If you read the press release of the Best Buys earnings you discover that smart phones are pretty profitable for the retailer. So much so they intend to add another fifteen stores under the Best Buy Mobile broad.
And its not just smart phones they want to display there but netbooks as well.
At the retail level the term Mobile Internet Device [MID] seems to be missing.
It maybe that with the advent of certified WiMAX rolling out this fall, the term MID starts to catch on. Talking to Ari Zoldan yesterday, I was impressed with some of the devices solutions he was offering that was carrier independent.
I don't think this is the place where Best Buy makes its margins, I think they are somewhat carrier dependent for the margins on the smart phones. So it will be interesting to see what kind of bundles start to happen with the netbooks.
I purchased a netbook separately from the Verizon MiFi from Novatel. But and the HP Verizon bundle may have value to others.
Bottom line though is the Wireless Internet market is about to explode and it should be fun to watch.
If you read the press release of the Best Buys earnings you discover that smart phones are pretty profitable for the retailer. So much so they intend to add another fifteen stores under the Best Buy Mobile broad.
And its not just smart phones they want to display there but netbooks as well.
At the retail level the term Mobile Internet Device [MID] seems to be missing.
It maybe that with the advent of certified WiMAX rolling out this fall, the term MID starts to catch on. Talking to Ari Zoldan yesterday, I was impressed with some of the devices solutions he was offering that was carrier independent.
I don't think this is the place where Best Buy makes its margins, I think they are somewhat carrier dependent for the margins on the smart phones. So it will be interesting to see what kind of bundles start to happen with the netbooks.
I purchased a netbook separately from the Verizon MiFi from Novatel. But and the HP Verizon bundle may have value to others.
Bottom line though is the Wireless Internet market is about to explode and it should be fun to watch.
Intel Finnishing it Connections, or, That's Nokia with an IA
June 25, 2009Jack Gold who has consulted many friends in the industry and provide great analysis now at J Gold Associates has done a more thorough analysis of the Intel Nokia deal that I highlighted yesterday. Having talked to friends in both companies, I think Jack understands the considerations very well. Take a read.
Today, Intel and Nokia announced a long term strategic relationship. There are 3 key parts to this agreement: Intel will license Nokia's technology for 3G HSPA cellular technology for use with its chips; Intel and Nokia will collaborate on making their respective open source implementations of Linux for small devices (Moblin and Maemo) more compatible; and they will collaborate on future Intel architectures (IA) for mobile devices. This is a compelling partnership for several reasons.
Why we are here? 4GWE Rewind
June 24, 2009
I took the liberty of heavily editing Brough Turner or Dialogic discussion from the "Our Genealogy" session. When we come to the west coast we broke up the tutorial so that Brough Turner and Fanny Mlinarsky had more latitude to talk about the current environment.
I placed the Video on YouTube
What's great about Brough's analysis is the understanding of the prime movers in the technology.
This clip gives the perspective of the fact that like the landline network, the wireless network is being swallowed by the data requirements of the future.
In LA we are continuing the discussion about what it take to evolve the 4G wireless broadband.
In listening to Brough, one thought occurred to me is that iPhone probably drove the US 3G adoption way past Europe at the present time. (Don't your get hopes, I have not reset my opinion of Apple.)
Enjoy the listen and if you want to stay up to date with us join us at 4GWE September 1-3 in LA.
In the meantime if you want access to the presentations send me an email and I will add you to system.
I placed the Video on YouTube
What's great about Brough's analysis is the understanding of the prime movers in the technology.
This clip gives the perspective of the fact that like the landline network, the wireless network is being swallowed by the data requirements of the future.
In LA we are continuing the discussion about what it take to evolve the 4G wireless broadband.
In listening to Brough, one thought occurred to me is that iPhone probably drove the US 3G adoption way past Europe at the present time. (Don't your get hopes, I have not reset my opinion of Apple.)
Enjoy the listen and if you want to stay up to date with us join us at 4GWE September 1-3 in LA.
In the meantime if you want access to the presentations send me an email and I will add you to system.
