Cloud

IP Video: A Whirlwind of Innovation

Edited By Peter Bernstein on October 28, 2014

By: Roland Mestric, Director, Video Solutions Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent

Before the iPhone, the world of TV was relatively simple. Linear TV programs were delivered to the TV set over the air or to its set-top box (STB), which was directly tied to the cable coax, the home gateway or the satellite dish.

Now everything has changed.

Video-enabled, IP-connected devices with ever-greater screen resolution are flooding the market. Tablets, smartphones and smart TVs are running on many flavours of operating systems. All use different protocols, formats and standards. With these devices, end users have many options to watch video. These include being attached to the service provider’s managed network, or being directly connected to the Internet and consuming ‘over-the-top’ content. Moreover, end users want to watch their favorite content on demand; they no longer want to be restricted to linear programing. This adds yet another level of complexity to this whirlwind of change.

Covering all IP video options results in countless protocols, proliferating standards and loads of acronyms. Even industry watchers can find the rapidly evolving world of IP video confusing. That’s why I created this IP video streaming infographic.

Posted in Alcatel-Lucent Technology News, Broadband, Cloud, Customer Experience, Next-Generation Communications, Video

Answering the Question of How to Manage NFV Effectively with an vEPC

Edited By Peter Bernstein on October 14, 2014

By: Mae Kowalke, TMCnet Contributor

The advantages to mobile operators of network functions virtualization (NFV) and moving to a virtualized evolved packet core (vEPC) have become clear, and mobile networks operators are pretty much sold on the technology in theory.

As the technology side has been figured out and operators begin to plan commercial deployments of NFV and vEPC, however, discussion is starting to move toward operational requirements and challenges. Mobile network operators need to figure out how best to manage these new virtual network functions (VNFs) and the NFV infrastructure, and also how to modify the existing network operations model when these VNFs are deployed.

Posted in Alcatel-Lucent Technology News, Broadband, Cloud, Data Center, NFV, Next-Generation Communications

NFV INSIGHTS: Is OpenStack ready for NFV?

Edited By Peter Bernstein on October 13, 2014

By Andreas Lemke, Ph.D. - Alcatel-Lucent

Open source has had a massive impact on information technology and the web: The Linux operating system, the LAMP stack, browsers, the Android smartphone OS. Individual enthusiasts, universities, and businesses spend enormous resources to build technologies, and then give them away for free. Are they out of their mind? The success of open source shows they are not.

OpenStack, the open source cloud management software, has come into the focus of service providers as a rapidly advancing, cost-effective technology foundation for NFV. With OpenStack, service providers are expecting to escape the tangles of individual vendors and build an open horizontal platform for their future networks.

Posted in Alcatel-Lucent Technology News, Cloud, NFV, Next-Generation Communications

Benefits of Standardization in the Internet of Things

Edited By Peter Bernstein on October 1, 2014

By: Tim Carey, Industry Standards Manager of Alcatel-Lucent’s Customer Experience Division

The world of M2M is changing as solutions move from single purpose devices that transmit data to and receive commands from an application in the network to an Internet of Things where solutions permit devices to be multi-purpose and applications to be collaborative.

The Internet of Things can benefit from global standardization efforts that:

Enable deployment of standards compliant devices and applications with no or minimal customization thereby expanding the applicable device ecosystem and reducing deployment time
Provide an ecosystem that readily allow applications to share information and experiences
Provide an environment where communication occurs securely and the privacy and confidentiality of the user is maintained

Posted in Alcatel-Lucent Technology News, Cloud, Internet of Things, M2M, Next-Generation Communications, Web 2.0

Network Functions Virtualization: Learnings from an NFV proof-of-concept

Edited By Peter Bernstein on July 21, 2014

By: Asaf Peled, Cloud Solution Architect, Alcatel-Lucent's CloudBand activity

We live in exciting times – again. I had been wondering if there was still room for fundamental innovation, for technological disruption – the worn out word. We had the Internet bubble that burst 2001/2002. We had the advent of the smartphone in the recent years. Great innovation, but somehow they reached a plateau. Faster processors, larger screens? It doesn’t seem to make a real difference. Apple’s engine showed the first signs of sputtering.

And yet, there is something brewing behind the scenes that makes the engineer’s heart beat faster: NFV and SDN, a bold new vision about the future of networks (read these blog posts about understanding Network Functions Virtualization and Software Defined Networks). Network functions are to be reduced to pure software - doing away with all the special purpose chips, circuit boards, and cabinets into which we have poured our brains to deliver the ultimate in features, performance, and reliability.

Posted in Alcatel-Lucent Technology News, Broadband, Business Talk, Cloud, NFV, Next-Generation Communications, SDN

NFV INSIGHTS: The making of NFV security - "from vision to reality"

Edited By Peter Bernstein on June 16, 2014

By: David Amzallag - Alcatel-Lucent Vice President, Virtual Telecommunications and CloudBand CTO

While network functions virtualization (NFV) introduces new challenges to security, it also presents unique opportunities for addressing security problems due to the unprecedented scale, flexibility, and central control it affords. Compute, storage, and network resources can be optimally allocated and stitched together as required by the security policy. Our approach to address NFV security is based on a recursive, divide-and-conquer methodology, which involves securing the Alcatel-Lucent CloudBand™ NFV Platform, cloud nodes, and the network that interconnects them. CloudBand uses policy-based placement capabilities enabled by the CloudBand Management System to install virtualized functions in their appropriate security zones, and re-uses the security services provided by NFV applications.

I thought it would be a good idea to describe the journey to this approach together with its "making of" episodes.

Posted in Alcatel-Lucent Technology News, Business Talk, Cloud, NFV, Next-Generation Communications

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