It's been all over the news:.AT&T cutting its headcount by 12000.
But what does this have to do with hyperconnectivity?
Look below the covers. While its wired subscriber base is shrinking, AT&T is reaping the benefits of an 11.5% growth in worldwide smart phone sales (Gartner), in AT&T's case riding the iPhone wave.
Many of these smart phones are being used across the hyperconnected enterprise. And as we move to 4G wireless services and next gen 802.11n wireless LANs, it gets more interesting still. Not only will wireless increasingly become the preferred technology of all access (resulting in erosion of wired desktops), but wireless access capacity demands will drive higher capacity optical networks in the core.
Even in these economic times, networking technology will continue going down the path towards the 'unwired enterprise' enabled by wireless access and optical cores.
BTW, 'unwired enterprise', a term first coined by Nortel, has now been picked up by Sybase, which characterizes it as an environment in which information flows freely from the data center to the point of action, and back, anytime, anywhere. Nortel's vision goes beyond information to the people who are using it and to the communications enabled business processes.
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