“œWhat comes after Petabyte?” was my question to Arielle Sumits, our lead researcher on the IP Traffic Study a few years ago, when we started the effort a few years ago. Even with a wide variety of very regional and granular market forecasts on topics such as”VoIP subscription growth in Western Europe” and”IPTV subscriber forecasts for AsiaPacific,” we didn’t have visibility on what these all mean to the network as a whole. And having a global focus with a global customer base, we needed a global view. Since the market didn’t offer one, we set off to create one (and from Arielle’s standpoint, she likely did it to cease the never ending questioning from me along the lines of”But what does this all mean?” Depending on my level of caffeine consumption, my questioning can often be a far too fast and quite annoying- as my wife, Annie, can firmly attest). Read More »

Here are a few items that came across my reading queue this past week that I found of interest and thought that you may too-Enjoy and thanks for reading,DougSecond Life is pretty intriguing and here’s a New York Times blog post about amping up the reality part of virtual reality even further. At Cisco, our customers are often awe-struck when we conduct a presentation over or give a demonstration of Cisco TelePresence -with its high definition screens and spatial sound, the experience becomes so real that you have to resist the urge to shake hands with the participants on the other side of the table (who actually are thousands of miles away). As innovations such what is presented in the video on this post build upon virtual reality and”transposed reality” such as Cisco TelePresence, the holodeck and remote Holographic”presence” that was envisioned by NTT years ago and even demonstrated by Cisco the past fall, may very well enter the mainstream far sooner that many think. Read More »

I am thrilled and excited about today’s announcement that AT&T will offer the industry’s first (1) intercompany; (2) managed Cisco TelePresence service. The Human Network is realized when more people able to experience it and when the experiences we have at home, at work and on the move feel less like technology and more like life-, partners like AT&T certainly share this vision.Intercompany: SizeMatters.One of the key parts of this announcement is the”Intercompany” capability. An intercompany Cisco TelePresence network service, which enables customers to maintain close contact with their extended supply chain or community of interest, has the potential to transform business. Furthermore, as more people use a network service -Telephony, Internet, Web 2.0 social networking, or Intercompany TelePresence, the more valuable the service becomes. Greater value attracts more users, creating a positive feedback loop and continued usage growth -that’s the”Network Effect“. It is no wonder the NewAT&T shares this vision with Cisco;according to Wikipedia, network effect was presented in the 1908 annual report by then AT&T President Theodore Vail — 100 years ago!…. and now IP DNA meets network DNA, fitting anniversary event -. Read More »

“œInternet’s pervasive political punch” read the front page headline of San Jose Mercury news, that one of our lead SP business analysts, Shruti Jain, showed me on a recent trip to Silicon Valley. While we have been talking of internet revolution for over a decade, the extent to which current presidential campaign in the U.S. is using Web 2.0, underlines importance of the network across all aspects of our daily lives, and across all aspects of the political spectrum for that matter In this case, the network transforms the campaigns from being largely national based on predominately paid placement and news coverage to having a trans-national reach using”grass-roots” methods being driven by individual voters. This approach can both shed light on the emotions associated with the democratic process while helping to bridge the gap between the traditional voters and the younger generation who are going to be defining the international political scenario of the future. Read More »

With all the “open” talk at at CTIA recently, Ali Baba might have thought Las Vegas was home of the forty thieves (not to mention casino odds). The FCC was concluding the 700 MHz auction, which included rules for the C Block that require “a platform that is more open to devices and applications.” Google had agitated for such a requirement, but Verizon Wireless won the auction, bidding $4.7 billion (for the C block, bidding a total of $9.4 billion in the auction overall).How will Verizon Wireless comply with the openness rules? They revealed some plans in New York city, on March 19, when they unveiled their Open Development initiative. I arrived at the event with some skepticism. I’ve written before about how the Internet business model challenges the culture of the mobile industry (see Where Worlds Collide). But after an enthusiastic welcome by Tony Lewis, the vice president of Open Development, the Verizon chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg gave a keynote that addressed these issues directly. He recognized the intersecting megatrends of mobility and the Internet as prompting a new wave of applications, which no single company can create by itself. Instead, Verizon embraces an ecosystem approach, which motivates this new Open Development activity. Read More »