For those of you familiar with the movie “This is Spinal Tap” the volume on SDN has been turned up to 11 for some time. However, too much of the sound is around the technology and not on the benefits to network operators. In fact, Cisco views SDN technology and our Open Network Environment (ONE) as an opportunity for service providers to monetize and optimize their existing assets. In other words – leverage existing investments as much as possible and build SDN and programmatic Cisco ONE capabilities on top of them. Read More »

Tags: Cisco, NFV, ONE, onePK, quantum, Sanjeev Mervana, SDN, Service Provider

Energetic debates of what SDN is and the expanding scope of what it can do for our customers continue to race along in a chaotic frenzy. In addition, the overall SDN market is somewhat fragmented in terms of both vendor positioning and marketing.  Collectively, the conversation really comes down to improving business agility and the efficiencies gained in bringing new services to market. Essentially, the goal is to enable operators to make their networks and services go much faster.

While software defined networking (SDN) technologies continue to drive significant entropy in our industry, Network Function Virtualization (NFV) recently rose up and became a key focus of many discussions at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month. Read More »

Tags: Automation Standards barcelona, Cisco ONE, cisco quantum, data in motion, internet, Internet of Everything, IoE, mobile, mobile world congress, mobility, mwc, NFV, orchestration, padmasree warrior, quantum, Sanjeev Mervana, SDN, Service Provider, visual networking index, vni

The communications industry has come a long way from fixed, inflexible telephone service optimized for voice to dynamic IP-based connections offering converged voice, data, and video capabilities. Now, both residential and business users are increasingly more mobile and distributed, as are the cloud-based services, applications, and content they want to utilize. Service providers must therefore support a more diverse customer base with more distributed content and applications across multiple geographies, yet still maintain a secure, reliable, and consistent quality of experience regardless of device and physical location.

In the face of greater traffic demands and the risk of becoming lower-margin “commoditized pipes,” network operators must react to three key challenges: Read More »

Tags: Cisco ONE, David Ward, ietf, ONF, Sanjeev Mervana, SDN, standards

Cisco in the Hot Seat Addressing Alcatel-Lucent’s  Core Network Offering

Service provider core networking has been a very difficult market segment for technology providers to penetrate based on its importance to global service providers and because it requires costly, ongoing innovation and investment to meet ever-changing customer requirements. While many vendors have attempted to enter this market – Avici and Caspian Networks come to mind – most have failed. In fact, Alcatel introduced a product in this space in the 2000s with the 7770. It was unsuccessful and ultimately discontinued.

While Cisco continues to be No. 1 in the core, we are not sitting on our hands by any means.  In fact, our innovation engine is in high gear, and we are confident that we’ve got the right strategy to lead our customers into the next decade and beyond. Our architectural approach was designed to enable the best delivery of video and mobility by leveraging the network intersection points of the cloud, network, and client.

Recently, Read More »

Tags: ACG Research, Alcatel, Cisco, core, CRS, CRS3, IOS XR, Ray Mota, rethinkthecore, Sanjeev Mervana, Service Provider