By Greg Nehib, Senior Marketing Manager, Cisco

Part 2 – Virtualized Services in an EPN World?

In part one of this series Gina covered the basic definition of an Evolved Programmable Network or EPN and its linkage to the Cisco Evolved Services Platform (ESP).   Figure 1 offers a quick visual recap.

Figure 1:  Cisco’s Open Network Strategy

And here’s a link to part one of this blog series if you need to play catch up.

In this segment we Read More »

Tags: Cisco EPN, Cisco Evolved Programmable Network, control, epn, esp, evolved services platform, IP and Optical Convergence, IPv6, NFV, ONE, programmability, SDN, Service Provider, SP open network environment, virtualization

Mobile is a fast-changing industry! Every year there are new devices, new technologies, and trends.

China is one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world with:

• 1.2 billion mobile connections and growing.
• The number of 3G mobile telephone users reached 386 million in November 2013, a growth of 154 million over the same period of last year.
• Smart phones in China reached 348 million units from January to October 2013
• December 2013, China had 500 million mobile Internet users, a growth of 80.09 million compared with that at the end of 2012

The number one mobile operator in China is China Mobile with an estimated 781M subscribers as of Q1 2014. To handle such a large customer base China Mobile has become an industry leader with their vision of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) in the quest to control operational costs and create the network elasticity new services creation.

Just as Cisco did in the China Mobile Booth at MWC 2014, Cisco is joining China Mobile at Mobile Asia Expo (MAE) in their “Network Function Virtualization Demonstration” located in the China Mobile

Pictured above: MWC China Mobile & Cisco Virtualization Demo Team

MAE Booth Read More »

Tags: Cisco Quantum™ Virtualized Packet Core, esp, GGSN, Jim O’Leary, LTE, ONE, quantum, Quantum vPC, Service Provider, StarOS, virtualization, vPC

Written By Gina Nienaber, Marketing Manager, SP Product and Solutions Marketing

This is the first blog out of a series of three covering  “What is the Evolved Programmable Network (EPN) Era and Why Evolved Programmable Network (EPN) Now?”

Those of us who have been around in the industry for a few decades will remember the first arrival of the “big bad wolf” that tried to blow down the service provider’s house. This wolf presented itself in the form of the commoditization of IP services and high traffic growth rates that limited service provider profitability options forcing them to move away from dedicated TDM-based networks that supported a single video, voice, data, or mobile service. Service Providers partnered with Cisco (and others) to build more scalable and lower costs converged IP Next Generation Networks (IP NGNs) and entered the IP NGN era. In doing so, a new wave of innovation and service revenues followed.

Until of course, “the big bad wolf” arrived on the scene again, also known as “exponential traffic growth, especially in mobile video, and this time he brought his friend along for the ride – the Internet of Everything (IoE).  Cisco VNI predicts IP Traffic alone will grow 300 percent to 1.4 zettabytes annually by 2017. Most of you are already experiencing the pains of exponential traffic growth and some of you believe, as we do, the next wave of dramatic Internet growth will come through the confluence of people, process, data, and things — or the IoE! And IoE predictions are off the charts as well.  Cisco estimates that 99.4 percent of physical objects in the world are still unconnected. With only about 10 billion of the 1.5 trillion things currently connected globally, there is vast potential to connect the unconnected via the IoE.

When you combine exponential traffic growth with IoE impact on the horizon what do service providers get?  You guessed it – cost and network complexity are rising at a faster rate than revenue. In order to deal with these challenges, (I would rather call them opportunities), network transformation is not optional, but essential for the next wave of growth and propriety.

This might also be a good time to mention the major innovations in cloud and virtualization technologies such as SDN and NFV are allowing for new agile competitors to enter into the market and are challenging traditional providers for their revenue streams by changing the service delivery game and giving the customer control over their service instantiation with consumption based business models.  If you would like to review a quick snapshot of the challenges providers are facing today see the Cisco EPN At-A-Glance.

Are you convinced we need to move from the IP NGN Era to the EPN Era Yet?  If not keep reading – you will be.

Why Evolved Programmable Network? Read More »

Tags: Cisco EPN, Cisco Evolved Programmable Network, control, epn, esp, evolved services platform, IP and Optical Convergence, IPv6, NFV, ONE, programmability, SDN, Service Provider, SP open network environment, virtualization

By Leonard Luna, Senior Marketing Manager, Cisco Service Provider Solutions

Timing is everything.  Faced with the ever-increasing challenges and opportunities of the Internet of Everything (IoE), the timing of Cisco’s Spring Packet Optical Networking Conference, May 13-15 at the Dolce Hayes Mansion in San Jose, couldn’t be better.

Fondly referred to as the PONC (‘pon-see’), Cisco coordinates this event with its customers and prospects twice a year: a Spring event in North America, and a Fall event in Monza Italy.  Besides being an immensely influential source of customer input and feedback for Cisco, the conference’s is designed to foster collaboration among attendees – often highlighted by compelling customer presentation and/or panels discussions by luminaries from the world’s leading ISP, OTT and ILEC organizations.  This year will be no different, and we look forward to you helping us Light up our Spring event.

Bill Gartner, Vice President and General Manager, Cisco High End Routing and Optical Business Unit, provides a PONC overview and invites you to participate.

We Read More »

Tags: ONE, one network environment, Optical, packet optical network conference, PONC, routing, Service Provider

In this week’s episode, Nathan Sowatskey and Jacoby Thwaites discuss transactions, applications, and the network: how to reduce complexity and increase compliance by changing the transaction process.

“Be careful of the unicorn.”

**The next Engineers Unplugged shoot is at EMC World, Las Vegas, May 2014! Contact me now to become internet famous.**

Read More »

Tags: applications, ONE, transactions