Issues and News

Innovation and Legislation

Tue, 02 May 2006 17:29:35 -0500

It often seems as if legislation is written to address technical issues that existed years prior. As noted in a soon-to-be-published e-newsletter for Network World, this has been a chronic problem for many years. With issues from intellectual property rights to the deployment of new telecommunications system capabilities, implementors run the risk of being out of compliance with regulations if they use systems that provide "best practices" for their business.

Do Managed Services Make Sense?

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 18:42:55 -0500

Twenty years ago, the essentially the only "services" that were offered by the telcos were transport services. At least in the US, the ability of the telcos to offer services beyond basic transport were severely limited in the immediate post-divestiture era.

However, over the course of the past twenty years, at least two major shifts have occurred. The service providers are now allowed to offer enhanced "managed services," and the extent to which these services offer reasonable value to customers has increased exponentially.

However, by most metrics, these enhanced services have failed to be adopted to any significant extent.

Open Source Based WAN Equipment

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 09:29:25 -0500

The recent movement to deploy open source based products has now reached out to the WAN equipment market. In particular, there are now open source based PBXs and routers. Is this a cute fad that will soon die or will it take off and be as successful as LINUX? Speaking of LINUX, if there is a problem with LINUX researchers around the globe rush to fix it. That will not be the case with open source PBXs and routers.

Lucent - Alcatel Merger: Impact on Corporate Networks?

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 13:23:21 -0500

In the laterst MegaMerger-of-the-Month, Lucent and Alcatel have announced an intent to merge. While the question of whether this is a good move for the two companies is not a primary concern for corporate users, the impact of this merger indeed does have a potentially profound impact.

NW Wide Area Networking and Convergence e-newsletter

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 10:10:06 -0500

Jim Metzler, Larry Hettick, and I asked for comments on this topic in the electronic newsletters published via Network World.

In case you did not receive the newsletters, click here to view the WAN newsletter archives and here to view the Convergence newsletter archives.

AT&T & BellSouth - Impact on the Enterprise/Corporate Network?

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 10:22:55 -0500

My ultimate concern about the proposed merger, essentially rebuilding a substantial portion of the 'Bell System," is the impact on the enterprise/corporate network. Back in the early 1980s, when data nets were first being built, they were - for the most part - what we would now call "managed services." In the intervening twenty-plus years, however, we moved to an era in which companies began to "BYOB," meaning "Be Your Own Bell." Some of this BYOB attitude was to gain additional features and function, and some of the attitude was necessitated for survival.

AT&T and BellSouth Merger - Analysts Speak Out

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 17:36:14 -0500

The proposed merger/acquisition of BellSouth by AT&T essentially rebuilds the old Bell system. My fellow analysts have a lot to say about the proposed merger, and this is the place to find out what everybody thinks.