February, 2009

Nokia’s migration of smartphone OSs to netbooks

Nokia is planning to release a netbook line based on Symbian, according to reports. The move is certainly a reaction to the Google plans to introduce netbooks based on Android.

The barriers to the use of a smartphone OS as the basis for a computer are less with netbooks because more of the usage is likely to be online, based on hosted applications or simple offline operation, than on general PC applications.

In theory, either Symbian or Android could be used on any hardware platform based on any reasonably flexible chipset. The Nokia move, coming after Google, could be a signal of a major shift in the computing space, something that could make life for Microsoft very difficult even given Windows 7, and something that will put considerable stress on Apple’s plans, particularly ifS teve Jobs does not return to the company later in the year.

Microsoft, whose Mobile version of Windows 7 is also due out next year, is rumored to be harboring netbook aspirations for the new OS as well, and some at Microsoft believe that a strong position in the netbook space, likely to create greater application developer support, would help them with smartphones.

Juniper focuses on preparing for economic upturn

Juniper’s analyst event was a tour de force by any standard, and especially good for a company that has had problems communicating its value proposition in this kind of forum. Juniper related its position with confidence, made effective stories of its new programs and projects, showed empathy with the financial crisis but not paralysis by it, and in all, did everything it needed to do.

Juniper’s most significant utterances on the main day with financial analysts present, were focused around a new Network Instruction Set Processor (NISP) and the Stratus Fabric, Juniper’s new architecture for the data center. Juniper presented the new-gen NISP as a quantum leap in performance, a shift that will characterize the new generation of Juniper routing/switching products. Stratus is a concept and not yet a product, so there was no detail, but it seems clear that it is a new interconnect fabric designed to interface with but move beyond such familiar datacenter architectures as FiberChannel and Infiniband.

Juniper clearly realizes that the data center, cloud computing, virtualization, and other trends are all bring increased focus on how networks and computer resources couple among themselves. The timing of Juniper’s revelation, which promises quantum leaps in performance and latency, suggest that Juniper is deliberately moving to de-position Cisco’s incumbency and its aggressive goals in this space. It’s not clear whether the new NISP is part of Stratus, though it seems logical it would be.

Juniper also announced expansions to two product families, SRX and EX, taking both lines to a lower-end model group. In all, Juniper has made it clear that it is not surrendering to market conditions and will continue to move into new areas to prepare for the upturn.

Juniper orchestration initiative to address services platform

Juniper, at its industry analyst event scheduled before its primary analyst meeting, hinted of a major initiative later this year in what the company calls “orchestration.” The new activity, coming out of its emerging network management team, appears to be creating a model for NGN services that is not radically different from the NGNSA model we propose in our TMT Advisor Planners’ Briefing.

Just what Juniper will release was not discussed, but the timing was early second-half of 2009. The lack of an effective architecture for NGN services is in our view the major issue in the industry, and Juniper’s lack of progress toward one is one of our most significant concerns about the company’s strategy.

If Juniper were to move aggressively here we believe that it could steal the march on Alcatel-Lucent and Cisco, or at least force them to step up their respective plans. The way the idea was explained makes it sound far more like a fundamental architecture than like “network management”, though, and we hope Juniper won’t bury the idea in the wrong organization.

The wisdom of mobile social networking strategies?

One of the interesting outcomes of the Mobile World Congress this year was the interest shown by mobile operators in social networking. Operators appear to be continuing their strategy of driving non-voice service dependence even at the expense of commoditizing bandwidth for mobile, a kind of “rob-the-future” risk balancing act.

Social networks draw on the same demography as heavy mobile users—youth. Social networks are also “viral” in that their success is self-perpetuating, socialized by the very community that makes up the audience. However, the push for non-voice customers through accepting over-the-top data drivers, smartphones or open handsets all create the problem of validating a pure transport/connection model for the operator, which admits to disintermediation.

This is interesting because the “sink-to-the-bottom” model is the one that seems most comfortable to operators, but it’s also the one most problematic for equipment vendors. Commodity services admit to no equipment differentiation either. We wonder if the rapidly increasing operator frustration in equipment vendor support for more service-related monetization strategies (now finally driving vendors to make at least strategic commitments to services) may be overtaking events.

Could operators be giving up on “intermediation” and services? If so, that will dramatically reshape the industry. A surrender to the OTT players would also rob the network operators of mobile advertising, which could well replace most forms of local advertising over time. But mobile operators are even advocating better rapport with developers and OTT players.

Nielson mobile survey: Caveats on the results

A mobile Internet survey conducted by Nielson for Tellabs shows that consumers consider it a necessity, and that almost three of four users expect to use the Internet from a mobile device daily. Obviously there are a lot of problems with this survey: 1) People routinely lie in them, and 2) Three out of four people don’t use mobile Internet, ever. Still, we believe that there is some sense in the dross here.

The Internet is an information tool that people rely on regularly, and that means they won’t give it up easily. We know seniors on fixed incomes of less than $15k per year who still have broadband service and profess to need it. There is little risk that there would be a major behavioral change and that broadband would be devalued in this downturn, but similarly we know younger and wealthier people who don’t use it at all.

In the mobile space, there is no question that the use of a smartphone for navigation, information, and just fact-finding, will become the norm. You don’t need surveys to figure that out. But just as there is resistance to longer-standing wireline Internet practices, there will be to mobile, and it’s just starting out. It would serve the industry better not to over-promote.

T-Mobile to shake up prices; pressure mobile market

T-Mobile may be about to launch the Great Mobile Price War, with dramatic consequences for the whole market. The company is expected to announce a $50 per month unlimited usage plan, undercutting competitors by half and potentially further pressuring the monetization model for mobile services.

The issue here is a familiar one: Feature differentiation in voice and mobile services has not been successful in luring customers, and so price is the only option. Generally those with smaller market shares and thus more to gain are early movers in price cuts, and T-Mobile fits that mold.

If the company also links in premiums related to its FMC offering, the result could be to force operators to reduce costs and advance their FMC plans. That, we believe, might actually hurt 4G, IMS and traditional approaches simply because it constrains ROI and focuses on shorter-term objectives.

Internet security: No easy fix

The issue of Internet security, and in fact of computer security overall, has become more difficult through the years, enough to prompt some to ask whether we need a “new Internet” that is less vulnerable.

Stanford’s Clean Slate approach and other academic programs are hoping to answer the question, but the problem is that these approaches are academic; the Internet is here to stay in substantially its current form because it would be too costly to fix it.

That doesn’t mean that security issues can’t be fixed. The biggest problems come from the presumption of anonymity; addressing and identification data on the Internet isn’t authoritative, and so you can’t “trace the call” as reliably as with the PSTN. Much of that could be fixed by requiring ISPs to provide authentic addresses for all packets, but that movement hasn’t made headway in the Internet world.

Thus, we believe this is (unfortunately) much ado about nothing, though there may be some incremental steps suggested by the work.

ExperiaSphere services architecture prototype released

CIMI Corporation has announced the completion of the Alpha-One prototype of ExperiaSphere and open-source Java toolkit for creating NGN Services Architectures, syndicating service components, and exposing services for partnership to the web community.

CIMI also announced its ExperiaSphere vendor partner, Extreme Networks. ExperiaSphere will support the EPICenter XML developer interface, and through that will provide the ability to integrate EPICenter-managed devices into the ExperiaSphere services framework.

Cisco positions for cloud computing move

Cisco is reportedly eyeing VMware for possible acquisition, a move that would surely put Cisco squarely into the IT competition and mark perhaps the most dramatic transformation of business model attempted by any major U.S. tech vendor.

There are other things that Cisco could be focusing on, but the recurring rumor we’ve heard is that Cisco plans a major cloud computing initiative, recognizing correctly that enterprise transition to a cloud computing model may be the most significant incremental spending opportunity in 2010 and 2011 (it isn’t likely to hit this year, so Cisco has some time).

Cloud computing is a strategic mixture of IT and networking, but it is also a space where having the total solution seems valuable, and Cisco fears that IBM, HP, or Microsoft might at best support a strategy that was open in terms of networking, and at worst ally with a competitor. IBM and Juniper have done some joint cloud announcements already.

Service layer platform vendors: Not game-changing yet

Nortel may be preparing its own application platform, something that would compete with HP ProCurve, Cisco’s new blade server, and Juniper’s JCS1200. All of these products reflect the reality that the “network” is dividing formally into a service layer and a transport layer, and that value-add in the service layer is critical to operators monetizing network investment.

The challenge for Nortel here will be the same as for other players: It’s not enough to have service-layer platforms; you also need an NGN Services Architecture, a framework for application/feature creation that empowers the platforms you’ve deployed.

Truth be told, none of the applications presented on these platforms so far has been compelling or game-changing, and operators want the game to change. Our view remains the same: The standards bodies tasked with work in the service layer are moving too slowly—as telco standards bodies tend to do. The vendors have been happy to blow kisses at standards instead of taking risks to get in front of the issues, and the operators have little chance to progress toward their goals without vendor support. This accounts for the uniformly low scores equipment vendors earn from operators in their support of operator monetization goals.