service delivery platforms

Cisco’s blade server market entry: Can it work?

Cisco is expected to launch its blade server project “California” today, and there is a lot of disagreement over just what’s coming. Some predict Cisco will enter the data center server market with a hardware product linked to its network virtualization tools. Others think the product will be more Unified-Communications-flavored.

The view that Cisco is getting into the blade server market has been refuted by some Cisco management comments (which doesn’t mean it’s not true, of course), and we believe it would be a major strategic error for Cisco to jump into the data center server market. Cisco will collide with major players like IBM and HP, and the company doesn’t call on IT buyers today.

We’re more inclined to see Cisco going after a different kind of server, something much more like a service delivery platform (SDP). SDP products have existed for a decade, but they’ve been hamstrung by a rather myopic voice focus. Cisco has a chance to create a vision of an SDP that’s focused on voice only as an element of unified communications and collaboration, but that earns its stripes in a value sense by what it can do for non-voice services.

We also believe that Cisco is looking at initiatives like Juniper’s JCS1200 and HP’s ProCurve, the former of which is a product that essentially offloads router control planes to external servers, and the latter is a means of binding applications more tightly to networks (one yet to be truly proven, we’d have to say).

The net of this is that there is clearly a mission for servers to host features and even network control behavior, and this space is pretty vacant at the moment. It’s not going to stay that way, whatever Cisco does with California.

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.

Juniper’s core virtualization strategy is critical for telecom

Juniper announced a new “core virtualization” strategy with the TX Matrix Plus, and the concept is quite interesting. The new capability links the Juniper JCS1200 for hosted-control-plane and the TX Matrix Plus as a large aggregator/on-ramp to create an IP infrastructure that can be partitioned to support multiple independent networks.

This capability is critical for a number of reasons.

• First, it deals effectively with the problem of network operators in separating premium service traffic from the Internet, something that is a security and performance issue everywhere and a regulatory issue in some areas.
• Second, it allows metro evolution to an IP core (something Juniper and Cisco both want, in order to marginalize PBT) by providing a means of keeping traffic there compartmentalized to avoid variations in QoS on key applications, and keeping IP involved in the major area of investment for the next decade.
• Finally, it opens the possibility of a “network-as-a-service” approach by operators, a means of perhaps pulling players like Google or CDNs in as customers.

But for us the big thing is the application of the JCS1200. Juniper is unique in its ability to support hosted control plane behavior, and this sort of thing could be a major element in a service-layer strategy. Juniper now needs to get such a strategy while it still has the lead here.

Verizon “Hub” VoIP to be FMC flagship

Verizon will be launching a VoIP product, “the Hub”, that will also be the flagship of its FMC and likely femtocell position. The new product is designed to deal with the end-of-life issues facing TDM voice and to provide a lower-cost way of offering voice services without risking loss of customers to other providers or to free Internet systems.

Verizon will be using integration with Verizon Wireless services and management of all voice calling from a single device as the kickers. All of this proves that telecom providers are looking at the service layer for their solutions; nobody believes Verizon will build out IP infrastructure for this. It will simply ride on capacity that’s already there.

Nortel bankruptcy: A lesson for everyone

Nortel has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a move that comes as no surprise given that the only likely candidate to buy its business components (Huawei) ran afoul of government policy concerns. Nortel has, over the last decade, fallen from one of the giants to its current state of likely irrelevance.

While the proximate cause was the deferral in spending by carriers worldwide, which Nortel’s reserves simply could not handle, the true cause was a persistent refusal to deal with market conditions as they were. Nortel stayed with its core competences despite the fact that those areas were becoming core irrelevancies.

There is a lesson here for every other player in the telecom space: If you cannot promote service features and monetization you must inevitably be a player in a commodity market. Nortel will likely try to sell off additional business elements, and may even refocus on the enterprise, but unless it can become more strategic, it is unlikely to regain stability, much less stature. We are offering an audio brief on this as part of our new information product series; see New free information product from CIMI Corp.