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Industry Commentary

By Frank Dzubeck

Dzubeck is president of Communications Network Architects, an industry analysis firm in Washington, D.C. E-mail him.

Cloud computing: End of the corporate WAN?
10/01/08
When vendors and marketers get their hands on an IT concept, it doesn't take long for that concept to morph into a totally new business opportunity and possibly a new market segment. Such is the story of cloud computing.
Five cloud computing questions
08/05/08
It seems that every decade or so I get the opportunity to write an article on IT déjà vu. This time around, the topic is cloud computing, which is the latest IT buzz word.
Desktop virtualization pioneer runs into early bugs
06/17/08
For the past six months, our offices have been part of the brave new world of virtualization. Not of servers, storage or networks, but of the next-generation desktop.
Are you ready for 'green SOA'?
04/16/08
All of a sudden “green” is the "in" color. In 2007 the IT industry embraced the green data center concept. What followed was an avalanche of PR from vendor after vendor claiming that they were greener than their competitors.
Return of the "L" word
02/28/08
What is the "L" word? It's latency. For the first time in years, CIOs are becoming concerned that networking and inter-process latency is affecting IT performance.
Cisco, Microsoft, IBM on collision course
01/08/08
The communications industry, as we once knew it, no longer exists.
Turning the data center green
11/06/07
With all the fanfare for Al Gore, one would think that global environmental concerns rank No. 1 on the list of "corporate social responsibility." Unfortunately, economics and internal operations have often overridden environmental concerns in the past. But now, green cannot be ignored. An obvious place to start is the IT data center. 
Network Evolution – Services-Centric Networking
09/04/07
Every once in a while a subtle evolutionary change occurs that dramatically affects the future of networking. As IT is making a dramatic transition to an SOA, the networking industry has been hesitant to embrace and commit to the transition.
Desperately awaiting the wireless revolution!
07/17/07
The buzz for the past month in the wireless mobile marketplace was focused on the iPhone from Apple. It was only after its first day of product release that the first glaring weakness became evident – the AT&T EDGE network. Even though AT&T beefed up capacity and bandwidth, its network still limped in at hundreds of kilobits/second emasculating a device capable of handling tens of megabits/second connection speed.
The fragility of road-warrior security
05/17/07
It is often said that the weakest link in the IT security chain is the human being. In our technological age it is inconceivable to travel without network tethers such as a laptop PC, mobile telephone or e-mail PDA. The road warrior is connected 24/7 to his home, corporate office/clients/partners and the Internet. What has occurred in the 21st century is that all of this technology is taken for granted, and security is never a primary issue or concern.
SOA still evolving, but questions remain
03/23/07
As the rapid adoption of service-oriented architecture continues within the corporate environment, companies are realizing that implementation is not instantaneous but evolutionary.
Service provider: What’s in a name?
01/23/07
Times have changed in the networking industry, as has nomenclature. In the beginning, carriers were the only service providers. Then came deregulation and divestiture, and the industry was awash with acronyms — PPTs, RBOCs, ILECs, CLECs and BLECs. Next came the Internet Age, and we created a host of new Internet and application service providers (ASP). Today, we still have ISPs, but they provide more than “vanilla” Internet access, and ASPs, but they now are software-as-a-service providers. What has changed is that a whole class of next-generation Internet vendors — MySpace, YouTube, Google and others — are categorizing themselves as content service providers (CSP), and a vigorous class of next-generation networking resellers called managed service providers (MSP) has appeared on the scene.
Dzubeck on the year ahead: What’s hot for 2007
01/03/07
Looking even a year ahead into the network future can be a daunting task. For example, three years ago at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Bill Gates, then Microsoft’s chairman, boldly predicted the problem of spam on the Internet would be solved by 2006. Recent studies, however, indicate worldwide spam traffic doubled in 2006 and now accounts for nine of 10 e-mail messages sent on the Internet.
Service providers changing stripes in 2007
01/02/07
The service provider business segment is in the process of morphing into multiple parallel lines of business. YouTube.com, Google.com and MySpace.com consider themselves next generation or alternate service providers. These companies are just the tip of the iceberg for the number of new entries in this market in 2007. Low entry cost and high growth driven by ad-model revenue is fueling this next phase of network growth and investment.
SOA evolves with information services
10/27/06
The service-oriented-architecture hype of the past year seems to have made believers of the most vocal skeptics. SOA has had an almost mystical aura as the savior of IT and most stagnant business operations.
Are communications apps next middleware?
08/28/06
Lucent, Alcatel and Nortel, beware: You, too, may have a nightmare of new IT competitors - IBM, Oracle, BEA and others - at your doorstep.
Unbundling IOS affects all areas of IT
07/17/06
Cisco has used IOS as proprietary leverage to lock in its installed base and lock out the competition. The concept was brilliant as long as IOS was a bundled part of the hardware. Leaving the IOS kernel as part of the hardware will keep out open source alternatives such as Linux. What will be the fate of the rest of IOS, however?
IT and networking: Convergence or divergence
05/29/06
Having seen many vendor presentations announcing new products and strategies recently, I've noticed a common thread. The IT world has embraced the concept of total multivendorism based upon agreed-to industry standards.
Bandwidth management is here to stay
04/03/06
Bandwidth management is here to stay as long as delivering a high quality of corporate customer satisfaction is important to the bottom line. Like it or not, bandwidth management appliances and software will always exist.
How smart should a network be?
01/30/06
This is not just an arcane philosophical issue; it is fundamental to how to design, implement, operate and manage a corporate SOA. Based on industry standards, an SOA is a multilayer framework that allows all computing concepts to exist in a single archi
The future revealed: Industry expert predicts what's hot, what's not
01/09/06
I look back at the past year and realize that everything changed and nothing changed in 2005.
Dawn of the consumer communications era
11/21/05
After next-generation technology succeeds in the consumer market, it will be only a short time before it morphs and migrates into the corporate and service provider and carrier segments. Get ready for 21st-century communications - the age of the consumer.
Is there a 'virtual PBX' in your future?
09/26/05
With IM becoming an important means of communication in the corporate environment, can IM-enabled VoIP be just over the horizon? If so, what will become of the corporate PBX?
No room for complacency in net management
08/01/05
Managing a data network in 2005 is much simpler than in 1995 or even 1985. The tools are more intelligent, and the information available is more accurate and complete. But network managers have let this sophistication cloud over a fundamental trait of corporate networking in 2005 - application fluidity.
Net intelligence a balancing act
06/13/05
Communications networking is at a critical juncture in its evolutionary cycle. Corporate decisions will need to be made as to where and in what form network intelligence will exist.

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