Stephen Lawson
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Stephen Lawson
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Like AT&T, Verizon is going virtual for enterprises
If you want to be able to turn network services on and off the same way you do virtual machines, some big carriers are starting to think like you.On Thursday, Verizon announced enterprise services defined and activated through software, a move intended to help both the carrier and its customers save money and respond more quickly to changing needs. It could mean firing up a new carrier Ethernet link to a branch office in minutes instead of months, for example.Verizon’s Virtual Network Services announcement comes just days after AT&T introduced its own set of software-defined services and then partnered with Orange to help move more service smarts from hardware into software.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Like AT&T, Verizon is going virtual for enterprises
If you want to be able to turn network services on and off the same way you do virtual machines, some big carriers are starting to think like you.On Thursday, Verizon announced enterprise services defined and activated through software, a move intended to help both the carrier and its customers save money and respond more quickly to changing needs. It could mean firing up a new carrier Ethernet link to a branch office in minutes instead of months, for example.Verizon’s Virtual Network Services announcement comes just days after AT&T introduced its own set of software-defined services and then partnered with Orange to help move more service smarts from hardware into software.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Wireless on wheels? Cable can play at that game, too
When lots of people gather for concerts or sports events, cellular carriers often bring their networks to the scene with cell towers mounted on trucks, or COWs (cells on wheels). Not to be outdone, Comcast is joining the fray using Wi-Fi.The U.S. cable giant will bring WoW (Wi-Fi on Wheels) to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia next week. WoW is what it sounds like: a van with six access points (APs) mounted on a 40-foot mast.Each AP points in a different direction so the truck can deliver strong signals over a wide area. It can serve as many as 3,000 people within a range of 500 feet, according to Comcast. Those users can get speeds as much as five times as fast as cellular, the company says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Wireless on wheels? Cable can play at that game, too
When lots of people gather for concerts or sports events, cellular carriers often bring their networks to the scene with cell towers mounted on trucks, or COWs (cells on wheels). Not to be outdone, Comcast is joining the fray using Wi-Fi.The U.S. cable giant will bring WoW (Wi-Fi on Wheels) to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia next week. WoW is what it sounds like: a van with six access points (APs) mounted on a 40-foot mast.Each AP points in a different direction so the truck can deliver strong signals over a wide area. It can serve as many as 3,000 people within a range of 500 feet, according to Comcast. Those users can get speeds as much as five times as fast as cellular, the company says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Businesses are rushing into IoT like lemmings
Companies are rapidly adopting IoT even though many don’t know if they’re getting a good return on their investment. Two-thirds of companies are now using or planning to use IoT, according to a global survey by research firm Strategy Analytics. That’s up from just 32 percent last year. But 51 percent of those aren’t sure whether the new technology is paying off, said Laura DiDio, an analyst at the firm. That doesn’t necessarily mean the internet of things isn’t saving them money or improving their businesses, DiDio said. But many organizations evaluate and deploy new technologies in such a fragmented way that they don’t know the full effects of their actions. It's actually better with IoT than with most other new technologies, where an even higher percentage can't measure the benefits, she said. But a disorganized approach isn't helpful in any case.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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How AT&T wants to use AI as a crystal ball
AT&T uses artificial intelligence to tell if things are going wrong in its network. Soon, AI may know it before it happens.The carrier says it’s been using AI for decades in areas like call-center automation but developed it for each use as they came along. Now AT&T is pouring its AI smarts into a one platform that can be used with multiple applications.“I can’t just keep doing this once at a time. We need a foundation,” said Mazin Gilbert, assistant vice president of the company’s Inventive Sciences division, in an interview last week at the AT&T Shape conference in San Francisco.That foundation is about two million lines of the code that powers AT&T’s Domain 2.0 software-defined network, which the carrier built so it could roll out new services more quickly and efficiently. Along with its own AI code, much of which is open source, the company is using open-source components from partners including universities and third-party vendors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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How AT&T wants to use AI as a crystal ball
AT&T uses artificial intelligence to tell if things are going wrong in its network. Soon, AI may know it before it happens.The carrier says it’s been using AI for decades in areas like call-center automation but developed it for each use as they came along. Now AT&T is pouring its AI smarts into a one platform that can be used with multiple applications.“I can’t just keep doing this once at a time. We need a foundation,” said Mazin Gilbert, assistant vice president of the company’s Inventive Sciences division, in an interview last week at the AT&T Shape conference in San Francisco.That foundation is about two million lines of the code that powers AT&T’s Domain 2.0 software-defined network, which the carrier built so it could roll out new services more quickly and efficiently. Along with its own AI code, much of which is open source, the company is using open-source components from partners including universities and third-party vendors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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How AT&T wants to use AI as a crystal ball
AT&T uses artificial intelligence to tell if things are going wrong in its network. Soon, AI may know it before it happens.The carrier says it’s been using AI for decades in areas like call-center automation but developed it for each use as they came along. Now AT&T is pouring its AI smarts into a one platform that can be used with multiple applications.“I can’t just keep doing this once at a time. We need a foundation,” said Mazin Gilbert, assistant vice president of the company’s Inventive Sciences division, in an interview last week at the AT&T Shape conference in San Francisco.That foundation is about two million lines of the code that powers AT&T’s Domain 2.0 software-defined network, which the carrier built so it could roll out new services more quickly and efficiently. Along with its own AI code, much of which is open source, the company is using open-source components from partners including universities and third-party vendors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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AT&T likes ‘white-box’ networks and hopes you will, too
AT&T’s march toward standard “white-box” network gear will come to enterprises this week with the introduction of a standard x86 server that can take the place of four specialized network devices. AT&T is aggressively pursuing SDN and NFV (network functions virtualization), a pair of technologies that are expected to change the face of networking over the next several years. The carrier is on track to have nearly one-third of its own infrastructure virtualized this year. More important for enterprises, it’s offering customers a way to do the same thing at their own locations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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AT&T likes ‘white-box’ networks and hopes you will, too
AT&T’s march toward standard “white-box” network gear will come to enterprises this week with the introduction of a standard x86 server that can take the place of four specialized network devices. AT&T is aggressively pursuing SDN and NFV (network functions virtualization), a pair of technologies that are expected to change the face of networking over the next several years. The carrier is on track to have nearly one-third of its own infrastructure virtualized this year. More important for enterprises, it’s offering customers a way to do the same thing at their own locations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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AT&T likes ‘white-box’ networks and hopes you will, too
AT&T’s march toward standard “white-box” network gear will come to enterprises this week with the introduction of a standard x86 server that can take the place of four specialized network devices. AT&T is aggressively pursuing SDN and NFV (network functions virtualization), a pair of technologies that are expected to change the face of networking over the next several years. The carrier is on track to have nearly one-third of its own infrastructure virtualized this year. More important for enterprises, it’s offering customers a way to do the same thing at their own locations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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AT&T wants to keep order in drone-filled skies
When it comes to drones, AT&T wants to be in the driver’s seat.The massive U.S. carrier is already using drones to inspect its cell towers and may someday put cells on drones to boost service at big events. But it’s also eyeing a major role in the way others use drones.At the heart of it all is AT&T’s network, technology executives from the company said Friday at AT&T’s Shape conference in San Francisco. They see the network as a future backbone for command and control of drones or even a drone traffic management system.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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AT&T wants to keep order in drone-filled skies
When it comes to drones, AT&T wants to be in the driver’s seat.The massive U.S. carrier is already using drones to inspect its cell towers and may someday put cells on drones to boost service at big events. But it’s also eyeing a major role in the way others use drones.At the heart of it all is AT&T’s network, technology executives from the company said Friday at AT&T’s Shape conference in San Francisco. They see the network as a future backbone for command and control of drones or even a drone traffic management system.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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IBM and AT&T are cozying up to IoT developers
Big IoT partnerships are coming thick and fast these days. A deal between IBM and AT&T to help developers turn IoT ideas into reality is just the latest tie-up involving major enterprise vendors in this field.The partnership will combine AT&T’s connectivity with IBM’s Watson and Bluemix analytics platforms. Through APIs (application programming interfaces) and development environments, plus open-source tools, the two companies say they’ll make life easier for developers.IoT involves so many parts that it’s almost inevitable enterprises will be working with several vendors to get their infrastructure up and running. Devices that collect data, clouds that analyze it, and networks that link the two are just the main components of systems that can rival the complexity of anything in IT.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Slideshow: Inside Facebook’s lab where it tests 2,000 phones at once
Facebook can test its code on 2,000 phones at onceImage by FacebookFacebook makes thousands of changes in its code every week. Any one of them could accidentally cause Facebook software to take up more data, memory or battery life on your phone. So the company tests code on more than 2,000 phones to account for different hardware models, operating systems and network connections.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Cisco brings some (real) friends to the chat-bot party
The next time you chat with someone on Cisco Systems’ Spark messaging service, that someone may not be a co-worker -- or even a person. Welcome to the world of bots.On Monday at the Cisco Live conference, Cisco said it’s working with the messaging company Gupshup so more developers can bring their bots into Spark. It also introduced a partnership with Api.ai, a natural-language software company, in part to help developers build interfaces where users can just talk to bots.Bots aren’t brand-new to Spark, but Gupshup prides itself on its chat-bot development platform, which is designed to make it easy to build bots and make them available through popular communications channels. The list already includes Facebook, Skype, Twitter and Slack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Eyefi leaves some card owners stranded, highlighting IoT hazards
Older networked flash cards from Eyefi will become the next IoT devices to effectively die in consumers’ hands when the company cuts off support for older models in September.Eyefi's cards store data like other SD cards but also include a Wi-Fi radio so users can send photos straight from a camera to their laptop or phone. When Eyefi's first card went on sale in 2007, it already had some of the qualities of what’s now called an IoT device: It was remarkably small and had no display but could connect to a local network or the Internet over the air.The products are also tied into a cloud-based service, which they usually rely on to get configured each time they’re used. Important functions of the device don’t work without a service that has to be maintained throughout the life of the product.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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IBM and Cisco will make Watson into a virtual workmate
Watson might schedule your meetings someday if a partnership between IBM and Cisco Systems bears the fruit they’re hoping to grow.In the meantime, the companies hope to save employees from some of the meaningless tasks they have to carry out just to work with their colleagues.IBM’s Verge email platform and Connections collaboration suite are a good match for Cisco products like the Spark messaging app and WebEx conferencing service, so the two vendors have found ways to integrate them, company officials say. All this will happen in the cloud. They’ll demonstrate the first examples next month at the Cisco Live conference.The collaboration could have particular value for enterprise Apple users. Both IBM and Cisco have partnerships with Apple for enterprise applications and communications on the company's devices. Details on that aspect of the IBM-Cisco partnership will come later, they said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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IBM and Cisco will make Watson into a virtual workmate
Watson might schedule your meetings someday if a partnership between IBM and Cisco Systems bears the fruit they’re hoping to grow.In the meantime, the companies hope to save employees from some of the meaningless tasks they have to carry out just to work with their colleagues.IBM’s Verse email platform (see also: "In search of IBM Verse") and Connections collaboration suite are a good match for Cisco products like the Spark messaging app and WebEx conferencing service, so the two vendors have found ways to integrate them, company officials say. All this will happen in the cloud. They’ll demonstrate the first examples next month at the Cisco Live conference.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Wave 2 Wi-Fi may be a sleeper, but it’s great for some
As the Wi-Fi Alliance starts certifying the latest gigabit-speed products to work together, users may not get as excited as they did for some earlier standards.On Wednesday, the industry group launched its certification program for IEEE 802.11ac Wave 2, a technology that’s been on the market for more than a year.Wave 2 can deliver up to 6.8Gbps (bits per second) and lets an access point talk to more than one device at a time. But due to issues like timing and wired backhaul, Wave 2 adoption has been relatively slow.The new technology builds on the first wave of 802.11ac, which started to emerge in 2013 and now makes up nearly three-quarters of the Wi-Fi market in terms of revenue. The new wave adds a few features with real advantages, at least for some users.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here