We've lost our collective ability to be patient. What used to be a virtue is now anathema because we have become so accustomed to having what we want when we want it, that we've simply forgotten what it's like to "wait it out."Need proof? We shifted our viewing habits to over-the-top video services quicker than it ever took us to walk to the nearest Blockbuster – yet many have already forgotten the formerly inconvenient task of walking, and now complain that an instance of buffering while streaming video means the service is "too slow." To wit, recent industry-sponsored research found that a poor experience such as buffering or poor-quality video drives almost 75% of viewers to give up in watching within the first four minutes of playback.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The constant push to increase productivity and profit has historically led commercial enterprises to drive some of our world's most significant technology advances. It was the enterprise push for further development of desktop computer processing that changed the personal computer from a hobbyist activity to a mission-critical tool. Commercial organizations deployed fiber for dedicated computer networks while the rest of us were just getting used to DSL. And the cellphone? It began its life as tool to keep business sales teams and execs more productive.But something happened during the smartphone revolution. What made the smartphone the critical invention of the 21st century was the ease of application use. Applications became "apps," and with them came their own marketplace, or "app store."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The constant push to increase productivity and profit has historically led commercial enterprises to drive some of our world's most significant technology advances. It was the enterprise push for further development of desktop computer processing that changed the personal computer from a hobbyist activity to a mission-critical tool. Commercial organizations deployed fiber for dedicated computer networks while the rest of us were just getting used to DSL. And the cellphone? It began its life as tool to keep business sales teams and execs more productive.But something happened during the smartphone revolution. What made the smartphone the critical invention of the 21st century was the ease of application use. Applications became "apps," and with them came their own marketplace, or "app store."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The world has gone web-scale crazy, but what does web-scale mean when we apply the term to networking? Isn't the network how we got the web in the first place? Unfortunately, many of today's networks leave a lot to be desired. For decades now, we've basically designed, built, and operated networks using a provision and monitor paradigm. WAN connections can take days, weeks, even months to correctly provision. If your connectivity needs were complex, timeframes could be even longer, if the desired services were available at all. Contrast this antiquated networking model with the real-time, on-demand environment that we have created for ourselves with applications, content, and businesses that can "go viral."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In my first blog post I discussed the gap that exists between what consumers want and what the network can feasibly provide – what I referred to as the "agility gap." In just the four months since that post, we have seen a variety of new examples of the acceleration in technology advances for the consumer and end user, while the network chugs along trying to keep up.The most intriguing of these was Sony's unveiling of PlayStation Now at CES 2015, a cloud-based gaming subscription service that gives players unlimited streaming access to more than 100 games.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Steve Alexander