As rumored for several months, AT&T Inc.agreed to buy satellite TV provider DirecTV for $48.5 billion, or $95 per share. Both companies described the deal as transformational as they seek to take on cable companies and online video providers, delivering content to multiple screens —on living room TVs, PCs, tablets and mobile phones.  The takeover… Read more →

On April 22nd, AT&T reported that its first-quarter earnings were unchanged from the first three months of last year, but revenue grew as the wireless business added 1,062,000 wireless subscribers in the quarter. That includes 625,000 smartphones and tablets in “post-paid” plans. Wireless service revenue grew 2 percent to $15.4 billion. Total wireless revenue, including phones… Read more →

Introduction: “Security will never be the same again.  It’s a losing battle,” said Martin Casado, PhD during his Cloud Innovation Summit keynote on March 27th.   Currently, security spend is outpacing IT spend, and the only thing outpacing security spend is security losses.  Clearly this isn’t an issue of investment, innovation, or priorities as huge… Read more →

Alcatel-Lucent has broadened its software-defined networking (SDN) portfolio with the introduction of a programmable access switch that features embedded analytics and can scale to deliver up to 32 10G uplinks. The OmniSwitch 6860 supports the OpenFlow and OpenStack protocols and will be commercially available next month. It features 24 or 48 Gigabit Ethernet ports, four… Read more →

Winners of the NetEvents Cloud Innovation Awards 2014 were announced March 27th at the NetEvents Cloud Innovation Summit celebration dinner in Los Gatos, CA, USA. These annual Industry Innovation Awards celebrate organizations and individuals that lead the world by innovation and performance in the networking and telecommunications sector.  The top prize was the “Cloud Industry Idol”… Read more →

Part I:  TiE-SV Panel and IoT Track at TiECon 2014 Introduction: In the past two weeks, we’ve attended Internet of Things (IoT) presentations at TiE-Silicon Valley (SV), IDC Directions 2014 and (via webinar) from Yankee Group.  This three-part article summarizes the key take-aways from each of those events. Backgrounder: The confluence of efficient wireless protocols,… Read more →

Market research firm Infonetics Research released excerpts from its full 4th quarter 2013 (4Q13) and year end Data Center Network Equipment and SAN and Converged Data Center Network Equipment reports, which now include forecasts for bundled solutions and ports-in-use for storage. DATA CENTER NETWORK EQUIPMENT MARKET HIGHLIGHTS.    Data center Ethernet switch ports sold as part… Read more →

John Donovan wants to revamp AT&T’s network using SDN, but also its internal policies, methods and procedures. AT&T’s senior executive vice president of technology and network operations was strong on conviction, but short on details during his March 4th keynote speech at the Open Network Summit (ONS) in Santa Clara, CA.   You can watch that keynote,… Read more →

Cisco Systems is expected to announce a cloud-video service along with Web-conferencing capability on Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones, Olga Kharif writes. The company is also expected to tout the “Internet of Everything” and related devices, and a speech by CEO John Chambers today will focus on the platform. “We think the Internet of Everything is the… Read more →

“The most recent revelation that the NSA has been secretly siphoning data from Google and Yahoo! data centers worldwide has put a laser focus on the need for security at all levels of the data center, from layer 1 transport all the way up to individual applications and data. The world’s never been more tuned… Read more →