Some Wild Weeks for Mobility

by Kitty Weldon, posted in Mobilize

Summary Bullets:

• There are some weeks, arguably some quarters, where few substantive announcements are made about mobility solutions, including enterprise mobility services (as opposed to 5G rollouts) and IoT. In the last two weeks, announcements from Ericsson, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon show a robust and dynamic industry.

• These launches were diverse: Verizon’s continuing MEC rollout and new reference customers, AT&T’s 5G win with the Air Force, AT&T’s Microsoft Azure Sphere-powered IoT connectivity offering, Ericsson’s acquisition of Cradlepoint, and T-Mobile’s new Magenta for Business price plans all show that opportunities in mobility and IoT are alive and well.

Enterprise mobility has often seemed like a sedate market, because smartphones and tablets are so baked in to the communications arsenals of enterprises; new, innovative offerings from the ecosystem are few and far between as every flavor of managed mobility seems to already be available. Even IoT, which is still considered a huge growth opportunity, has suffered from being put in the “enabler” category, with providers worrying about flat revenues and being reticent to introduce new capabilities as they wait for 5G to bring it back into the light via “massive” connectivity requirements. Continue reading “Some Wild Weeks for Mobility” →

Building a Local Smarter State in the UK, Post-Pandemic

by Guest Author, posted in IT Leader

Robert Stoneman, Principal Analyst for local government at GlobalData, analyzes the key messages from the second day of techUK’s “Building the Smarter State” conference.

Day two of techUK’s flagship conference for 2020 took on a decidedly local theme compared to the day before, with the response of local public sector organizations firmly in the spotlight. With close to 130 attendees, and despite moving online in the current circumstances, the conference continued to be an industry-leading forum with a range of high-caliber speakers detailing the latest developments in public service ICT.

Kris Burtwistle, Head of UK Local Government at sponsors AWS, kicked day two off by summarizing some of their work with local authorities and introducing many of the key themes of the day. This included highlighting the rapidity with which councils embraced home working during lockdown, citing how the London Borough of Waltham Forest moved many its contact center staff to home working in just a matter of days. Continue reading “Building a Local Smarter State in the UK, Post-Pandemic” →

Oracle’s Scenario Planning is Early Out of the Gate, but Leaves Ample Room for Competition

by tcuzzillo, posted in Big Data
Ted Cuzzillo,
Principal Analyst – Data Analytics

Summary Bullets:

• Oracle rolls out a lightweight scenario planning application within its planning ecosystem

• The market for scenario planning support is ripe for new entries in a year of unexpected change

Oracle has come out of the gate early with capabilities explicitly aimed at scenario planning — which in Oracle’s rendition of the classic method is at best a lightweight version that gets lost within the vendor’s rich planning ecosystem.

Whatever support Oracle offers for the venerable method is unclear. But at least it picked the right year to revive the name. True scenario planning would be useful to a business world that struggles to see its way past the pandemic. How does any business leader know which path offers the quickest, safest path? What if they bet on the wrong one? Continue reading “Oracle’s Scenario Planning is Early Out of the Gate, but Leaves Ample Room for Competition” →

HPE Completes Acquisition of Silver Peak

by Steven J. Schuchart Jr., posted in IT Leader
S. Schuchart

Summary Bullets:

• The acquisition of Silver Peak by HPE is complete and will be beneficial overall, creating a complete offering with SD-Branch

• The SD-WAN market is still hot and a new wave of consolidation is on the horizon.

In July 2020, HPE announced its intent to acquire one of the leading SD-WAN vendors, Silver Peak. Silver Peak has been fighting it out with big competitors and doing very well for itself. Along with Versa, Cisco, and VMware, Silver Peak are considered to be among the top contenders in the marketplace today. HPE and its Aruba networking division have generally been considered the number two competitor in the campus and branch networking markets, but the Aruba proposition has not been able to get recognition or traction in the SD-WAN market. HPE was a very early adopter of the SD-Branch concept, but unfortunately was too early for a market starry-eyed with SD-WAN enthusiasm. Continue reading “HPE Completes Acquisition of Silver Peak” →

“BlueJeans by Verizon” Has Come a Long Way in a Short Time

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Communicate
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

• Verizon has been aggressively expanding and marketing the “BlueJeans by Verizon” offer since the acquisition five months ago.

• BlueJeans by Verizon will continue to play a key role in Verizon’s UC&C portfolio going forward.

Overview

In just five months, BlueJeans by Verizon has become a centerpiece of Verizon’s UC&C portfolio and larger advanced communications strategy. Verizon has left no stone unturned. Product features, integration with existing Verizon offers, sales, marketing, and support have been carefully considered. Very compelling is Verizon’s decision to operationalize BlueJeans as something of an independent start-up within the larger Verizon organization. Despite significant progress, the BlueJeans story at Verizon is not yet complete as more change lies ahead. Continue reading ““BlueJeans by Verizon” Has Come a Long Way in a Short Time” →

Who’s Winning the Wireless Private Network Race?

by Kitty Weldon, posted in Mobilize
K. Weldon
K. Weldon

Summary Bullets:

  • There has been a small but meaningful trickle of news on private wireless (cellular) network deployments over the last couple of years from a cast of characters ranging from CSPs to equipment vendors, SIs, and enterprises themselves. The latest CBRS auction has also uncovered likely new entrants, including companies that lack their own cellular networks or want to own and manage their own deployments.
  • Interest in providing private wireless networks is not new; after all, this is essentially what WiFi has been providing all along. But using 4G LTE and 5G (over licensed, unlicensed, or ‘lightly regulated’ spectrum) for these networks is creating excitement from a wide swath of the telecom market. Will companies buy it?

GlobalData has been tracking the private wireless network market for several years because it is potentially a major disruptive technology. It promises to partially displace WiFi and wireline connectivity – at least for those use cases that need more consistent signal strength, security, higher speeds, and lower latency, with support for in-building, campus, and hybrid environments such as manufacturing facilities, warehouses, sports stadiums, mines, oil and gas fields, ports, airports, and other transportation hubs. Continue reading “Who’s Winning the Wireless Private Network Race?” →

AWS Continues Its JEDI Protest After the Pentagon Declares Microsoft the Winner (Again)

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in Cloud Enable
A. DeCarlo
A. DeCarlo

Summary Bullets:

  • After a multiple-month JEDI contract re-evaluation process, the Pentagon reached the same decision it had 11 months ago and awarded Microsoft the deal.
  • AWS immediately re-sounded the alarm that the procurement process was inherently inequitable, filing a new protest with the court.

The JEDI battle lines are still as tightly drawn as when Microsoft was declared the winner in October 2019. Amazon didn’t waste any time to raise its continued objections after the Department of Defense (DoD) disclosed it was once again awarding the sought-after multi-billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract to Microsoft. Posting a blog titled “JEDI: Why we will continue to protect this politically corrupted contract award,” AWS outlined some of the issues with both the initial award and the re-evaluation processes. Continue reading “AWS Continues Its JEDI Protest After the Pentagon Declares Microsoft the Winner (Again)” →

Teradata Tries to Shake Off Its ‘Just a Storage Vendor’ Stereotype

by tcuzzillo, posted in Big Data
Ted Cuzzillo,
Principal Analyst – Data Analytics

Summary Bullets:

  • Longtime database vendor and now also analytics vendor Teradata is trying to fight off the perception that it just does data storage.
  • Teradata, in character with its quiet and reliable reputation, struck at the stereotype recently by announcing an expansion of its 20-year-old academic program.

Underneath all the buzz of technology marketing is the steady hum of stuff just working. Part of that hum seems to have always been Teradata, which has been around so long that the name even goes back to when a terabyte of data was impressive.

It’s been humming for so long that it carries a stale stereotype — propagated even by some people who should know better. They still say it offers only data storage. Never mind its strong, nimble analytics wares. Continue reading “Teradata Tries to Shake Off Its ‘Just a Storage Vendor’ Stereotype” →

Story-First Data App Lands in North America, Tells ‘Only What You Need To Know’

by tcuzzillo, posted in Big Data
Ted Cuzzillo,
Principal Analyst – Data Analytics

Summary Bullets:

• The new tool’s story-first approach may succeed in winning over the vast numbers of business users who never use data.

• The software maker, Toucan, should consider new messaging and take more seriously the threat from other vendors to imitate its approach.

How do you present data to those who would rather run away at the first sight of a dashboard? Multiple surveys over the years all come to a similar conclusion: roughly three quarters of business people feel this way. They could use data but never do. Now a product out of Paris, France works on a radical idea: message first, data second to deliver only what people “need to know.”

That data-second concept bucks the conventional assumption, that users want data to make their own observations and conclusions. And they want to drill down as far as questions may lead them.

Toucan Toco’s top down approach is absolutely not self-service. Presentations are created by authors, who are forced to simplify and focus data in a lockstep path with very few choices. Authors can’t even change fonts. Toucan Toco enforces simplicity.

Messages have such primacy that creators can actually sketch out a presentation with fake data to create placeholders for real data. That’s easy to do because Toco ignores an old assumption, that those engaged in data like to drill down. Toco gives them, as the product literature puts it, only what they “need to know.”

Toucan’s bold rejection of analytics industry dogma — self-service, data’s primacy, and almost infinite accommodation to a user’s inquiries — naturally inspires a question. What market is there? Continue reading “Story-First Data App Lands in North America, Tells ‘Only What You Need To Know’” →

Mayflower Voyage Opens Up a New World of Opportunity for Edge Computing and AI

by Chris Drake, posted in IT Leader
C. Drake

Summary Bullets:

  • The transatlantic voyage of the Mayflower robotic ship will be an important testbed for the use of edge computing and artificial intelligence at sea.
  • Potential use cases for commercial autonomous ships include marine research, ocean clean-up, remote marine pilotage, and defense.

On September 16, the UK’s first robotic ship, named the Mayflower Autonomous Ship, will embark on a transatlantic voyage from Plymouth, England to Plymouth, Massachusetts, retracing the route of the original Mayflower on the 400th anniversary of its crossing. The transatlantic voyage of the Mayflower Autonomous Ship will be an important testbed for emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and edge computing, and is widely expected to pave the way both for the development of commercial autonomous ships and for the advancement of use cases ranging from marine research and defense to remote marine pilotage and ocean cleanup. Continue reading “Mayflower Voyage Opens Up a New World of Opportunity for Edge Computing and AI” →