The Rethink Blog

Volta is gearing up for the TIP Summit next week in Amsterdam on November 13 and 14.  This will a great opportunity to engage with members of a thriving collaborative community. The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) has over “500 Member organizations, including operators, technology providers, developers, integrators, startups, and a range of other entities inside

We don’t actually have a crystal ball, but Volta seems to have a good track record in identifying trends. Last week, there was a spate of articles validating things that we have been saying for some time. Last April we did a webinar with Light Reading and pointed out that 4G was about connecting consumers

In carrier networks, the appliance model is giving way to a disaggregated model. Traditionally, functions like routing were implemented in a tightly coupled hardware and software bundle. Routing vendors could ensure the proper operation of their system because they controlled the entire network element. They even developed their own switching ASICs for their line cards.

Server virtualization gained interest as a way to optimize costs. The processing capacity of servers had grown to a point where it was common to see very low utilization levels. Thus, there was enough processing available to add a hypervisor and run multiple workloads on a single server. IT departments could point to better server

In server virtualization, the key is thinking of an application as a workload.  A server with a hypervisor can run multiple, independent workloads.  This allows for better utilization of the server and much greater flexibility, agility, and responsiveness in managing workloads. In routing, we have seen many attempts to run multiple control plane workloads trying

The hypervisor was a technology that could be added to the existing mix that made everything work better.  The applications, the OS and hardware were all the same after the hypervisor was introduced into the mix. As a result, the focus could be on prioritizing what workloads to virtualize enabling a gradual introduction of the

x86 processors from Intel and AMD were used by a range of server ODMs. Moore’s Law held and these chips grew in raw processing power. It meant that the need for custom silicon greatly diminished. Custom silicon was common – think of Sun servers running Sun’s own SPARC processors. Commodity should not be viewed as

In tomorrow’s webinar hosted by IHS Markit’s Michael Howard, we will be discussing routing virtualization in the context of cloud native NFV.  One of the key points is that network operators want the same benefits that data centers saw from server virtualization. I want to take the next few blog posts to discuss what lessons

We are getting our presentation ready for a webinar on September 12 hosted by IHS Markit “Exposing the Cost Trade-offs of Cloud Native NFV” featuring Michael Howard, IHS Technology Fellow. The webinar will focus on the impact of virtualization on network operators.  Volta’s portion will use two routing uses cases to talk about why virtualization

Telecommunications and Computer Networking recruitment has played its big part in the general recruitment industry for some time. Technology is evolving as we all know at a rapid rate.  With Digital, Virtual, AI Infrastructure becoming the norm, companies need the right expertise to propel themselves forward, make that difference, disrupt and succeed in competitive markets.