Ericsson’s acquisition of CENX is not simply a “business” event, it promises to move forward Ericsson’s ability to execute an effective closed loop, and therefore automated healing, scaling and capacity management. It should come as no surprise to any regular reader of Appledore Research that we see great value in automation, and believe that elegantly simple closed loops are one of the most important constructs to achieve automation. No blog is long enough to define how to achieve “elegant simplicity”, but I’ll remind everyone of the old saying: “I’m sorry to write you such a long letter; but I didn’t have time to pen a shorter one.” Suffice it to say that job #1 is actually creating the pieces for a loop. In NFV, SDN or any complex service, this means a) being able to orchestrate the resources, such as VNFs, b) being able to orchestrate across all technical sub-domains, c) being able to collect performance/fault data and identify the root cause, and d) knowing where and how to take corrective action. This fundamentally requires orchestration (fulfillment) and assurance, as well as some glue logic, hopefully in the form of very general rules or algorithms. Ericsson, in part through […]