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Mitch introduces himself with a laborious metaphor involving the 1983 movie “Trading Places.”
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Mitch will oversee research on subjects including smart cloud, artificial intelligence, rural broadband, open RAN, and more.
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Previously, Mitch had a variety of editorial positions covering enterprise and telco tech, including executive editor at Light Reading and InformationWeek
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Unique fourth bullet: Mitch promises not to refer to himself in the third person again
I’m feeling like Billy Ray Valentine. That was the character Eddie Murphy played in the 1983 classic Trading Places, in which the wealthy and dastardly Duke brothers pluck Valentine from the gutter and install him in a position of privilege and responsibility as a stockbroker.
Similarly, today, Fierce Network has plucked me from the gutter to install me in a position of responsibility as executive editor, research.
Well, it wasn’t the gutter. I was running a successful independent business. And the team at Fierce Network isn’t dastardly. They’re nice.
However, the situations are parallel. I’m sure you’ll agree.
My role at Fierce Network is to provide you with the research you need to deploy the latest cloud, AI, and network technologies to serve the business needs of communications service providers (CSPs) and enterprises.
I’ve been covering enterprise and telco technology for more than 30 years, including positions as executive editor at Light Reading and InformationWeek. More recently, I held marketing writing positions at Oracle and AMD and was a self-employed freelancer starting in 2023. I’m based in San Diego and work from an office at home, which I share with my wife, dog, and two cats.
(As I type this, I’m in the kitchen, because I can’t hear the doorbell from my office and I’m waiting for delivery of my official Fierce Network computer. The dog is staring at me. “We’re in the kitchen now?” she is thinking. “Great! That means we can play, right?” She will be disappointed.)
With my assistance, Fierce Network will bring you research on technology subjects essential to business today, including:
Smart cloud
Automated, AI-enabled cloud infrastructure and platforms will be self-healing, self-optimizing, self-defending, self-aware and operating at high speed, combining cloud, observability, automation, AI and security. Smart clouds are the future; these networks will run themselves, without human intervention, and less expensively, more efficiently, responsively and securely than existing technology.
Artificial intelligence
We’re looking for real business cases for AI, driving actual business value, including customer experience, BSS chat agents, streamlining operations and predictive analytics.
Security
This includes cloud security and AI.
And more
Save a seat for rural broadband and the resurgence of open RAN.
Tackling the cloud transition
Modern cloud platforms go back about 20 years, but the migration to cloud is just getting started. Only 25-30% of workloads have migrated to the cloud, increasing to 70-75% by 2027, according to a recent Gartner study. Critical workloads are moving slower—by 2027, only half of those workloads will be on the public cloud.
We’ll examine questions including: How are organizations making the transition? What are the benefits and pitfalls? What partners and service providers are available to help? And, most importantly, how can companies transition to the cloud while controlling costs and improving revenue?
We’ll also examine tools and methodologies for building, maintaining, and operating cloud resources, including DevOps, DevSecOps, Kubernetes, containers and all the latest emerging technologies and trends.
Developments at the major cloud providers. We’re keeping an eye on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, with a particular focus on how those platforms are serving telco and enterprise needs.
And what about IBM and Oracle? Those two companies are gaining ground on the big three. They’re still far behind in terms of market share, but they are leveraging their deep histories in partnering with enterprises to slowly build their customer roster.
Then there's AI
The AI market is booming, but business leaders are starting to see its problems. AI is expensive, it gulps oceans of energy, and it’s flagrantly unreliable.
AI is a bubble, but built on a solid foundation of value that is already transforming business and society. In that regard, AI isn’t the kind of bubble we saw recently with blockchain, crypto and the metaverse, all of which turned out to be tissues of nonsense. AI is more like the internet bubble of the 1990s—a lot of nonsense, but useful too.
We’ll be watching and analyzing where AI turns out to be useful and transformative, and where it falls spectacularly on its face. Tracking these developments as they play out will be extremely useful (and fun!)
Oh and don't forget the job market
Tech companies shed 57,000 jobs this year and the damage is continuing, even as tech companies see greater profits. What are workers to do? Almost exactly a year ago today, we wrote that tech workers are welcome in the mainstream economy—is that still the case?
I’m very interested in your ideas, thoughts and exclusive news. Email me here [email protected].
That’s enough to get us started. The preceding list is not a straitjacket; we’ll follow the markets wherever they lead us. Come along for the ride!
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