At long last, March 9 is here.  Cisco had a running timer on its Web site counting down to 11 a.m. eastern this morning when they would make an announcement that, they claim, would change the Internet forever.

Based on the hype that Cisco and much of the media created, I’m not sure what I was expecting but my expectations were high.  So what was it?  Today Cisco launched its new carrier core router, CRS-3.  The CRS-3 is the evolution of a product Cisco launched a few years back, CRS-1, which, at the time, set the high water mark for carrier routers.  Upon its release, many people chuckled at the concept of a 92 Tbps router, thinking we’ll never need that kind of bandwidth, but what we found was that indeed we do!  Cisco has shipped almost 5000 CRS-1’s–clearly, there’s demand.

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More than 25 percent of Yankee Group survey respondents say they expect at least a third of their infrastructure to move to cloud computing in the next 12 months, but company-wide adoption remains low. To uncover what lies ahead for cloud computing in 2010, Yankee Group interviewed executives from 25 cloud computing pioneers—including early cloud service providers, telecom operators, and infrastructure and software vendors. Their unique perspectives and key strategies tout the power of the cloud and offer a view into its impact: Will cloud computing be an evolution or a revolution?

Zeus Kerravala and I were delighted to have three cloud thought leaders join us for today’s webinar:

• Doug Hauger, General Manager, Microsoft Windows Azure
• Raj Nathan, Executive VP and Chief Marketing Officer and Senior VP, Sybase
• Jayshree Ullal, President and CEO, Arista

The discussion was lively and thoughtful–a special thanks to each of them for taking the time do join us. A replay of the webinar is below. We’re also offering a complimentary download of the report that inspired this webinar: “Clouds in 2010: Vendor Optimism Meets Enterprise Realities.” Register as a guest for access.

The webinar runs about an hour: audio (mp3) and slides (pdf).

When researching my new book, ANYWHERE: How Global Connectivity is Revolutionizing the Way We Do Business, I was fortunate to interview more than 50 thought leaders in connectivity. Their input was invaluable and their ideas, advice and examples provide very rich context for the Anywhere vision. I’m sharing selected book interviews through the blog.

In this excerpt from my interview with Axel Haentjens, senior vice president Marketing, Brand and External Communications for Orange Business Services, Haentjens provides his take on how the upcoming ubiquitous connectivity revolution will change how enterprises do business, both internally and with their customers.

What do changes like pervasive connectivity and embedded IP in broader devices mean for enterprises?
I have been in the communications business for 15 years at France Telecom [FT]. In 1995, it was very clear that the desktop had to be connected. Now we’re at the point where we have laptops, BlackBerrys, PDAs, and more. So in the last two to three years, you could access documents and e-mail through a PDA from everywhere — from a train, on holiday, etc. For Orange [FT’s key brand], that translated into a huge success for our Business Everywhere tool. We have more than 1.3 million users.

But this year, we see something else. We’re now at the point of pervasive reachability, where you need to talk to people using various means that are all integrated. We ought to be able to start one way, and then move to another.

And it’s not only human connectivity.

Right. There will be five times more objects to connect than people, at the very least. There are mature applications today in tele-monitoring, fleet management and tracking goods. Orange operates mobile networks in 28 countries, including 15 countries in Europe today: 15 percent of our mobile B2B revenue is already M2M. It comes from SIM cards embedded into devices either for fleet management or remote monitoring, and it’s growing at a rate of about 20 percent per year.

Clearly tele-metering is ready. You’ll find security companies doing it, utilities also, and energy companies doing tele-measuring for gas and electricity. We see a lot of apps in vehicles, helping to manage thousands of trucks via geo-location and route optimization.

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Thanks to everyone who joined us in the webinar today, officially launching our new book ANYWHERE: How Global Connectivity Is Revolutionizing the Way We Do Business. For the discussion, I was joined by five terrific thought-leaders in the connectivity space:

• Glenn Lurie, President, Emerging Devices, AT&T
• Walter McCormick, President & CEO, U.S. Telecom Association
• Paul Sagan, President & CEO, Akamai Technologies
• Sriram Viswanathan, VP, Architecture Group, Intel
• Nigel Waller, Founder & CEO, Movirtu, Ltd.

A special thanks to each of them for taking the time to chat about Anywhere and illustrate their own business’ opportunities and challenges. If you missed the presentation, the replay is below–I would be delighted to hear your thoughts.

The webinar runs about an hour: audio (mp3) and slides (pdf).

We interrupt your New Year’s resolution-making for an important announcement. ANYWHERE: How Global Connectivity is Revolutionizing the Way We Do Business (McGraw-Hill) is officially shipping from all major booksellers.

[As a one-time resident of the great city of Philadelphia, PA, I was delighted that the first reported in-store sighting of the book was at the Barnes & Noble in Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia. ]

Our official launch of the book is on January 14th, with a webinar where I’ll talk about the book with some of the thought leaders who contributed to the research.  Sign up to join me here.

Keep up with all our doings around the book’s official launch by checking the book’s website, where we’ll be posting book signing events, reviews, and other launch activities.  Plus, because we did so much research for the book that we weren’t able to include in the book itself, we will be augmenting the website with in-depth interviews and resources over the next few months.

If you’re a YG client, you can read this recent report I wrote based on book interviews with two creative entrepreneurs bringing Anywhere opportunities to emerging markets.

Happy 2010 to everyone. We all managed to make it through 2009. Now let’s get back out there and build the Anywhere Network.

Farewell to the Noughties, a decade sandwiched between two crises: The dotcom bust and the current – but sputtering – downturn.  In that time, Europe accomplished much: The Euro was adopted, DSL went mainstream and telcos went NGN.

Not least, consumers woke up to the pleasures of mobile content, although it’s questionable whether MNOs will ever see a fair return for their expensive 3G licenses. Roaming charge crackdowns and market saturation haven’t helped financials either.

Time again to put a nebudchadnezzar on ice? There’s plenty under the tree for 2010:

1. Ethernet will be everywhere. Ethernet is in the LAN, it’s in the WAN, it’s transforming mobile backhaul economics, and it’s converging the datacenter. Fiber remains best, but clever vendors (see Hatteras, Actelis) are delivering copper-bonded Ethernet in the first mile. And new Ethernet exchanges (see CENX and Equinix) aim to speed order to cash with their interconnect services. Want a unifying communications fabric? Well duh!

2. The CDN bubble will burst. Telco CDNs can offer compelling features, but how many service providers can the market sustain, even if video traffic is exploding? Many partnerships are already in place: Tata Communications with BitGravity, Verizon with Velocix, Deutsche Telekom with EdgeCast and Global Crossing with Limelight Networks and EdgeCast. If you’re not in the game now, you’ll need deep pockets to buy in.

3. The cloud’s hot air will expand. Resilient, liquid (and probably Ethernet-based) connectivity is going to save the outage-prone cloud. To invest in cloud services enterprises require robust network as well as applications-specific SLAs, as well as network redundancy, say Yankee Group enterprise surveys. Offering on-demand VPN connectivity to cloud services (on a wholesale or retail basis) could help defuse concerns about their security and resilience.

4. Equipment vendors will want to be your new best friend. The ratio of CAPEX to revenue currently stands at 12.6 percent among European operators, according to Yankee Group analysis. It’s not going to recover much. That’s why European equipment vendors like Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks are on a charm offensive with managed services propositions and aims to transform telco business models. Listen to their pitch. And talk to Huawei:  With a new SDP partner program and growing software division, it’s got more in its arsenal than cheap kit.

5. Smart wholesale will become sexier than dumb wholesale. Get big, get niche or get out. Embrace revenue-sharing models with non-traditional partners. And work mobile angles: International remittances, GRX to IPX interconnect, content transcoding, white-label mobile UC and M2M are among many rich avenues of investigation.

Best wishes for the New Year – and decade – look forward to continuing the conversation!

The economic crisis proved a major obstacle for consumers, enterprises and network builders, and each has had to evolve to survive. The changes from 2009 will create new opportunities in the Anywhere ecosystem, especially in the areas of cord-cutting, devices, cloud computing and network innovation.

Earlier today, I was joined by my colleagues Jon Paisner, Camille Mendler and Josh Holbrook to unveil Yankee Group’s top predictions for the 2010 communications industry. We discussed six of our eleven published predictions and took questions live from the audience. Check out the webinar replay below. You can also register as a Guest on the Yankee Group Web site to get the full report for free.

The webinar runs about an hour: audio (mp3) and slides (pdf).

First it was an idea… then it became a company-wide research mission… now it’s a book.

Today we start talking publicly about something we have been working on at Yankee Group for much of this past year: our first mass-market book. If you have worked with us recently — or even if you have just visited our web site or talked with us about what we do –  it should come as no surprise that the name of the book is ANYWHERE.

The book is nearing publication with McGraw-Hill, for release in stores on January 8, 2010 (although the major online bookstores are taking orders now; hint, hint). You can get a taste of what it’s all about by downloading Chapter 9, “How ANYWHERE Do You Need to Be?” at our book website, which is anywhere.yankeegroup.com.

Since we’re now preparing to support media interest in the book, I thought I’d use this post as an opportunity to practice my book Q&A.  So I’ll interview myself!

Intriguing title! What’s it about? ANYWHERE is Yankee Group’s vision for the emergence of ubiquitous connectivity: when a seamless, capacious, and intelligent network connects all of us and the things we care about. The book explains why this is happening — but more importantly, it exposes the tremendous changes still ahead in all our lives as it happens. We set out the vision, how and when it happens around the world, and what it’s doing for us as consumers, workers, and business leaders. That’s why the subtitle of the book is How Global Connectivity is Revolutionizing the Way We Do Business.

But Yankee Group’s research is all about Anywhere already. Why did you write a book? By any measure you could choose — the number of people touched, the geographical scope of the technologies, the total economic value added — this revolution in the expansion of the global network will be the largest technology change of our lifetimes, even bigger by far than the commercialization of the Internet.  Yet frankly most managers in the business world today don’t yet see the magnitude of those changes: how the network’s expanded reach will continue to ‘flatten’ the planet, how the growing richness of network experiences will create new appetites in us as consumers, how the network’s intelligence will shrink costs in companies and change the fundamental nature of our activities as businesses.

So we wrote this book to educate businesses on how best to steer their initiatives, partnerships, product development, customer service and virtually every other aspect of a business in order to succeed in the Anywhere environment.

What does the reader get? We focused on describing the business impact of the network changes ahead — in non-technical terms — and prescribing specific things that managers can do to profit from those.  For instance, we paint some pictures of how the lives of typical people will change in ten years’ time, in both developed and emerging markets. We show some companies living the Anywhere vision now, and share how that’s transforming their businesses. We explain how to decide when to move, and what to tackle when you do.

Big scope. How did you pull this picture together? Yankee Group’s extensive resources in the communications world gave us the chance to interview over 50 thought leaders in connectivity–from pioneers to CEOs, from small firms to mega-corporations.  Bob Metcalfe, co-inventor of Ethernet… Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the One Laptop Per Child initiative… Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint… Reed Hundt, former chairman of the U.S. FCC, and many more big thinkers lent us their support. Check out the complete list here. Besides our data assets and terrific contributions from our own analysts, the ideas, advice, and examples from these participants provide very rich context for the Anywhere vision.

You sound excited — why? The reason why all of us at Yankee Group are excited is that we are evangelists for the huge benefits the world will enjoy from the continued expansion of the network — to more people, more devices, and more services. As analysts, we are independent but not neutral: we unequivocally want the Anywhere Network to emerge. The sooner that happens, and the more business people ‘get’ that message and commit themselves to planning how to benefit, the better. With this book, we feel like we’re doing our part to help that all come about.

I’m excited about everyone’s feedback, too. You can talk about it here, follow me on Twitter, join the book’s Facebook fan page, add your reviews and comments on the online book store pages, and of course email me directly as always.

PS: Yes, it’s going to be available in e-book formats as well! You should expect no less for a company working to become an Anywhere Enterprise. Amazon will be promoting it in Kindle form in January — more on that shortly.  Meanwhile — see you Anywhere!

Late yesterday, HP announced its intention to acquire 3Com for $2.7 billion.  While this may come as a bit of a surprise to some, I actually think this is a great move for HP.  Followers of this industry know that HP and Cisco have been bitter rivals over the past few years creating a Red Sox/Yankees-like rivalry (I won’t say who is who since I’m a Sox fan).  The acquisition of 3Com by HP is just the latest chapter in the on going feud and helps HP fill in some significant product holes by adding high end switching products, a broad routing portfolio, security products and VoIP capabilities.

3Com is one of the industries most misunderstood companies.  Over the past few years almost the entire networking product line has been refreshed.  It has a huge base of business in China as well as low cost engineering that turns out high quality products quickly.  Its biggest problem though is brand.  When you mention 3Com to anyone in the networking industry, one of two comments usually come up: (1) “those are the guys that bailed on the enterprise market a decade ago;” or (2) “those are the guys that make NICs (network interface cards), palm or low end networking gear.”

Bringing 3Com products into HP not only solves HPs product holes, but also solves 3Com’s brand and distribution problems.  Two problems, one solution.  The move also creates a de facto #2 vendor in the networking industry.  Currently, in the switching market, which is the biggest of the enterprise networking submarkets, HP and 3Com flip flop for #2 depending on how the numbers are cut.  Our research has HP at 11% and 3Com at 9% creating a company with a combined 20% of the overall ports.  This will be the first time the industry has had a clear alternative to Cisco since the mid ‘90s when Nortel was a dominant vendor.

This is the third big acquisition announcement in the past few months following Cisco-Tandberg and Avaya-Nortel.  There is a clear trend to companies rationalizing down the number of vendors they use so we see this trend continue as companies like Brocade, F5, Riverbed, Polycom and Aruba all become legitimate acquisition targets for larger companies.  So, while this may be the most recent announcement, it won’t be the last.

For a more detailed look at my analysis, look for the Yankee Group focus report on this acquisition.

Video, video and more video—that’s been one of the big themes in the communications and collaboration market for the back half of 2009 and will continue to be hot moving into 2010.  Over past month, we’ve seen Cisco make a bid to acquire Tandberg to bolster its video strategy, videoconference as a major theme at the Fall09 VoiceCon, Cisco describe video as “stream that runs through all of Cisco” at its annual collaboration summit and now the Logitech news.  For those who have not heard of Lifesize, the company came to market as a competitor in the flourishing telepresence market but lately has focused on HD videoconferencing and teleworker solutions.  For the most part, Lifesize offers solutions that are much lower cost than the “name brand” vendors like Cisco, Tandberg and Polycom.

On the surface, plunking down $405 million in cash for a company that’s expected to do $90 million in 2009 might seem kind of steep but Lifesize is expected to grow in the neighborhood of 50 percent this year, so the potential to make the investment back fairly quickly is there.  Additionally, the corporate videoconferencing market has been hot lately because of companies cutting travel costs, increased focus on collaboration, green compliance and overall easier to use systems.  Yankee Group estimates the videoconferencing market to be approximately $2 billion in 2009 and grow 15 to 18 percent in 2010, so a high growth market for Logitech to leverage Lifesize.

Most people know Logitech as the company that makes PC peripherals such as the computer mouse, keyboards or desktop webcams—all necessary things but not exactly synergistic with high end corporate videoconferencing.  Its decision to move into the corporate videoconferencing market does seem out of place but shouldn’t be a total surprise.  One of the big trends that Yankee Group has been following is the rapid consumerization of the enterprise, and as this happens and more workers work remotely, video will begin to cut deeper across our personal and professional lives.  Long term this trend will allow Logitech to bring much of the focus it has on consumer design and ease of use to the videoconferencing market and create an effective go to market strategy but, in the short term, it will likely run these as separate businesses.

I think this is a leading indicator of what’s to come for what was a niche market.  Today, there are still a lot of problems but many of the barriers are starting to fall.  The systems are easier to use, the vendors are focusing on interoperability between one another (took them long enough) and we’re starting to see some focus on intercompany videoconferencing (see my blog from earlier this week).  All of these will contribute to videoconferencing being a “rising tide” that will lift all the boats in the market.  Cisco has made its play, HP has moved its Halo product into its TSG (technology solutions group) and we’re expecting even more activity in this market.  Tandberg’s chief’s rival, Polycom, is a definite acquisition target with Avaya and HP being possible acquirers.  Radvision is another company that could be an acquisition target for any vendor in the network, communications or collaboration space.

In summary, look for the activity that’s started in this space to continue as we move into 2010 as video becomes a bigger part of our every day work life.