RE: RE: RE: SandvineHey Longhaul,
great post and insight.
I agree with your risk assessment. Understanding an ISP's network, how it works, how it's designed, infrastructure layers, etc. are all vital to understanding SVC. We saw with Bell during the CRTC hearings - I got the impression they'd prefer it if no one knew anything of their network and what really goes on behind the scenes. I would suspect most ISP's would prefer this also.
What I do remember is Caputo mentioning here and there during conference calls that SVC is constantly talking with network engineers and on a day to day basis with some ISP's.
An interesting question is how much has SVC learned about ISP networks in general, how much visibility/knowledge they obtain from working with numerous ISP's, and whether possibly SVC knows, broadly speaking, more about an ISP's network than the ISP itself. The advantage SVC (and its competitors) has is it may have the luxury of "looking into" the ISP's network, seeing similarities, differences, challenges, problems, what needs to be upgraded, etc. and therefore keep abreast of what the ISP's network may look like in the future.
I mean, SVC's doing these rollouts for ISP's and I would think they have to know as much as the network operator on how the ISP network functions. Common sense tells me you can't just plunk in an SVC box and turn on the switch and voila. Integration takes time and this reminds of what Donnelly said during the briefing - although SVC has an indirect sales force, SVC still maintains direct contact with each ISP. An advantage for SVC over its competitors (or vice versa) could be who knows the network operator's network the best to ensure the best solution set is provided to maximize value to the ISP and/or who can provide a unique, value added perspective to the network operator on what's going on with their network.
Your point about whether ISP's could eventually manage the network without SVC type products. Definitely possible, perhaps even today or if not, perhaps eventually. But for the short to medium term, Caputo did say during the investor briefing that he believes every ISP will have SVC type gear as part of the ISP's network. Caputo of course has an incentive to push SVC type gear into each network, but I get the impression from listening to conference calls & the investor briefing that he truly believes it.
And the thing I really do admire about the co-founder's is that after the co-founder's sold off PixStream, most people would have packed it in given the enormous amount of money they probably made and essentially retired.
Instead, these guys start up a new company without really any idea of what the new company would do and from what I gather, brainstormed a bunch of areas they could get into and eventually chose essentially network management. That's pretty radical - starting up a tech company, after the tech bubble burst in 2000 and with no idea of what the wanted to do. These guys chose the problem they wanted to help solve. So when they say they want to help build a better and more intelligent internet, I get the impression these guys really want to do that and believe it and help in their own way. Of course, there are risks and things might not work out for them for who knows what the future holds.