The telecommunications industry is moving to cloud-based technologies at the network edge to help tackle the explosion of mobile video consumption, service mobility, virtualization of Customer-Premise Equipment (CPE), the Internet of Things (IoT), and other latency-sensitive applications. But unfortunately today, much of the compute still happens at the center of the network or on the client device. This situation results in more traffic, higher latency, and less flexibility.
Moving processing closer together—away from the two furthest points where it happens today, the network core and the client, toward the network edge and aggregation layers—can speed deployment and reduce TCO for carriers. In these environments, flexible general-purpose compute will drive the most value. 
If “data is the new currency”, then positioning compute should be like choosing an oil well site: as close to the resource as possible, yet comprehending the geographic transport issues.
If “data is the new currency”, then positioning compute should be like choosing an oil well site: as close to the resource as possible, yet comprehending the geographic transport issues.
Table of Contents
- Executive Summary
- The Changing Carrier Landscape
- Optimizing for More Flexible and Cost-effective Compute
- Focusing Investment
- Building Agnostic, Standardized Infrastructures
- Silicon Platform Requirements
- Optimizing the Network
- Figure 1: Moving Compute Brings Significant Benefits to Carriers
Companies Cited
- Altera
- AMD
- Applied Micro
- ARM
- Avago
- Broadcom
- Cavium
- Cisco
- Comcast
- Freescale
- Hi-Silicon
- IBM
- IDC
- Marvell
- Netronome
- Oracle
- PMC Sierra
- Telefonica
- TI
- Qualcomm
- Xilinx
Patrick Moorhead is the founder, CEO, and chief analyst of Moor Insights & Strategy. His big-picture view of technology is grounded in more than 20 years as an executive leading strategy, product management, product marketing, and corporate marketing functions at NCR, AT&T, Compaq, and AMD. He has shared his expertise in areas from silicon to infrastructure to enterprise SaaS and everything in-between in thousands of national broadcast appearances (CNBC, Yahoo Finance), articles (Forbes, CIO), research-based analyses, and podcast episodes. Today, he has 100+ CXO-level advisory clients and is often ranked the #1 technology industry analyst by ARInsights.
