Nokia is on a path of reinvention. The company is making bold moves under chief executive, Justin Hotard, to extend its reach across mobile network operator and enterprise markets. The acquisition of Infinera last year strengthened its already well-established optical networking portfolio that is optimized to facilitate AI data center clustering. The recent sale of Nokia’s fixed wireless access business to Inseego also signals an intention to redirect its engineering efforts to provide AI connectivity infrastructure at a massive scale. By all measures, the company is doubling down on AI. This week, Nokia continued its ambitious AI journey by staking a claim to becoming the first infrastructure provider to commercialize…
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I recently attended Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Discover in the United States, meeting with the company’s executive leadership and product teams. This year’s event was especially significant, highlighting HPE’s progress with integrating its hotly contested acquisition of Juniper Networks, which was finally approved by regulators last July. I was bullish on the combination from the onset of the announcement, while other analysts and pundits viewed it as a share consolidation play that was potentially anticompetitive. From my perspective, the opportunity for HPE to create a formidable engineering team to better compete with other AI infrastructure by utilizing networking as its market penetration tip of the spear is powerful. It has the potential…
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Mainframes are easy to overlook amid today’s focus on GPU-powered servers for generative AI and agentic frameworks. Yet these systems, which originated in the 1940s well before personal computers and distributed computing, still power billions of daily transactions for many of the world’s largest banks, credit card processors, and airlines. I recently spent time with Broadcom’s Mainframe Software Division in Boston at its third annual analyst forum and left impressed. The team is relentlessly pursuing what is right for its customers, extending the mainframe platform’s relevance and viability, and facilitating knowledge transfer and skilling to ensure operational continuity. With a continued practice of summarizing my event attendance with three big…
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Cisco recently held its signature Live event in the United States, returning to Las Vegas and featuring over 1,200 sessions, including keynotes, technical demos, and breakouts. Themes related to scaling networking for AI, securing the agentic workforce, and reimagining operations dominated agendas, and I had the opportunity to spend time with company executives, customers, and partners to dive deeper into deployments and business outcomes. The launch payload was massive again this year as Cisco continues to move its solution development at the speed of modern AI. With a continued practice of summarizing my event attendance with three big takeaways – let’s dive in! Maintaining Control Through Chaos This year marks…
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CyberArk held its Impact event in my hometown of Austin a few weeks ago. I had an opportunity to spend time with company executives and Palo Alto Networks’ chief executive Nikesh Arora. With a continued theme of summarizing my event attendance with three big takeaways – let’s dive in! A New Brand To Address Identity Fragmentation The biggest news coming out of CyberArk Impact was the launch of a new brand in Idira. Before the close of its $25 billion acquisition of CyberArk, Palo Alto Networks organized its product portfolios under three pillars: Strata for network security, Prisma for cloud and SASE, and Cortex for security operations and AI threat…
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Extreme Networks turns 30 years old this year, and its recent Connect event in Orlando celebrated many of its achievements. Not surprisingly, AI-driven operations were a big theme, and it is abundantly clear that the company is focusing its efforts on delivering better business outcomes and improved network operational efficiency rather than just competing on speeds and feeds. With a continued theme of summarizing my event insights with three big takeaways – let’s dive in! Extreme Platform ONE’s Agentic Journey At Extreme Connect, executives spent considerable time discussing how AI can reduce operational burden across wired, wireless, and fabric environments. Enterprise networking teams continue to struggle with complexity, and cloud-managed…
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Hewlett-Packard Enterprise recently unveiled significant enhancements to its self-driving network architecture. Juniper Networks can be credited for much of the groundwork, having put an early stake in the ground well before its acquisition by HPE. Modern AI applications and agentic frameworks have enormous potential in unlocking digital transformation and deploying automation at scale. Commensurately bringing autonomy to not only the underlying network architecture but also network operations has the capability to strengthen assurance and security posture. Defining A Self-Driving Network Architecture HPE positions itself as the industry’s first and exclusive provider of fully autonomous, agentic AIOps enterprise networking. It is a bold statement, one that is technically accurate given Nokia’s…
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Fortinet recently held its virtual AI cybersecurity summit, offering participants practical advice on securing AI, using it to strengthen defensive posture, and prioritizing network and security operations. I found two sessions particularly interesting, one related to mitigating shadow AI and a second that focuses on the need to reimagine endpoint AI security. Mitigating Shadow AI At RSA Conference 2026, the need for deeper agentic observability dominated many of my conversations, so it was no surprise that shadow AI would be a subject of discussion at the Fortinet virtual event. I agree with the company’s assessment that organizations are dealing with a looming crisis. As AI experimentation continues, there are large…
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I recently spent time with T-Mobile For Business executives and partners, including Ericsson Enterprise Wireless and Inseego, at the Uncarrier’s Innovation Hub in Bellevue to dive deeper into a new business internet offering dubbed SuperBroadband. The announcement follows another “super” mobility business service launched last August, and this one promises to address a fundamental issue that multi-site businesses have struggled with for years – regional broadband service fragmentation. What Is SuperBroadband? T-Mobile’s recently fielded Voice of the Customer research surfaced three important considerations for its current business internet subscribers. First, reliability and redundancy are non-negotiable. Second, nationwide coverage across locations is critical. Third, simplicity delivered through a fully managed service…
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To say that the number of product, customer, and partner announcements at Google Cloud Next 2026 was significant is an understatement. A dizzying 260 introductions across 700-plus breakout sessions punctuated an underlying theme of enabling improved business outcomes within the agentic enterprise. The event also clearly demonstrated that Google is quickly moving beyond cloud services imbued with AI to become an AI-native infrastructure solution provider that is leaning into security, networking, and silicon to deliver a tightly integrated AI stack. With a continued theme of summarizing my event insights with three big takeaways – let’s dive in! Flipping Security From Detection To Autonomous Defense At the event, Google introduced three new…
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NTT Research held its signature Upgrade event in the heart of Silicon Valley this week. I had an opportunity for a third year in a row to join customers, partners, and company executives over two days for a visionary keynote, compelling panel sessions, and impactful technical demonstrations. With a continued theme of summarizing my event attendance with three big takeaways – let’s dive in! Incubation Designed To Scale Innovation Upgrade kicked off with its keynote emphasizing NTT Research’s efforts that serve as a foundation for meaningful innovation. It is a message that I have heard at past Upgrade events, but this year the Japanese tech giant put wood behind the…
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The concept of cloud computing can be traced back to the 1960s, rooted in the notion of time-sharing. This year marks its twentieth anniversary, and the cloud continues to play an instrumental role within IT and OT organizations. Cloud services provide scalable, cost-effective on-demand compute, networking, and security infrastructure to power business operations. Its ability to be treated as an operational expense is invaluable, as well as its ability to provide new features and capabilities to meet ever-changing applications and workloads, including the rise of generative AI and agentic frameworks. Over the past several weeks, I have had an opportunity to spend time with two NTT DATA executives and attend…
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MediaTek welcomed a group of industry analysts to its annual event at the beautiful Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco’s Nob Hill district this week. I have always loved the hotel’s early 1900s Neoclassical architecture, and in many ways, its symmetry and simplicity echo MediaTek’s corporate DNA and humble yet confident culture. With a continued theme of summarizing my event attendance with three big takeaways – let’s dive in! No Longer The Value Play Historically, MediaTek has competed with Qualcomm in mobility SoCs as a value play. The strategy served the company well, allowing it to establish a leading position in the category. However, through a relentless pursuit of silicon development,…
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Image: RSA Conference 2026 RSA Conference yet again welcomed scores of security practitioners, executives, and infrastructure providers to San Francisco this year. I had the opportunity to attend in person and meet with thirty companies over four long days. Not surprisingly, agentic AI security punctuated all my conversations. With a continued theme of summarizing my event attendance with three big takeaways – let’s dive in! You Can’t Protect What You Can’t See Agentic frameworks are moving at hyper speed, and enterprises are struggling to keep pace. Historically, technology roadmap refreshes were measured in years. In contrast, modern AI application innovation can be measured in months. OpenClaw experimentation is a glaring…
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Image: OFC Conference 2026 Artificial intelligence can trace its symbolic birth back to the Dartmouth Conference in the summer of 1956. It had to be a wild concept at the time, a gathering of academic researchers that pondered the concept of machines that could think. Seven decades later, it has become a mainstream reality. Since the introduction of ChatGPT four years ago, and amid today’s rapid acceleration of agentic frameworks, compute has remained a focal point as GPU silicon evolves. However, the ultimate bottleneck of scaling modern AI applications and workloads is the advancement of networking infrastructure, and optical networking will play a significant role. As expected, AI infrastructure anchored…
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Image: NVIDIA Agentic AI security is a hot topic, one that I expect to discuss in every conversation I have with infrastructure providers at the upcoming RSA Conference. To no surprise, it was also a focal point for NVIDIA at its GTC event this week. The undisputed AI GPU leader is staking out fertile agentic security ground with the introduction of its NemoClaw “enterprise-ready” AI agent platform, but is it ready? On the surface, it is another strategy by NVIDIA to dominate the deployment of modern AI and solidify its ability to lock in its AI stack. What Is NemoClaw? The announcement payload at GTC was massive, demonstrating the company’s…
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Okta held its Showcase event in New York City this week. I had an opportunity to attend the livestream among many of its partners and customers in the famed Rockefeller Plaza to learn more about Okta’s ambitions to capitalize on the need for stronger AI agent security. With a continued theme of summarizing my event attendance with three big takeaways – let’s dive in! An Agentic Blueprint To Secure Enterprises Founder and chief executive Todd McKinnon kicked off Okta Showcase, speaking to the power of agentic AI and what the company is doing broadly with its Okta for AI Agents platform to secure non-human identities and safeguard against its weaponization…
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/willtownsend/2026/03/09/ocudu-aims-to-scale-open-source-ai-ran-innovation
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Fortinet welcomed a record number of attendees to its Accelerate 2026 event in Las Vegas. I had the opportunity to spend a full day with the company’s leadership team and customers, learning more about the firewall category leader and its broad, deep portfolio of secure networking solutions. With the theme of summarizing my event attendance with three big takeaways, let’s dive in! FortiOS 8.0 And FortiSOC Two big announcements punctuated Accelerate 2026. First, the introduction of FortiOS 8.0 builds on the company’s investment in the operating system launched nearly 25 years ago, which powers its security fabric. Enhancements include AI runtime security controls, SASE enhancements, and new quantum-safe capabilities. From…
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Image © 2026 GSMA / MWC Mobile World Congress Barcelona is the perennial event for the mobility industry. From its start exactly twenty years ago, MWC has showcased the latest in cellular infrastructure and device advancements dating back to the second “G.” Two decades is an eternity in any industry, and this year’s show highlighted the rapid advancements in cellular infrastructure and mobile devices. From my perspective, I walked away (after logging thirty miles dashing between halls at the Fira) with three big takeaways – so let’s dive in! AI Everywhere Not surprisingly, an overwhelming theme of AI everywhere punctuated MWC this year. From my perspective, AI washing has evolved…
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/willtownsend/2026/02/23/the-importance-of-optical-networking-in-the-ai-era
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I had the opportunity to attend T-Mobile’s Capital Markets Day in New York City on February 11. Over two and a half hours, chief executive Srini Gopalan and his executive leadership team took a group of industry and financial analysts through a look back and a look forward at its overall business, including its recent Q4 and full-year 2025 financial results. Three things stood out for me: First, the “Uncarrier’s” relentless focus on continually refining its network capabilities, subscription value, and customer experience is resulting in significant top-line revenue growth, exceptional gross earnings, and substantial free cash flow. In Q4, this equated to 2.4 million postpaid net customer adds and…
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Identity is the new hack. Cybersecurity architects, security operations center analysts, and C-suite IT executives are all struggling to maintain security posture and control with the growing use of modern AI tools by bad actors. Fundamentally, enterprise security now starts with identity access management, but it must evolve to stay one step ahead of an escalating threat landscape. With these points in mind, I will dive deeper into the challenges of securing identity and highlight what I find compelling about Cisco Duo’s approach after spending time with its leadership team late last year. Identity Is The New Hack Numerous published research reports indicate that the lion’s share of today’s security…
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Last year, a group of researchers at UC San Diego and the University of Maryland revealed a startling discovery utilizing an inexpensive satellite receiver system made with off-the-shelf components – not purpose-built spyware. Following three years of data collection and analysis from a vantage point in La Jolla, the team was able to collect a myriad of confidential data from geosynchronous satellites. As mobile network operators, including AT&T, T-Mobile, Vodafone, and others, adopt non-terrestrial networks to expand coverage, the study highlights the need for stronger security provisions. In this research note, I will outline the types of confidential data intercepted, the initial responses from operators, and what should be considered…
