Introduction to my blog
Welcome.
It is with great pleasure that I begin my official weblog at Nortel. Because it is my first, I thought I’d take a bit of space to introduce myself and my philosophy and perspective in general as a way to kick off what I hope will be an on-going dialog related to technology, the telecom industry, Nortel and other assorted items of interest that I hope to share with you through this medium.
First off, my name is John Roese, and I am the Chief Technology Officer of Nortel, one of the foundational companies of the telecommunications industry and a company that has existed for more than one hundred years (111 to be exact). I joined Nortel in the middle of 2006 after being CTO of networking technologies at Broadcom in California, CTO at Enterasys Networks (along with being CMO, CIO and a host of other roles) in Andover, Massachusetts, and CTO of Cabletron Systems.
The fact that this is my fourth CTO role of a significant public telecom company by age 36 can either mean that I am overly focused on this type of work or that I really enjoy being in the center of the telecom industry. The truth is probably a bit of both. While I have focused on this type of role most of my career, I do tremendously enjoy the challenges and changes that the core of telecom technology provides one with. In that vein I can’t think of a better place to be today than at a company with 10,000+ R&D professionals, involved in all the major markets of the industry (from enterprise to carrier to wireless to wireline to applications to infrastructure), with a proud and proven history of innovation and intellect and, most importantly, a company that not only has an urgent desire to drive change in the industry, but is in a position to do so. More on Nortel’s reality at another time in another blog entry; it’s a story many of you probably don’t know the details of, but it’s both interesting and enlightening…
Getting to my philosophy and approach to telecom and technology in general…
[Soapbox for a second]
I think you’ll find that while I understand and have been an active participant in helping create the reality of the industry today, I have never been content with the status quo. I am always in search of a better outcome. As such, I believe that CTOs and leaders need to have opinions on the relevant issues of the day, even if those opinions are controversial. Some of these recent press clippings will give you an idea of what I mean and I think speak for themselves in terms of demonstrating my style. One of my favorite quotes is from Albert Einstein. He said that the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” All too often, we forget that the inevitable betterment of technology is driven by continuous change and evolution. Change starts with being able to see that the present is not perfect and that innovation and change are strong tools to make a better future in whatever domain you exist.
[Off soapbox now]
Talking about my views of the industry and the technology of telecom…
The single biggest element of my focus is the belief that the technology of the future must be focused on the problem space at the intersection of domains and at the system level. What I mean by this is that in the past it was good enough to excel in a single domain. For example, you could build the best router or switch or the best GSM base station, or you could be the strongest large enterprise specialist company or the most focused company in delivering optical systems or directories or anything else for that matter. The reason you could excel by being so focused was that the problems that were in front of your customers were mainly one-dimensional. If a customer, for example, wanted to provide data connections to all of their PCs in a building (that was their problem) and you were the best at building LAN switching, you could provide the connections and solve their problem. Everyone was happy. Was pretty easy to do, right?
Well, look around you today and ask yourself two questions related to communications. One, “What are ALL of your technology and communications challenges or issues?” And two, “Is that list dependent on a single technology or on the interplay of a set of technologies and systems?” I am willing to bet that not one of you has just a single challenge in front of you. As a former CIO, I know that I never had just one project or challenge. In fact, I usually had so many that my teams could at best triage them to make sure the business operated and we achieved the best results with limited time and resources. I am also willing to bet that no matter what set of problems you focus on, there are few, if any, single products that really address them in a complete way by themselves. If my suppositions are correct, then we as an industry have significant change in front of us.
To address this changing reality, one of the first things I did at Nortel was create what is affectionately known as the “Atom Chart.”
This chart says that in the present and future reality, the telecom industry must focus on the intersection and interplay of domains. The six domains of interest are wireless, wireline, carrier, enterprise, applications, and infrastructure. A bit about each …
Wireless and Wireline: Communications networks are not only expected to operate and be transparent but are also expected to give us the ability to communicate wherever we want with an acceptable level of service. To do that, we need both wireless networks (for mobility, coverage and ubiquity) and wireline networks for performance, predictability, and cost.
Carrier and Enterprise: Our communications experience is a combination of both what we need in our businesses and home offices and also what we need in the public environment and as consumers. The ideal experience is one that allows communications wherever we need it. And, since we exist in both public and private environments, it makes sense that the telecom solutions of the future will involve both enterprise and carrier networks and, most importantly, the interaction between them to create a continuity of experience.
Infrastructure and Applications: In the distant past, our networks were embedded into applications (SNA, DECNET…); then, we swung the pendulum to the other extreme and made the network agnostic (Ethernet and IP). Neither extreme is ideal. In fact, the desired communications systems of the future will almost always encompass a system of intelligent networks that understand and support the applications and services they need but will also have a model where the applications and their supporting middleware are not network agnostic but network aware. The interaction of network and applications is critical in creating a robust communications experience that offers more than basic services. It is hard to imagine a trustworthy communications system where both the applications and infrastructure are not involved in achieving that goal.
So to wrap up this first blog entry… I have many opinions and observations to share (as you’ll discover as you get to know me!) and enjoy immensely an open and vigorous debate of ideas. To start that debate, I throw out to you that the future is about synergy and systems not about any one technology or domain. I also put forward that the companies that will thrive in the future will be the ones that look to the system or ecosystem and not simply to the individual technology. I firmly believe that Nortel is one of those companies and it is my goal to make sure that we capitalize on this.
Welcome! I look forward to reading your on a regular basis.
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