The carriers might be feeling especially justified in their cloud strategies in the wake of two recent Amazon Web Services outages.

Does this first wave of open RAN for 5G necessitate a joint venture or an outright merger or acquisition involving Dish and Rakuten?

Multiple factors have precluded an abundance of 5G cores, including technical, financial, and readiness, Cisco's Jonathan Davidson said.

“The reality is that operators are at a crossroads,” IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said.

Palo Alto Networks called EDR a "really stupid idea;" VMware eyed 5G core opportunities; and Nokia plugged a triple-threat enterprise strategy.

“Unlike today’s fragmented architectures, a Cloud Metro is built for resource-pooling, network slicing, and automated cloud-based operations,” Juniper's Brendan Gibbs said.

Oracle's Ellison threw a dig at SAP; CrowdStrike and Trend Micro faced off on XDR; and Cisco revealed its private 5G network vision.

Palo Alto Networks readied a flexible firewall; Gelsinger plotted Intel's return to glory; and Fortinet's firewalls were hit by a security flaw.

Building on the success of its ExtremeCloud IQ platform, Extreme aims to extend the service to third-party equipment vendors and 5G applications.

Former VMware CEO Gelsinger jumped to Intel; Cisco, VMware, Nutanix, headlined 2020 tech battles; and Cisco fought termination of $2.6B Acadia deal.

It’s now on President Joe Biden to manage China sanctions; European operators vow open RAN support; and U.S. 5G coverage hits a milestone.

Nexcom will supply the hardware, Enea will handle NFV orchestration, while SD-WAN and security will be supplied by flexiWAN and pfSense.

The analysts expect cloud computing to pervade 5G networks, including the core, radio access network, and edge, but frames this transition as a years-long effort.

IBM slashed thousands of jobs; Aruba Networks swept Cisco from the Pentagon; and Cisco workers were anxious.

Equinix Fabric is now available in 49 metropolitan areas across five continents, and the company said it will reach 56 markets by the end of 2021.

A Cisco VPN bug avoided capture; Ericsson explained why 5G isn’t awesome in the U.S. (yet); and AMD unveiled its Instinct MI100 GPU.

Aruba bumped Cisco from the Pentagon; AMD bagged Xilinx for $35B; and Juniper paid $450 million to buy 128 Technology.

“We have aligned with Dish from the beginning to ensure that this is [open RAN] compliant,” Intel's Dan Rodriguez said.

Aruba Networks swept Cisco from the Pentagon; Palo Alto's Unit 42 found flaws in AWS deployments; and Cisco slashed its workforce by 9%.

The new routers replace Cisco's integrated service, aggregated service, and cloud service routers while introducing wireless WAN capabilities to its IOS-XE platform.

The OpenStack Foundation launched its latest Victoria OpenStack release, which includes greater Kubernetes integration.

Internet2 will deploy Cisco’s 8200 series routers that use Cisco Silicon One ASICs in 48 U.S. locations.

Intel claims to be the leading network silicon provider and has its sights set on becoming the largest provider of base station silicon by 2021.

HPE’s HCI scorched Dell, Nutanix; Samsung stung Nokia with Verizon 5G deal; and Red Hat scored a 5G deal.