Michael Soper, Senior Analyst

About Michael Soper, Senior Analyst

Michael Soper is a senior analyst in TBR’s Telecom Practice specializing in telecom vendor research. Michael leads TBR’s coverage of telecom vendors Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia, among others, as well as private cellular networks, telecom edge compute and telecom infrastructure services markets. He leverages 15 years of analytical experience to contribute to the practice’s research agenda as well as to provide critical insight and analysis to subscription research and project work. An analyst with TBR since 2010, Michael holds a B.S. in corporate finance and accounting with a minor in law from Bentley University.

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Entries by Michael Soper, Senior Analyst

Webscale capex growth will decelerate, though dollar volume will continue to climb, as data center builds slow

03.18.19/by Michael Soper, Senior Analyst

According to Technology Business Research, Inc.’s (TBR) 1Q19 Webscale ICT Market Landscape, webscale ICT capex for the Super 7 will grow at an 8.1% CAGR to nearly $58 billion in 2023. Most U.S.- and China-based webscales began pulling forward significant investment in data center and network capacity in 2018, which will lead to moderating — […]

CSPs accelerate NFV and SDN investments ahead of the 5G era

12.26.18/by Michael Soper, Senior Analyst

Communication service providers (CSPs) are ramping up NFV- and SDN-related investments to realize greater cost savings and efficiencies, according to Technology Business Research Inc.’s (TBR) 2H18 Telecom Software Mediated Networks (NFV/SDN) Customer Adoption Study. This increase in investment will be driven by two underlying factors: CSPs under pressure to realize cost savings as their connectivity […]

5G-readiness spend and migration to new network architectures spur the TIS market to growth in 3Q18

12.26.18/by Michael Soper, Senior Analyst

According to Technology Business Research, Inc.’s (TBR) 3Q18 Telecom Infrastructure Services (TIS) Benchmark, the TIS market grew as communication service provider (CSP) investment in areas tied to 5G-readiness increased. CSPs are rearchitecting their networks leveraging NFV, SDN and the cloud as well as implementing new business models, which requires growing spend across a broad range […]

U.S. 5G investment supports non-China-based vendors as Huawei and ZTE face increasing headwinds

12.19.18/by Michael Soper, Senior Analyst

Nokia and Huawei are well-positioned to win as operators overhaul architectures in the 5G era, but most of the spend to date is on 5G radios, with Ericsson at an advantage due to market perception of its software-upgradeable Ericsson Radio System RAN. The network must ultimately be overhauled to fully realize 5G’s potential, but it […]

Red Hat can save CSPs from themselves

11.26.18/by Michael Soper, Senior Analyst

TBR perspective Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) is inarguably the leading open source company, with revenues far outpacing those of open source-centric competitors, such as Canonical, which only recently began taking monetization seriously. Red Hat’s solutions are pervasive in the market, with the company counting over 90% of the Fortune 500 as customers. Red Hat executives […]

Telecom vendor revenues trend upward as operators pull forward 5G investment

10.03.18/by Michael Soper, Senior Analyst

According to Technology Business Research, Inc.’s (TBR) 2Q18 Telecom Vendor Benchmark, revenue growth improved for the largest vendors as they capitalized on early 5G investment but saw reduced spend in China. Operators, particularly those in the United States, are pulling forward investment in 5G and deploying small cells to densify networks. However, the RAN market […]