Thursday, August 7, 2003

Sun Microsystems to Acquire CenterRun for Data Center Mgt.

Sun Microsystems agreed to acquire CenterRun, a start-up based in Redwood City, California that specializes in software that enables customers to rapidly provision, track and update their networked application services across many network devices. The CenterRun software can be used for the distribution, configuration and setup of packaged and custom applications, patches and updates. CenterRun's technology also enables the simulation of application deployments before any changes are formally instituted. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.sun.com
http://www.centerrun.com

Japan's Yahoo! BB Adds 157,000 VoIP Subscribers in July

Yahoo! BB, the Japanese broadband service provided by Softbank and Yahoo! Japan, issued its latest monthly progress report.






























































Yahoo!
BB Subscribers


  Jul-03 Jun-03 May-03 Apr-03 Mar-03 Feb-03 Jan-03 Dec-02 Nov-02 Oct-02
Yahoo!
BB lines installed
2,961k 2,822k 2,680k 2,547k 2,363k 2,181k 1,972k 1,691k 1,461k 1,208k
Yahoo!
BB phone users
2,672k 2,515k 2,353k 2,162k 1,974k 1,806k 1,585k 1,294k 1,028k 773k
Central
offices
2,155 2155 2148 2,146 2,144 2,135 2,098 2,045 1,822 1,549


http://www.softbank.co.jp/en/newsrelese/2003release/e030808.htm

ITU to Adopt TeleManagement Forum Standards

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the TeleManagement Forum reached an agreement that will allow TM Forum standards to be published by ITU as ITU-T Recommendations. The TM Forum's work has long been complementary to that of ITU-T's Study Group 4. The partnership means that the ITU and the TM Forum can avoid duplication of work and get standards to market in a far more efficient manner. Houlin Zhao, Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (secretariat for ITU-T), said "a policy of cooperation with other standards development bodies contributes significantly to the process and will ultimately help to create a fairer market for businesses and consumers."http://www.itu.int/newsroom/press_releases/2003/20.htmlhttp://www.tmforum.org/
  • The TeleManagement Forum (TM Forum) has developed a New Generation Operations Systems and Software (NGOSS) framework for procuring and deploying operational and business support systems and software. The TM Forum has some 340 member organizations worldwide.


  • In June 2003, the Distributed Management Task Force and the TeleManagement Forum (TM Forum) announced efforts to converge their shared information and modeling approaches to help support telecommunications/enterprise management convergence. The TM Forum and DMTF have traditionally been major players in the telecommunications and enterprise industries, respectively. Each has developed its own shared/federated information models: DMTF's Common Information Model – CIM; TM Forum's New Generation Operations Systems and Software (NGOSS) Shared Information and Data – SID. They are now collectively working on the potential for integration of these shared information models to also support the essential need for telecommunications / enterprise convergence.

Nortel Networks Extends Service Contracts with Chinese Carriers

Nortel Networks signed one-year extended warranty service agreements with subsidiaries of China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile. These extensions include remote technical support, hardware repair and return, field service engineering, and knowledge transfer services for the China Telecom Shanghai Branch ATM network and for the GSM networks of China Unicom Hunan Branch and China Mobile Xinjiang Branch.
http://www.nortelnetworks.com

Israel's Ben Gurion Airport Deploys Nortel's Meridian PBX

Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport has deployed Nortel Networks' Meridian 1 PBX to provide IP communications for its newly-built Terminal Three. Network integrator Telindus also participated in the deployment. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.nortelnetworks.com

EchoStar IX/Telstar 13 Satellite Successfully Launched

The EchoStar IX/Telstar 13 satellite was successfully launched from a platform in the equatorial Pacific by Sea Launch. The satellite has Ku-band capacity that will be used to enhance EchoStar's U.S. DISH Network, which is served by eight other satellites in orbit. The new satellite is also equipped with the first commercial Ka-band spot-beam directed at the U.S. EchoStar' plans to introduce future broadband initiatives use the Ka-band capabilities. EchoStar will operate the Ku- and Ka-band payloads as EchoStar IX; Loral Skynet, a subsidiary of Loral Space & Communications, will initially own and operate the C-band payload as Telstar 13. In July, Loral reached a definitive agreement to sell Telstar 13, along with five other North American telecommunications satellites to Intelsat. The EchoStar IX/Telstar 13 satellite was built by Space Systems/Loral in Palo Alto, California.
http://www.echostar.com
  • On 15-July-2003, Loral Space & Communications and certain of its subsidiaries filed voluntary Chapter 11 petitions. In a related transaction, Loral agreed to sell six satellites and the rights to their orbital locations to Intelsat for up to $1 billion. Loral intends to reorganize around its remaining fleet of five satellites and its satellite manufacturing operations Loral will also continue to own and operate Space Systems/Loral (SS/L), which builds satellites and satellite systems for commercial and government customers. Intelsat said the proposed acquisition of the Loral assets would complement the Intelsat global network, which includes capacity on 26 satellites. The Loral satellites would add complete coverage of the important North American market and increase Intelsat's customer base in the cable television and broadcasting segments. Of the six satellites to be purchased, four are operational, serving cable television, broadcast and private data network customers in North America. Two satellites are currently under construction and are scheduled to be launched into North American orbital locations in the coming year.

Broadcom, Intel Settle All Litigation, Execute Patent Cross-License

Broadcom and Intel settled all outstanding litigation between the companies and announced a patent cross-licensing agreement. Under the settlement agreement, Broadcom will pay Intel $60 million in cash. All outstanding claims and counterclaims in those actions will be dismissed. The cross-license agreement covers patents owned or controlled by either party or its subsidiaries, and having a first effective filing date, at any time through 07-August-2008. Under the agreement, products of each party and its subsidiaries are licensed under the patents of the other for the respective lives of the patents. All existing products of each party are licensed by the other. Certain proprietary products of each party are not licensed to the other.
http://www.broadcom.com
http://www.intel.com

BT Exact's Tests Confirm Performance of DCL's BGP Suite

BT Exact successfully completed evaluation of Data Connection Limited's (DCL's) BGP routing software. The DC-BGP software, which forms part of DCL's IP Routing Suite, supports advanced features including virtual routing and BGP/MPLS VPNs (RFC 2547). It also supports non-stop forwarding, distribution of routing tables to multiple locations with distributed processing and no single point of failure, and scaling to many thousands of independent routing tables, as required by Virtual Routers and BGP/MPLS VPNs. DCL's BGP software passed all of the tests and provided all of the functionality required by BT Exact. BT Exact's also report singled out several areas where DCL's BGP implementation scaled beyond current requirements:

  • route table capacity in excess of 1.2 million routes.


  • a single peer accepting in excess of 1.2 million unique routes


  • BGP peer capacity in excess of 996 established BGP peers


  • route convergence and route learning times averaging 7 seconds or under for 100,000 routes


DCL's BGP source code can be integrated with the company's MPLS and other IP Routing protocol stacks (including DC-OSPF and DC-ISIS), or can be used on its own, or with third-party products. An optional, highly scalable Routing Table Manager component provides a flexible policy engine to control sharing of routing information with other protocols (typically sharing between an IGP and EGP).


BT Exact is BT's research, technology and IT operations business.
http://www.dataconnection.com/bgp/