Netflix Leverages Amazon Web Services

Netflix has been using Amazon Web Services (AWS) for over a year to run a variety of mission-critical, customer-facing and backend applications. Now, Netflix is significantly expanding the set of applications that it is migrating from its existing technology infrastructure onto AWS. Netflix members' movie lists, website search, movie transcoding, recommendation system and other applications will all be powered by AWS, representing many of the most critical pieces of the Netflix technology infrastructure.



Some specifics:

• Delivering content faster and on more devices: Netflix is utilizing the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) to transcode and store the movie subscription service's growing movie content library for delivery on new platforms, including the Nintendo Wii and the Apple iPad. AWS allows Netflix to utilize vast numbers of servers to transcode and store TV episodes and movies into new formats
• 
  
• Maintaining a highly available and resilient member-facing website: Netflix runs several of its website application functions on AWS, and is rapidly migrating more of these components to AWS. The companies said the important functions migrating to AWS include the delivery of movie and member metadata within the Netflix website.



• Analyzing data to improve streaming quality: Netflix is using Amazon Elastic Map Reduce to analyze streaming sessions and extract business metrics around performance, viewing patterns, etc.

http://aws.amazon.com

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Nokia's Ovi Life Tools Launched in China

Nokia launched its Ovi Life Tools
(Nokia Ovi Sheng Huo Tong) in China, providing information services covering healthcare, agriculture, education and entertainment. The service addresses the needs of rural consumers with the vision to provide livelihood and life-impacting benefits to improve their economic prosperity and quality of life. The Nokia 1616 and the Nokia 1800 are the first two phones to support the new service.


According to Sun Xiaoming, Deputy Director of China Rural Technology Development Center of China's Ministry of Science and Technology, "Currently there are almost 732 million rural residents in China: which is roughly 55 percent of the total population. The Chinese Government has consistently placed rural issues as a top priority, and this includes the development, access and dissemination of information to people in rural areas. Fast and effective communication coupled with locally relevant information will help promote economic growth and productivity.


The SMS- based service will be in simplified Chinese and is offered with six major partners - 39.net, Beijing Nongxintong Technology Co. Ltd., Beijing Etiantian Net Educational Technology Co. Ltd (Beijing Sizhong Ltd.), British Council, Kongzhong Corporation and Sina.com. The service is available to consumers via subscription or on demand. Consumers can activate the service from an icon on the menu of the device and can choose any one of four selected services for a 2-week free trial.
http://www.nokia.com

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Verizon Global Wholesale Offers VoIP Security Tunnel

Verizon Global Wholesale announced new VoIP security functionality for three of its product platforms -- SIP Gateway Service, Advanced Toll Free IP Termination, and Carrier IP Termination Transport. The new capability allows these services to share a single, secure virtual private network connection called an IP Security (or IPSec) tunnel.


Verizon said it is the only major provider offering this connection, which provides additional security during call setup. Because IPSec is an industry standard and supported by most major equipment vendors, there is no need to create vendor-specific security protocols.


"We bypass other security protocols in favor of IPSec tunnel because it offers the greatest level of flexibility to meet our customers' security needs for VoIP traffic." said Mike Yancey, director of wholesale voice services for Verizon Business. "Verizon wholesale customers can rest assured we go the extra mile to protect their business traffic on our world-class global network."


An IPSec tunnel maintains integrity and confidentiality because all data is encrypted prior to transmission, then authenticated upon receipt to verify the data has not been altered. The source of the data is also authenticated to prevent the possibility of such security breaches as "spoofing" an IP address -- a fraudulent network technique in which a program or person masquerades as another.


Verizon's wholesale VoIP products continue to grow as more customers migrate from traditional voice platforms to IP platformshttp://www.verizon.comhttp://

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Infonetics: Asia-Pac PON Up by 38% in 2009

Asia Pacific PON equipment revenue totaled $1.1 billion in 2009, up 38% from 2008, according to the latest figures from Infonetics Research. The Asia Pacific region accounted for 63% of the world's PON equipment revenue in 2009, and strong growth in the Chinese PON market, particularly the GPON segment, is expected to continue. Huawei leads the Asia Pacific region for PON equipment sales.


By 2014, Infonetics Research forecasts 10G EPON and 10G GPON will together make up about 1/3 of all PON equipment revenue in Asia Pacific. A slowdown in PON equipment sales in South Korea is expected as infrastructure buildouts reach strategic goals, and the focus shifts to turning up new subscribers despite saturation in Seoul, Busan, and Incheon.


"Not surprisingly, China was the catalyst behind passive optical network equipment growth in 2009. China Telecom's and China Unicom's heavy investments in Ethernet-PON OLTs and ONTs in 2009 will be joined by China Mobile's Gigabit-PON fiber-to-the-home investments in 2010. Subscriber growth continued in Japan and South Korea, where much of the infrastructure buildout for fiber-to-the-building and FTTH services has already been completed. India's BSNL also helped pace the GPON market in 2009, purchasing equipment to support their 700,000-line rollout throughout 2010," notes Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for broadband at Infonetics Research.
http://www.infonetics.comhttp://

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Indosat Upgrades with Ericsson's HSPA at 42 Mbps

Indonesia's Indosat has commissioned Ericsson to modernize its network, including the deployment of Ericsson's HSPA Evolution technology, which is capable of reaching up to 42Mbps. Indosat is currently serving 39.1 million subscribers in Indonesia.


The modernization will not only prepare the network to migrate to next generation LTE technology, but it will also gear it up with features that reduce energy consumption and footprint, making the network more environment friendly while reducing operating costs. The sustainable character of this network will be boosted by a number of "green sites" powered by alternative energy sources. Financial terms were not disclosed.


As part of the agreement Ericsson will provide Indosat with its Radio Base Station (RBS) 6000, MSS Blade Cluster, and MINI-LINK TN. Network design, deployment, training and support services are also part of the agreement. The modernization will provide Indosat with the flexibility to evolve to next generation technology, known as LTE (Long Term Evolution).
http://www.ericsson.comhttp://

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Global Carrier Deploys Infinera on Transatlantic Route

A major global telecommunications service provider has deployed Infinera's optical transport platform on a transatlantic route of over 6,000 kilometers. The new route provides the service provider 1.76 Tbps of optical capacity on a single fiber pair.


The Infinera Submarine Solution enables wavelengths to be implemented on a 25 Gigahertz channel grid, providing for doubling the density or capacity compared to traditional DWDM optical systems.

Infinera said that in addition to increasing capacity, its optical transport solution is intended to enable quick and easy deployment, provisioning, and management of the network. An innovative dispersion management solution is engineered to simplify dispersion management.


The company noted that with the completion of this project, the Infinera Submarine Solution is now deployed on over 50,000km of submarine cable systems."http://www.infinera.comhttp://

• In September 2009, Infinera introduced its new submarine optical transport solution, which is designed to be deployed at land-based terminals of submarine networks. The platform, which has already been deployed by Global Crossing, offers submarine network operators a way to protect their investment in their subsea infrastructure while adding new capacity to the network via the Infinera Digital Optical Networks architecture.

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8x8 Acquires Central Host

8x8 has acquired Central Host, Inc., a Los Gatos, California-based provider of managed hosting services and cloud-based computing solutions, for $1 million in cash and 432,276 shares of common stock. Central Host claims approximately $1 million of annual revenue.


Central Host has relocated to 8x8's Sunnyvale, California headquarters and will combine its operations with 8x8's existing Network Operations Center (NOC), sales, customer service and data center operations.


"Adding managed hosting and cloud computing services to our business service offerings is an ideal extension of our current business," said Bryan Martin, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of 8x8, Inc. "We are excited to provide additional enterprise-class services to our customer base, giving us multiple best-of-breed offerings to sell to the same installed base. Central Host's customers are ideal targets for 8x8's communications services, and we believe that many of 8x8's existing customers will benefit from the performance attributes and disruptive pricing of the Central Host offerings. We look forward to discussing the synergies and benefits of this acquisition during our fourth quarter and full-year results earnings conference call on May 19, 2010."http://www.8x8.comhttp://

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NEC Confirms SingTel's LTE Trial

NEC announced its participation SingTel's LTE field trials, which are scheduled to be carried out in Indonesia, Australia and the Philippines. NEC is participating in the trial through Globe Telecom in the Philippines.


The trial will verify data capacity and throughput, as well as the handover of existing networks and interoperability with third-party devices, all of which within a high-speed transmission environment. NEC is implementing verification and interoperability tests via the provision of wireless base stations, EPC core network devices, etc.
http://www.nec.co.jp

• In November 2009, SingTel announced plans to conduct regional LTE trials in Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore in collaboration with Optus, Globe Telecom and Telkomsel. The trials, which are scheduled to commence in the first half of 2010, will take place over a period of six to nine months. The trials will lay the groundwork to establish a regionally compatible LTE network to facilitate growth in the mobile broadband business for the SingTel Group, which now serves a mobile-user base of more than 273 million across its various markets. Six leading network vendors were invited to participate in the LTE trials: Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei, NEC, Nokia Siemens Networks and ZTE.

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Whitepaper -- Aricent

5 Steps to Elevating the Android Experience Android is a true game-changer for the mobile space, more effectively addressing the two fundamental shifts in consumer electronics - all things connected, and exponential growth in consumer expectations on innovation and improved usability. This is the era of open operating systems and the growing market adoption of the Android OS on multiple devices and the emergence of an ecosystem of active application vendors creating new, innovative solutions clearly underline the trend. In order to deliver highly differentiated Android based offerings, there is a clear need to address the "experience gaps". In this technical report, we have outlined 5 key Steps to Elevating the Android Experience -- areas that device ODMs, CE Manufacturers and Service Providers need to address in order to deliver compelling end user experiences on Android.   Download the full whitepaper here: http://info.aricent.com/Android_whitepaper-convergeddigest.html

http://info.aricent.com/Android_whitepaper-convergeddigest.html

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