Monday, May 17, 2010

BroadHop Releases its Policy Management for iPhone and Android

BroadHop released its SmartPhone Application Framework for the iPhone and Android OS. This allows mobile, policy-based applications to be bundled with a smartphone or downloaded by a subscriber from an app store. Once implemented, smartphones and service provider infrastructure can communicate, manage services, and initiate personalized, policy-based services in real time.


For example, a service provider could develop an interactive, loyalty-oriented program (with points-based benefits much like airline mileage programs) in which service providers could notify mobile subscribers within highly congested areas that their bandwidth would likely be constrained. Then, if desired, the provider could offer the subscriber the option to upgrade their network connection temporarily by using accumulated loyalty points, or even to downgrade voluntarily (freeing resources for other customers) to receive loyalty credits in exchange. BroadHop said this is just one example of the service and applications that service providers could create in order to work with their subscribers in managing network resources.


"Over the better part of the past decade, an era we refer to as Policy 1.0 , service providers have primarily used policy management as a tool for resource control and bandwidth management," said William Diotte, BroadHop's CEO. "With the introduction of the industry's first mobile applications for our Quantum Network Suite, BroadHop has ushered in the era of Policy 2.0, where policy management is used as an integral platform for service and application creation and, more importantly, as a means to provide a more compelling and positive subscriber experience."


In addition, BroadHop released a Policy Builder application module for application and/or service development in conjunction with its Quantum Network Suite. Policy Builder is a virtual workbench for authoring rules-based services through the creation of new service policy "blueprints" for new services and also extending existing installations that utilize different, and sometimes fragmented, policy enforcement points and subscriber databases. This allows service providers to deliver policy based services more rapidly by aggregating rules into reusable policy objects and templates. BroadHop integrates with existing back-office systems such as subscriber and service data sources and OSS/BSS platforms.
http://www.broadhop.com

Aricent and NetLogic Microsystems Collaborate on LTE eNodeB

Aricent and NetLogic Microsystems announced a collaboration aimed at enabling LTE capabilities on NetLogic Microsystems' XLS family of MIPS64-based multi-core, multi-threaded processors. The companies are working to create a pre-optimized, fully integrated solution for advanced LTE eNodeB platforms.


Aricent offers equipment manufacturers pre-packaged software frameworks conforming to the latest 3GPP standards, along with a comprehensive set of product lifecycle services to develop feature-rich and differentiated products while gaining significant time-to-market advantage at lower R&D costs. These offerings include:


LTE User Equipment (UE) Software Suite -- Aricent's LTE UE Software Suite is a complete software package for device and semi-conductor vendors including fully optimized Layer 1, Layer 2 protocol software with support for 100 Mbps downlink and 50 Mbps uplink data rates. The implementation ensures optimal power consumption, processor utilization and easy integration on multiple hardware platforms.


eNodeB Protocol Stacks and Framework -- Aricent's existing eNodeB offering provides a turnkey solution for radio access, from pluggable stack software to a pre-integrated and optimized software frameworks for Radio Access equipment, that have been benchmarked on multiple industry leading hardware platforms. Aricent's eNodeB Framework (eNBF) serves as a robust software platform for infrastructure providers planning to develop a complete LTE Release 8+ compliant eNodeB of varying densities (macro/pico/femto).


IP Backhaul -- Aricent's IP Backhaul solution is based on its industry-proven ISS Metro platform which offers pre-integrated Layer 2 switching solutions and can be used to build LTE and IP backhaul devices such as IP RAN Aggregation devices, Internet Offload Gateways, and Metro Ethernet devices.


Evolved Packet Core Protocol Stacks and Framework -- Aricent offers EPC protocol stacks as well as frameworks for the System Architecture Evolution (SAE) Gateway and the Mobility Management Entity (MME) Gateway. These include support for charging, QoS, high availability, lawful interception, and bearer-related features.


NetLogic Microsystems' XLS family of multi-core, multi-threaded processors used in the reference design offers a rich set of features and functionality with unprecedented performance and power for embedded telecommunications, enterprise, data center, security and storage applications. These processors integrate up to four high-performance MIPS64 cores, each with four-way simultaneous multi-threading, for a total of 16 fine-grain processor threads to mitigate latency, improve computational efficiency and throughput for network data plane and control plane processing in security appliances, storage appliances, base stations, eNodeB, RNCs, gateways, switches, routers, ATCA and AMC service cards. The processors also offer packet management, packet distribution and network accelerator engine, an intelligent Fast Messaging Network to maximize on-chip communications bandwidth, a superior memory sub-system, high-speed interconnects, and a broad set of acceleration engines. The company said its multi-core processors can support billions of in-flight messages and packet descriptors between all on-chip elements.
http://www.aricent.com
http://www.ensemble-multicore.org

Vodafone Reaches 341 million Mobiles, Sees Positive Trends

The Vodafone Group reported that its quarterly revenue increased by 8.4% to £44.5 billion for the fourth quarter of its 2010 fiscal year. Group service revenue increased by 8.9% to £41.7 billion. Q4 organic service revenue fell 0.2%, a second successive quarterly improvement. Group EBITDA was £14.7 billion, up 1.7%. The EBITDA margin declined in line with expectations. The results were driven by a strong performance from Verizon Wireless, which grew service revenue by 6.3% for the financial year.


At the end of the quarter, the Vodafone Group's proportionate mobile customer base was 341 million, with 8.5 million net additions in Q4.


Some highlights from the financial report:

  • Europe service revenue declined 3.5%(*) to £28.3 billion. In Q4 service revenue declined 1.7%(*)(1), an improvement on Q3. Strong revenue growth continued in data and fixed broadband. In mobile, improvements were driven by data, enterprise and roaming, with voice usage and price trends broadly similar to the previous quarter


  • Africa and Central Europe service revenue declined 1.2% to £7.4 billion. In Q4 service revenue increased by 2.4%(*), a 2.9 percentage point improvement on Q3, driven by strong revenue growth in Turkey (+31.3%(*)) and continued growth at Vodacom (+4.6%)


  • Asia Pacific and Middle East service revenue increased by 9.8% to £6.1 billion. In Q4 service revenue increased by 5.0%, lower than the previous quarter due to the start-up of Indus Towers in Q1 2009. India again generated quarter on quarter revenue growth. Its customer base now exceeds 100 million. The award of six new national licences in India and the resulting intense price competition have led to an impairment charge of £2.3 billion, partially offset by a £0.2 billion reversal related to Turkey.


  • Data revenue exceeded £4 billion for the first time, up 19.3%, with increased take up of data-enabled smartphones across Europe. The Group's active data users now exceed 50 million


  • Fixed line revenue grew by 7.9% to £3.3 billion with strong broadband customer growth and increased market share. The Group's fixed broadband customer base is now 5.6 million


"Vodafone's financial results exceeded our upgraded guidance on all measures. Revenue trends have improved again in Q4 driven by growth in mobile data and fixed broadband. Cost reduction targets were delivered ahead of schedule enabling commercial reinvestment to improve market share and further strengthen our technology platforms. Free cash flow of £7.2 billion and confidence in Vodafone's prospects have enabled us to increase dividends by 7% and to target 7% per annum growth in total dividends per share for the next three years. We are
creating a stronger Vodafone, which is positioned to return to revenue growth during the 2011 financial year, as economic recovery should benefit our key markets," stated Vittorio Colao, Chief Executive.
http://www.vodafone.comhttp://

Orange Business Builds Global MPLS VPN for Flowserve

Flowserve, the leading supplier of pumps and valves to the oil and chemical industries, has selected Orange Business Services to manage its global MPLS network under a multimillion dollar engagement. The network connects more than 250 Flowserve locations across six continents (56 countries total).


The network supports Flowserve's critical Oracle and SAP applications at a significantly lower cost threshold, managed VoIP service, enhanced messaging to 11,000 mailboxes, and a management for remote devices for 5,000 users. Full migration to the Orange Business VPN will be completed by March 2011.
http://www.oranagebusiness.com
http://www.flowserve.com

Sipera Raises $10 Million for UC Security

Sipera Systems raised $10 million in venture funding for its real-time Unified Communications (UC) enablement and security solutions.


Sipera's "Borderless UC" architecture enables enterprise managers to safely extend UC over any network to any device, including office phones, home office phones, remote call center agents, video devices, soft-phones, collaboration tools, and smartphones. The company's portfolio includes its smartphone UC security solutions and UC-Sec enterprise UC security product family. Its UC security appliance protects against signaling and media vulnerabilities while maintaining the highest quality of service (QoS). It terminates encrypted UC traffic, offers fine-grained policy enforcement to apply different security and call routing rules, and solves firewall/NAT traversal among other UC deployment issues.


Last month, the company announced that its security and compliance products now protect up to one million UC devices for its customers worldwide. The company recorded a 300 percent year-on-year growth in demand as of the first quarter of 2010. Sipera noted that is also nearing completion of the Common Criteria Certification of its solution, an international standard for IT security products.


"Enterprise adoption of UC is surging, and the need to secure these applications and ensure compliance with privacy and monitoring regulations is mission critical. Sipera has seen a major spike in demand for its UC security solutions, including its smartphone security offering that enables an enterprise to securely manage VoIP and UC on an employee's smartphone in any location," said Sipera President and CEO John Lochow.


The new funding was led by S3 Ventures, and includes participation by prior investors Austin Ventures, Duchossois Technology Partners (DTEC), Sequoia Capital, and STAR Ventures. This brings Sipera's total funding to $48 million.
http://www.sipera.com

NorthScale Raises $10 Million for Memcached Web Software

NorthScale, a start-up based in Mountain View, California, secured $10 million in Series B funding for its Memcached "elastic data" infrastructure software. This new class of data management software -- elastic data infrastructure -- promises substantial cost, performance and scalability advantages over relational database technology, for the vast majority of data associated with modern web applications and cloud computing environments.


NorthScale's technology leverages a directly-addressed, distributed (scale-out), in-memory, key-value cache alongside relational database technology. Frequently used data is cached, thereby reducing the number of queries a database server must perform for web applications.


The new round of financing was led by Mayfield Fund, with participation from Series A investors Accel Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners.


NorthScale also announced the appointment of Bob Wiederhold as its president and CEO. Previously, he was chairman, CEO, and president of Transitive Corporation (acquired by IBM) and before that he was president and CEO of Tality Corporation, a provider of electronic design services.
http://www.northscale.com

XO Communications Cites Challenging Market Dynamics

XO Communications reported Q1 2010 revenue of $369.5 million, a decrease of $8.3 million, or 2%,
compared to the year-ago period. The company said the revenue drop was primarily from targeted price increases within its wholesale long-distance services, which were implemented to improve margins on selected routes.


"While existing market dynamics continue to be a challenge for the telecommunications industry as a
whole, XO's continued focus on providing best-in-class broadband services and products well positions
the company to execute upon its long-term business plan," said Carl Grivner, chief executive officer of
XO.


In the first quarter of 2010, XO's Broadband offerings generated $209.8 million in revenue, an increase of
$20.4 million, or 11%, from the year-ago period. This increase principally resulted from growth in the IP
VPN, IP Flex, Ethernet and Dedicated Internet Access services, compared to the year-ago period. XO cited a strong demand for secure, low-cost IP access, and said that it continues to focus on moving
customers away from TDM-based solutions. Growth for these services was partially offset by a decline of $3.5 million in wholesale Carrier VoIP termination revenue due to targeted price increases intended to improve margins on selected routes.


The revenue growth in XO's Broadband services is partially offset by the year-over-year decrease in
Integrated/Voice service revenues. This category contains more mature bundled data and voice offerings,
as well as traditional Carrier Long Distance Termination (CLDT). In addition to the continuing demand
shift from older integrated voice and data offerings to Broadband-enabled solutions, CLDT revenue
decreased by $4.6 million compared to the year-ago period. The decline in CLDT revenue was also due to
targeted price increases intended to improve margins on selected routes. Also contributing to the
company's lower revenue year-over-year was the continued decline in XO's traditional Legacy/TDM
services, which decreased $10.8 million, or 9%, compared to the same period last year reflecting XO's
ongoing strategic focus on offering Broadband-enabled solutions to customers and prospects.
http://www.xo.com

ZyXEL Offers Dual-WAN, Multi-Service, Wireless VDSL2 Gateway

ZyXEL Communications is introducing a single gateway that supports copper, fiber-to-the-node (FTTN)
and fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) deployments. The P2812HNU, with dual-WAN, offers an integrated VDSL2 modem that enables service providers to support up to 100/50 Mbps over newer PTM networks -- along with ADSL2+ fallback to accommodate existing networks. The gateway also has a dedicated Gigabit Ethernet WAN port for FTTH deployments.

ZyXEL's new gateway also features 300Mbps 802.11n wireless, four Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports and two SIP-based VoIP ports. On the management side, the device supports TR-069 for remote configuration by the service provider.
http://www.zyxel.com

Solarflare Samples 40nm quad-port 10GBASE-T PHY chip

Solarflare has begun sampling a 40nm quad-port 10GBASE-T PHY chip to large server and switch OEMs. Target applications include single and dual-port Ethernet server adapters, high-density LAN switch to server, LAN switch to switch, iSCSI based IP storage and test equipment designs.


The device, which represents Solarflare's fourth generation, achieves 100 meter reach at one-third the power consumption of existing 10GBASE-T PHYs. The company said that under normal 100 meter operation, the new SFT9104 consumes just 2.5 watts per port. The chip has multiple data center power modes including a 1.5 watts ultra-low power and latency mode for in-the-rack applications. The SFT9104 is fully backwards compatible with both 1000BASE-T and 100BASE-TX.


"We have achieved the power, density, performance and cost required to accelerate the mass adoption of 10GbE," said Russell Stern, CEO of Solarflare. "Delivering quad-port PHYs at 2.5 watts per port makes the SFT9104, by far, the lowest-power and easiest 10GBASE-T part for our customers to integrate into their designs."


Commercial availability is expected in Q4 2010.
http://www.solarflare.com

Cisco to Acquire MOTO -- a Design Consultancy

Cisco will acquire privately held MOTO Development Group, a design consulting firm that develops products and product strategies for the consumer industry. The San Francisco based company, which has about 35 consultants on staff, assisted with the development of the Flip video product family, which Cisco acquired last year. Cisco said MOTO's philosophy directly aligns with its own consumer device strategy. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.cisco.com

AT&T Wins $90 Million UC Contract with Shell

AT&T has won a 3-year, $90 million contract to provide an enterprise-wide unified communications (UC) service to support Shell's 150,000 users in more than 90 countries.


The project is the largest UC technology deployment to date by AT&T for a single business customer. The service will provide Shell users with a suite of services to better enable inter-company and external collaboration, productivity and communications. The hosted and managed UC solution based upon Microsoft's Office Communications Server 2007 R2. The initial roll-out to users started earlier this month. AT&T is already managing Shell's global deployment of the previous version of Microsoft's software.
http://www.att.com

AT&T Offers U-verse Quad-Play Bundle

AT&T today introduced new "Choice" consumer bundles that combine a quad-play of AT&T U-verse TV, U-verse High Speed Internet, U-verse Voice and wireless services. The Choice bundle, first introduced in March, let customers choose three services for their bundle -- and select home phone or wireless as their voice option. The new Choice quad-play bundles give U-verse consumers additional savings for choosing all four AT&T services.



In addition to a monthly savings of $30-$45 with a U-verse Choice triple-play bundle for one year, customers who bundle a fourth AT&T service receive an extra $15 in monthly savings, for up to $60 in savings each month for one year.


"With more than three-fourths of our U-verse customers taking a triple or quad-play bundle, we know this is an option consumers want and can't get from cable," said Joey Schultz, vice president of consumer marketing, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. "We're giving customers even more reasons to bundle with AT&T. This is an incredible deal that not only gives you savings and one monthly bill, but a full lineup of services that work together to bring you a new level of integrated features, convenience and control."


The AT&T U-verse Choice Plus bundle starts at $172 a month for U-verse TV U300 with Total Home DVR capability; U-verse High Speed Internet Elite (up to 6 Mbps downstream); AT&T Nation 450 wireless voice with unlimited messaging; and unlimited nationwide home phone calling with U-verse Voice Unlimited -- providing a savings of $540 for one year.
http://www.att.com/bundledeal

AT&T's Telepresence Footprint Reaches 75 Countries

AT&T's Telepresence footprint
now reaches locations in a total of 75 countries and territories. Twelve countries were recently added to the list: Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Norway, Portugal, Slovak Republic, South Africa, Turkey, and Venezuela. The fully managed bundle includes AT&T customer premises equipment, installation, full monitoring and management of the application, remote help desk service, on-site equipment maintenance, and functionality over an AT&T Virtual Private Network or Enhanced Virtual Private Network transport.


"The expansion of the AT&T Telepresence Solution further establishes AT&T as one of the leaders in managed intercompany telepresence solutions in terms of footprint, scale, subscribers and value," said Joe Lueckenhoff, senior vice president, AT&T Business Solutions.


Subscribers in all locations will be able to access the AT&T Business Exchange, which is a network-based community for intercompany collaboration. Globally, more than 100 companies and organizations can access the AT&T Business Exchange, and have the ability to connect with one another via more than 1,100 telepresence endpoints worldwide.
http://www.att.com

Juniper Outlines 3-2-1 Data Center Architecture, 10 GbE Switch

Juniper Networks outlined its new "3-2-1" data center network architecture
aimed at improving latency, increasing density, boosting security, lowering power requirement and simplifying management.


Juniper's plan is to leverage a "Virtual Chassis" fabric technology to reduce from three to two layers, and then collapse to one layer via Juniper's "Project Stratus" fabric in the future. Data centers typically have access, aggregation and core switching layers. Juniper currently collapses the aggregation and core layers into a single switch. The Virtual Chassis creates a single, logical switching fabric across multiple racks in the data center, so that a pool of compute resources can be more effectively virtualized. Juniper estimates that its Virtual Chassis will let administrators move virtual machines between 10x faster than current approaches. Ultimately, Juniper's Project Stratus seeks to collapse data center switching into a single, logical layer linking potentially thousands of servers.


As part of the announcement, Juniper introduced its new EX4500 switch with up to 48 10GbE ports and its EX8200-40 SX line card, both of which use a new switching ASIC that was developed in-house. The EX4500 switch is designed for top-of-rack data center access, while the new line card can be inserted into the company's EX8200 chassis to enable up to 640 ports of 10 GigE in a single box. Availability is slated for later this year.


Juniper is seeking to drive simplification through a single network OS (Junos), single software release chain, and flexible software platforms (Junos, Junos Space and Junos Pulse).


Junos Space (announced last October) aims to automate provisioning, management and support for data center networks. The company is rolling out four new Junos Space software applications: Virtual Control software to manage physical and virtual systems from a common orchestration platform; Ethernet Design and Security Design software to enable rapid configuration and deployment of data center networks and security policies; and Service Now with Service Insight to enable fast and proactive detection, diagnosis and resolution of network issues.


Juniper is working with VMware to achieve seamless orchestration across both physical and virtual network elements.


Juniper is also pursuing a "dynamic security model" for the data center using its SRX Series Services Gateways. This is accomplished with new AppTrack software, which enables application and user visibility to better manage data flows and pinpoint bottlenecks. In addition, Junos Pulse (now shipping) and Junos Space (including Security Design) enable IT to dynamically manage identities, applications and policies across their network from devices to data centers.


Juniper also announced that IBM has started shipping OEM versions of the SRX Series, enabling IBM customers to get the world's fastest network firewall as part of their integrated data center solutions.


The company also introduced its new Juniper Care Plus services portfolio, offering mission-critical support for enterprise customers.






http://www.juniper.net