Rackspace Delivers Cloud Servers powered by OpenStack

Rackspace announced the availability of Cloud Databases and Cloud Servers powered by OpenStack. Customers can now select from private, public or hybrid offerings and have the flexibility to deploy their solutions in a Rackspace data center or another data center of their choice.

The company said this marks the first time any company has deployed a large-scale open source public cloud powered by OpenStack.

Rackspace’s open cloud portfolio includes not only Cloud Servers and Databases, but also Cloud Files object storage with a content delivery network, Cloud Sites platform as a service for .NET and PHP, load balancers, and monitoring.

“Rackspace is disrupting the current model of how IT is consumed,” said Lanham Napier, CEO of Rackspace. “We have delivered on our promise to implement OpenStack in our cloud offerings, and to free customers from the vendor lock-in that they face at other major cloud providers. We’re delivering open, high-performance, scalable and easy-to-use cloud solutions, while empowering customers to choose features, services, prices and locations based on the needs of their business. At the heart of Rackspace is Fanatical Support, which means we put our customers’ needs and wants first. Today, we are extending this approach by giving the market an open alternative, enabling them to choose how and where they use the cloud.” http://www.rackspace.com 01-Aug-12

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NEC Enhances its ProgrammableFlow SDN Solution

NEC is enhancing its ProgrammableFlow software defined networking product family with new capabilities to automate the provisioning of high performance network services. The announcement includes the release of the UNIVERGE PF Series ProgrammableFlow Controller 3.0, an OpenFlow controller supporting end-to-end QoS and network management capabilities.

 ProgrammableFlow 3.0 expands the scalability of the ProgrammableFlow physical and virtual network fabric. Specifically, the number of switches that can be controlled is greatly expanded and operators can build networks with more than 4,096 virtual LAN (VLAN) ID configurations.

In addition, NEC said its new UNIVERGE PF Series offers integrated API capabilities, enabling third party applications, such as network management or orchestration systems to directly interact with the network through a well-defined functional approach. Third party systems can make on-demand calls to the API to create, edit, and delete virtual networks, as well as to add and remove policies.

"These enhancements to NEC's UNIVERGE PF Series meet the growing need for virtual networks using OpenFlow technologies in support of cloud data centers and business networks," said Hiroyuki Watanabe, General Manager, Global Solutions, NEC. "Additionally, they satisfy the demand for lower installation and operational costs while providing greater security and higher quality." http://www.nec.co.jp 01-Aug-12

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Amazon Web Services Offers Provisioned IOPS at 500 Mbps to 1 Gbps

Amazon Web Services introduced new features for customers looking to run high performance databases in the cloud.

The company is now offering EBS Provisioned IOPS and EBS-Optimized instances for Amazon EC2. Provisioned IOPS are a new EBS volume type designed to deliver predictable, high performance for I/O intensive workloads, such as database applications, that rely on consistent and fast response times.

AWS said customers can attach multiple volumes to an Amazon EC2 instance and stripe across them to deliver thousands of IOPS to their application. EBS-Optimized instances deliver dedicated throughput between Amazon EC2 and Amazon EBS, with options between 500 Mbps and 1,000 Mbps. http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/ 01-Aug-12

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AT&T to Acquire NextWave Wireless for its Spectrum

AT&T has agreed to acquire NextWave Wireless, which holds licenses in the Wireless Communication Services (WCS) and Advanced Wireless Service (AWS) bands, for approximately $25 million plus the assumption of about $600 million in debt.

According to its 2011 annual report, Nextwave Wireless' total domestic spectrum holdings covers approximately 218.6 million total POPs, with 104.8 million POPs covered by 20 MHz or more of spectrum, and an additional 94.9 million POPs covered by at least 10 MHz of spectrum. In addition, a number of markets, including much of the New York City metropolitan region, are covered by 30 MHz or more of spectrum. Its domestic spectrum resides in the 2.3 GHz Wireless Communication Services (WCS), 2.5 GHz Broadband Radio Service (BRS)/Educational Broadband Service (EBS), and 1.7/2.1 GHz Advanced Wireless Service (AWS). Its international spectrum includes 2.3 GHz licenses in Canada with 15 million POPs covered by 30 MHz of spectrum.

In terms of spectral size, NextWave's AWS spectrum is divided into six spectrum blocks, A through F. There are three 10 MHz blocks, each consisting of paired 5 MHz channels, and three 20 MHz blocks, each consisting of paired 10 MHz channels. Nextwave hold both 20 MHz and 10 MHz licenses.

WCS spectrum was first auctioned in 1997, but has not been utilized for mobile Internet usage due to technical rules designed to avoid possible interference to satellite radio users in adjacent spectrum bands.

In June, AT&T and Sirius XM filed a joint proposal with the FCC that would protect the adjacent satellite radio spectrum from interference and enable WCS spectrum — for the first time — to be used for mobile Internet service. This proposed solution on WCS spectrum, which is still under review by the FCC, effectively creates much-needed new spectrum capacity. http://www.att.com http://www.nextwave.com 02-Aug-12

• The old NextWave Wireless was formed in 1996 as a wholly owned operating subsidiary of NextWave Telecom Inc., which sought to develop a nationwide CDMA-based PCS network. In 1998, NTI and its subsidiaries, including Old NextWave Wireless, filed for Chapter 11, and the case took seven years to resolve. Substantially all of the assets related to the PCS build-out, except PCS licenses, were abandoned when NTI was sold to finance the plan of reorganization of the NextWave Telecom group.

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BT Deploys 500,000 Wi-Fi Hotspots for London 2012

BT has deployed 500,000 Wi-Fi hotspots across the capital for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The latest Wi-Fi hotspots are along 44km (27 miles) of the River Thames. BT Wi-Fi is also currently live on the Olympic Park.

Hotspots sites also include high street brands, hotel chains, thousands of independent businesses and homes, plus outdoor hotspots across Westminster and Waltham Forest.

BT now has over 4 million Wi-Fi hotspots in the UK and Ireland, plus an extra 2 million international hotspots through BT’s partner Fon. http://www.btwifi.com 02-Aug-12

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ADTRAN Adds Four-Degree ROADM

ADTRAN introduced a new four-degree, scalable, compact Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer (mini-ROADM) system-on-a-blade enables greater flexibility for service providers to respond to shifts in traffic and capacity demands in their residential, business, wholesale and mobile backhaul networks. ADTRAN's Optical Networking Edge (ONE) blade solution integrates into its flagship Total Access 5000/5006 platform.

ADTRAN said the flexibility of the four-degree, gridless mini-ROADM design reduces complexity in the network compared to alternative ROADM architectures that typically require a multi-blade implementation and a separate service delivery platform. The mini-ROADM design also simplifies agile optical network deployments by uniquely integrating into a single card the typical distributed and over-sized ROADM sub-elements, such as the amplifiers required to adjust for optical losses. These new features allow service providers to rapidly respond to customer requirements in dynamic markets like residential broadband, carrier Ethernet and 4G backhaul.

In addition, ADTRAN has doubled the transmission capacity of its ONE portfolio for up to 88 wavelengths of 10 Gbps. Future upgrade to 100Gbps networking and services will also be supported.

"ADTRAN has been working closely with customers to deliver a solution that allows them to merge multi-service access, aggregation and packet optical transport for increased network flexibility and scalability,” said Mano Nachum, packet optical networking product line manager, ADTRAN’s Carrier Networks Division. "The new ONE capabilities allow service providers to take full advantage of the benefits of agile photonics in response to the ever growing traffic and capacity demands on their metro, middle-mile and access edge networks." http://www.adtran.com 01-Aug-12

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Cisco Appoints Marc Benioff and Kristina Johnson To Board

Cisco announced the appointment of Marc Benioff, co-founder and CEO of salesforce.com, and Dr. Kristina M. Johnson, CEO of Enduring Hydro, LLC and former Under Secretary of Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy, to its board of directors.

With the appointment of Benioff and Johnson, Cisco's board now consists of 14 members, including Carol A. Bartz, former CEO, Yahoo! Inc.; M. Michele Burns, former chairman and CEO, Mercer LLC; Michael D. Capellas, former CEO, VCE Company, LLC; Larry R. Carter, former SVP, Office of the Chairman and CEO, Cisco Systems, Inc.; John T. Chambers, chairman and CEO, Cisco Systems, Inc.; Brian L. Halla, former chairman and CEO, National Semiconductor Corporation; John L. Hennessy, Ph.D., president, Stanford University; Richard M. Kovacevich, retired chairman and CEO, Wells Fargo & Company; Roderick C. McGeary, chairman, Tegile Systems, Inc.; Arun Sarin, KBE, senior advisor, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and former CEO of Vodafone Group Plc; Steven M. West, founder and partner, Emerging Company Partners LLC; and Jerry Yang, co-founder and former chief Yahoo!, Yahoo! Inc.
http://www.cisco.com
02-Aug-12

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FCC Sees Savings from Reforms to Lifeline Program

Reforms to the Lifeline program, which were implemented in January of this year, have yielded $43 million in savings so far and are on track to save at least $200 million by the end of the year, according to a progress report issued by the FCC.

The Lifeline program provides financial assistance to low-income Americans to get phone service. Reform implemented in January help to cut duplicative subscriptions, and required better proof of eligibility. http://www.fcc.gov 01-Aug-12

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