Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Ericsson Acquires Conceptwave for OSS/BSS Software


Ericsson has acquired ConceptWave, a private company specializing in software for managing the lifecycle of telecom services.  Financial terms were not disclosed.

ConceptWave, which is based in Toronto, Canada, has developed Product Lifecycle Management, Order Lifecycle Management and Customer Lifecycle Management solutions for service providers. The company was founded in 2000 and has about 170 employees.

Ericsson said the acquisition complements and strengthens its operations- and business support systems (OSS/BSS) portfolio.

Elisabetta Romano, Head of OSS in Business Unit Support Solutions, Ericsson, says: "There is a trend towards more personalization of services where end-users want to purchase communications services meeting their individual needs. This puts high demand on telecom operators to be able to offer flexible product bundles with customized pricing packages. In this area ConceptWave's solutions and employees' expertise adds considerable value to Ericsson's portfolio."

http://www.ericsson.com

In January 2012, Ericsson completed its acquisition of Telcordia for US$1.5 billion in cash. 

Huawei Shows 480 Gbps Router Line Card


Huawei unveiled the industry's first and highest-capacity 480 Gbps router line card, enabling a capacity of 15.4 Tbps for its high-end core router with 48x10GE, 12x40GE, or 4x100GE line-rate forwarding per slot.  Huawei will offer various daughter cards with 10GE/40GE/100GE ports for flexible configuration.
Huawei said the capacity is achieved using its third-generation programmable, custom Solar 3.0 ASICs with Smart Memory and Intelligent Frequency Adjustment (IFA) technologies. The company said it is able to achieve a record-low energy use of 0.71 W/g for the line card.
"The global 100G era is coming, with Internet traffic fast approaching terabyte level. 2012 marks the beginning of large-scale commercial deployment of 100G, with the launch of Huawei's 480G line card expected to accelerate the development of the high-end 100G industry. It will help carriers build sustainable and efficient networks, combat the bandwidth challenges created by cloud application proliferation, and reduce network O&M costs." said Gai Gang, President of Huawei's Carrier IP Product Line.
  • Earlier this month, Huawei announced Software Defined Network (SDN) capabilities on its Service Provider routers. The company said its SDN solution is based on its high-performance, large-capacity hardware platform and fully distributed "VRP" software, which enables a centralized control plane and a software-defined forwarding plane.
    Huawei will support Openflow for decoupling of hardware and software. By abstracting the control layer and the orchestration layer, Huawei said its SDN Enabled router enables carriers to rapidly deploy new services without having to change the forwarding hardware.  Another advantage of SDN, according to Huawei, is that end-to-end path calculation based on routing policies is possible with a centralized controller.  The SDN Enabled router is also expected to simplify IP network management.

Huawei Cites 100G Milestones - 40 Carrier Deployments

Huawei confirmed that its 100G networks are now deployed by more than 40 carriers in over 30 countries around the world.  The company claims a 39% share of the 100G market, according to figures from Ovum.

Two leading deployment examples are Rostelecom's national 100G network across Russia, and a pan-European 100G WDM network for KPN (the Netherlands).

http://www.huawei.com

More 100G news about Huawei is here:
http://convergedigest.blogspot.com/search?q=Huawei+100G&max-results=20&by-date=true

Huawei Collaborates with Yale on Open Edge Cloud


Huawei is collaborating with Yale University on Open Edge Cloud – an open content delivery infrastructure using data lockers.
Huawei said the idea behind the Open Edge Cloud is to integrate service modules, including storage, computing, video processing and network awareness, over the edge of telecom carrier networks. The service modules are application programmable, enabling a flexible and efficient cloud platform by providing standard APIs and virtualized in-network resources to applications. 
The work will be presented to the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)’s Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM) conference.
 http://www.huawei.com

Nominum Leverages DNS Query Analytics for New Applications


Nominum introduced its N2 platform and "IDEAL" ecosystem for helping network operators to harness the power of DNS data analytics to improve their networks and offer in-house applications.
Nominum’s DNS software currently processes over one trillion queries per day at over 140 network operators worldwide.  The N2 platform gathers and anonymizes this data allowing application providers seamless access to it.  The N2 platform enables the rapid development and seamless integration of applications that leverage this DNS data.   These applications are generated by the Nominum IDEAL ecosystem, an open ecosystem of application providers. 
Nominum said this approach lets network operators leverage their DNS infrastructure to deploy more highly functional apps more quickly and cost effectively to differentiate their services.
“Traditionally, it’s been hard to take advantage of DNS data to gauge network health and activity or improve the subscriber experience. The tools for collecting, synthesizing, anonymizing, and analyzing it weren’t adequate,” said Nominum’s Chairman Dr. Paul Mockapetris, the inventor of the DNS. “The N2 Platform simplifies the process of collecting large amounts of data in real-time and makes it easier to develop new applications and integrate with other network operator systems."
Additionally, Nominum has released six new Nominum applications built on top of the N2 platform:
  • Nominum Subscriber Safety: Protects subscribers from malicious websites on any device.
  • Nominum Network Security: Deters outbound spam, protects valuable network assets and subscribers.
  • Nominum Personal Internet: Makes it simple for subscribers to personalize their home Internet.
  • Nominum Network View: Provides instant access to high-level network intelligence with drill downs to detailed data. 
  • Nominum Configuration Manager: GUI interface streamlines DNS operations and reduces management costs.
  • Nominum Content Filtering: Gives families the option to keep illegal and offensive content out of their homes and mobile devices.

Ericsson Supports First VoLTE Launches

Ericsson noted its role in the world's first three commercial Voice over LTE (VoLTE) launches: SK Telecom and LG U+ in Korea, and MetroPCS in the US.  All three carriers announced their VoLTE deployments on August 7, 2012.



“Telecom grade telephony is going all-IP over commercial mobile broadband LTE networks for the first time. This is a historic moment in the telecom industry. We see increasing operator interest in VoLTE globally, and we expect broader market take-off in 2013,” said  Johan Wibergh, Head of Business Unit Networks at Ericsson.

http://www.ericsson.com

DE-CIX Internet Exchange Scales Across Frankfurt with ADVA's 100G



DE-CIX, the world's largest Internet Exchange serving over 480 Internet service providers via a distributed peering fabric in Frankfurt, Germany, will upgrade its metro network to 100G channels using ADVA Optical Networking's FSP 3000 platform.

DE-CIX hit a new data throughput record last week  as Internet traffic across its switching fabric exceeded the 2 Tbps (terabits per second) mark for the first time.

The DE-CIX peering infrastructure has a star-shaped topology and is spread out over a total of twelve data centers operated by different providers in the Frankfurt metropolitan area.  The current 10G DWDM metro network is being upgraded to 100G channels.

ADVA said its100G Metro solution is built on 4x28G direct detection technology delivering four key efficiencies: cost, space, power and spectral. 


"We're seeing a continuous increase in data traffic with a growth rate of about 80% every year, an increase that shows no signs of slowing down," said Arnold Nipper, CTO at DE-CIX. "To meet this enormous surge in data it's critical that we migrate the core of our network. What's more, we need to do so in the most seamless manner possible. We have a record of 100% uptime and this is something we cannot risk. ADVA Optical Networking’s 100G Metro enables us to migrate our current 10G services while at the same time adding 100G capacity in the simplest manner possible. But it's the small footprint and the low power consumption of theADVA solution that make all the difference: ADVA Optical Networking is simply the only vendor out there with 100G in this form factor."

"DE-CIX is faced with aggressive data demands," said Detlev Schmidt, head of the AXIANS Business Unit Carrier & Service Provider. "Serving over 480 customers from more than 50 countries places unprecedented strains on its core network. To ensure that it can meet its customer expectations and scale for future growth, we're helping DE-CIX to build one of the most advanced networks of its kind. Centered upon the ADVA FSP 3000, DE-CIX is building its core infrastructure on a firm foundation: A 100G Metro foundation that has already been tested in some of the most demanding network environments."



  • Equipment deployed in the DE-CIX distributed fabric includes Force10 Networks' Terascale platform.

Australia's NBNCo Picks Cisco for MPLS


Australia's NBN Co has selected Cisco to supply MPLS-enabled routers and firewalls for its National Connectivity Network (NCN) in a deal estimated to be worth up to $38 million over five years. Cisco's solutions will be deployed in NBN Co's depot, aggregation nodes and other key locations and will support the Operations Support System (OSS) and Business Support System (BSS) platforms, signalling and timing.

Cisco said the win formally expands its role in Australia's NBN. In late 2010, a consortium led by Cisco was awarded the contract to provide NBN Co with a data centre platform. Together with its technology partners EMC and VMware, Cisco was commissioned to build a scalable platform to run essential applications, including network management, inventory management, customer care, billing, service provisioning and fulfilment systems, as well as a web portal to support customer self-service and the corporate website.

NBN Co's executive general manager of Network Architecture and Technology, Tony Cross, said: "We are pleased to extend our relationship with Cisco as a supplier of data centre infrastructure to include the supply of a high-performing, highly secure network foundation composed of switches, routers and firewalls to support our NCN."

http://www.cisco.com

BT Openreach Extends Fibre Rollout

BT Openreach is extending its fibre rollout to a further 163 exchange areas as part of BT’s £2.5bn Superfast initiative. So far, 11 million premises have access to Superfast broadband delivered via Openreach fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) or fibre to the premises (FTTP).  This extension, which will add more than one million homes and businesses to Openreach’s previously announced fibre footprint, covers exchanges spread across the UK from Torquay, in Devon, to Kilbirnie in Scotland.

Openreach aims to bring fibre broadband available to around two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2014.

http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk