Dreamforce in SF Attracts 135,000 Registrants - Power of Cloud

Salesforce.com's annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco has attracted over 135,000 registrants (online and in-person), making it the largest cloud and software industry event so far.  This compares to about 90,000 registrants last year. The event has about 350 partner companies exhibiting at the expo, as well as 1,200 sessions. In his keynote address, Marc Benioff, Salesforce's Chairman and CEO, said his company is building the Internet...

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FCC Considers Mandatory PSTN Sunset in 2018

The FCC will consider an order at its January meeting addressing the IP Transition along with the recommendation to sunset the public switched telephone network in 2018. In a statement, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai said he welcomes the decision but that adequate testing and preparation must be conducted in advance. Geographic all-IP trials should be conducted so that carriers will be able to  transition from TDM to IP in a discrete set of wire...

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Ericsson Confirms Key Contracts for China Mobile's TD-LTE Rollout

China Mobile has selected Ericsson to deploy LTE TDD in 15 provinces in China, covering 63 percent of China's population. Financial terms were not disclosed. Specifically, Ericsson will deploy radio access networks based on its multi-standard RBS 6000. For the core network - which will be used for China Mobile's nationwide mobile network covering 2G, 3G and 4G - Ericsson has been selected to upgrade its installed base, equal to a market share...

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Intel Tunes its Xeon Phi for Programming Simplicity and Performance

Intel confirmed that its next generation Xeon Phi devices (codenamed "Knights Landing"), available as a host processor, will fit into standard rack architectures and run applications entirely natively instead of requiring data to be offloaded to the coprocessor. Intel said this approach will significantly reduce programming complexity and eliminate “offloading” of the data, thus improving performance and decreasing latencies caused by memory, PCIe...

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Verizon Launches Managed Certificates for Internet of Things

Verizon Enterprise Solutions has launched Managed Certificate Services, a next-generation, cloud-based platform designed to authenticate objects and machines -- verifying object and machine “identities” -- and securing data transmitted between these connections. Verizon said its new class of cloud-based certificates provides strong security while eliminating the need for expensive hardware and complex implementations that were once the hallmark...

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CenturyLink acquires Tier 3 for Cloud Services

CenturyLink has acquired Tier 3, a provider of public cloud services based in the Seattle area, for an undisclosed sum. Tier 3's cloud platform, which is immediately available as "CenturyLink Cloud," targets complex enterprise workloads.  It offers a self-service interface and Web APIs. CenturyLink said the acquisition builds on its earlier AppFog acquisition. "Our mission is to provide world-class managed services to global businesses on...

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Poland's Netia Tests Coriant's 400G Optical Transport

Netia, Poland's largest alternative provider of fixed-line telecommunications, has tested a 400G DWDM solution from Coriant. The trials, based on Coriant's industry-leading hiT 7300 DWDM technology, included: Flexigrid ROADMs - to support flexible channel spacing, specifically across 400G in 150GHz superchannels A Flexigrid 400G superchannel signal based on 4 subcarriers The purpose of the trial was long haul transmission of a 400G signal adjacent...

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Huawei Brings its High Performance Compute Platform to U.S. Market

Huawei announced the US launch of its Tecal E9000 blade server featuring integrated compute, storage, networking and system management.  The blade server is optimized for private and hybrid cloud infrastructure, mission-critical enterprise IT applications, in-memory computing, real-time big data analytics and HPC Cluster applications. Huawei E9000 x86 server platform boasts 15.6 Tbps mid-plane bandwidth, the highest blade server chassis bandwidth...

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Aviat Introduces Adaptive Intelligent Repeater for Low Latency Microwave

Aviat Networks introduced its Eclipse Adaptive Intelligent Repeater (AIR) for low latency microwave networks. The product provides adaptive repeater and regenerator functions with error-free Space Diversity path protection. Aviat said a key advantage of its Eclipse AIR is that ability to connect more direct routes — such as those over water — reducing end-to-end circuit miles and, therefore, latency. McKay Brothers, which specializes in private...

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ONF's Plugfest Tests OpenFlow v1.3 and OF-Config v1.1.1

The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) conducted its fourth, semi-annual PlugFest earlier this month at the Spirent Proof of Concept (SPOC) Lab in Sunnyvale, California. The event focused on the testing of OpenFlow v1.3 and the OpenFlow Management and Configuration Protocol (OF-Config) v1.1.1 through a “speed dating” format. Participating companies’ switches, controllers, and applications were paired together through one-on-one testing and small...

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Infonetics: Optical Infrastructure Spending Slows

Globally, the optical network hardware market (WDM and SONET/SDH) is down 7% sequentially in 3Q13, and down 1% from the year-ago quarter, according to a new report from Infonetics Research. “In the third quarter of 2013, sales of WDM optical equipment are up 4% from a year ago and remain at the elevated levels reached earlier in the year, but overall optical spending is down on a quarter-over-quarter and year-over-over basis,” says Andrew Schmitt,...

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Sprint Expands Connected Vehicle Services

Sprint announced an expansion of its Velocity business unit, which delivers telematic services for automotive manufacturers, to cover more vehicle models. Sprint Velocity Connect is an expanded capability that supports additional hardware on the Sprint Velocity platform, including TCUs (Telematics Control Units), OBD-II (On-Board Diagnostic) devices and embedded in-dash head units. “With more than 14 million vehicles sold in the United States...

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