MapR Raises $110 Million for Apache Hadoop

MapR Technologies, a start-up based in San Jose, California, raised $110 million in venture funding for its distribution for Apache Hadoop software.

MapR has significant production Hadoop environments in financial services, healthcare, media, retail, telecommunications, and Web 2.0 companies.  The financing will be used to continue growth in the big data and analytics segment, especially to fund additional engineering resources and support open source projects, such as Apache Drill, Hadoop 2.2 with YARN, and Apache Spark.

Google Capital led the $80 million equity financing. Also participating was Qualcomm Incorporated, through its venture investment group, Qualcomm Ventures, and existing investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, NEA and Redpoint Ventures.  In addition to the equity financing, MapR completed a debt facility of $30 million led by Silicon Valley Bank.

"Google has a long-standing commitment to Hadoop, making Google Capital an ideal investor for MapR. This investment round recognizes our customers’ rapid adoption, their tremendous results and ROI, and also the capital efficiency of our business model,” said John Schroeder, CEO and co-founder of MapR Technologies. “It’s extremely gratifying to bring these high-caliber strategic investors on board, including Qualcomm who is the leader in the mobile ecosystem and also at the forefront of the Internet of Things, to help us accelerate growth and position the company for global leadership.  Our installed base of more than 500 paying licensees provides a strong foundation and we are excited to move forward with the tremendous resources from our new and current financial investors.”

“Hadoop is a cornerstone for the big data ecosystem, and MapR has demonstrated its leadership in the space,” said Albert Wang, director, Qualcomm Ventures. “We invested in MapR because of the strength of its technology in leveraging the expanding Internet of Things and providing immediate business benefits."

http://www.mapr.com/company/press-releases/mapr-closes-110-million-financing-led-google-capital

• In March 2014, Cloudera confirmed that its latest funding round, which included a strategic investment from Intel, amounted to $900 million.  This financing round includes the previously-announced $160 million of funding from T. Rowe Price and three other top-tier public market investors, Google Ventures, and an affiliate of MSD Capital, L.P., the private investment arm of Michael Dell and his family, and a significant equity investment by Intel that gives them an 18% share of Cloudera.
  Cloudera offers enterprise analytic data management software powered by Apache Hadoop, which is the underlying technology behind a growing number of Big Data projects.

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Huawei Launches 1T WDM Line Card

Huawei launched the world's first 1T WDM line card.

The line card delivers 800-km transmission based on common G.652 fibers and erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs), but without regeneration. It can encapsulate client signals of any rate into an OTN-based 1 Tbps channel for transmission.

A demonstration was shown at the Next Generation Optical Networking Forum last week using Huawei's flagship OSN 9800 platform.

Huawei said its line card uses Optical Digital Signal Processing (oDSP) algorithm for processing high-speed signals. Switching between short-haul metro mode (ultra-high-capacity transmission) and ultra-long-haul backbone mode (ultra-long-haul transmission) can be implemented through software-based modulation scheme reconfiguration. The short-haul metro mode reaches a capacity of more than 20 Tbit/s per fiber, nearly triple that of current mainstream commercial 100G systems. The ultra-long-haul backbone mode supports more than 10 Tbit/s transmission per fiber over a distance of 3,000 km.

Huawei noted that it has deployed over 200 commercial 100G networks worldwide to date.

http://pr.huawei.com/en/news/hw-346706-1twdm.htm#.U7F1PfldVF4

• In 2013, Huawei demonstrated a 40T Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) prototype at the OFC/NFOEC 2013 event in Anaheim, California. The prototype supports simultaneous transmission of 20 C-band optical channels running at 2 Tbps, providing an industry-leading capacity of up to 40 Tbps per fiber. Huawei cited three innovations in its platform:
  The combined use of Electrical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (eOFDM) and frequency-domain Hybrid Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) technologies substantially improve spectrum efficiency to 10 bit/s/Hz.
  The combined use of Flex-Optical Digital Signal Processing (Flex ODSP) and Hybrid Soft-/Hard-Decision Multi-level Coding (HMLC) technologies extend the transmission distance to beyond 1,000 km over common single-mode fiber and Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers (EDFAs).
  Software-implemented transceiver technology allows optical modulation formats such as Quadrature Phase-Shift Keying (QPSK), 16QAM, 32QAM, and 64QAM to be adjusted or combined, achieving a configurable transmission rate and distance for each service. As a result, dynamic service needs in varied scenarios can be easily met.

• In 2012, Huawei completed a 2 Tbps WDM field trial with Vodafone, achieving up to 3,325 km transmission for 2 Tbps signals. The 40T WDM prototype is another major breakthrough in high-speed transmission proving current commercial optical networks will be ready for the upcoming flood of digital traffic.

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China Unicom Deploys Software-Defined IP Radio Access Network with Huawei

The Sichuan Branch of China United Network Communications (Sichuan Unicom) has deployed a software-defined networking-based IP radio access network (SDN IPRAN) in the city of Chengdu.

The deployment, believed to be the first of its kind in the world, uses Huawei’s SoftCOM technology.

Huawei said the use of SDN technology on the IPRAN simplifies network O&M and enables a high-quality packet bearer network for wireless services. After deployment, Sichuan Unicom’s SDN IPRAN increased the efficiency of service provisioning by 60% compared with traditional networks. Virtual management of large volumes of end devices significantly reduces the network management scale and improves O&M efficiency. The control plane is decoupled from the forwarding plane, thus implementing new service provisioning regardless of forwarding devices. This significantly shortens LTE service go-to-market periods and helps respond to market requirements quickly and supports new LTE service development and rapid future innovation.

Huawei also highlighted its IP Flow Performance Measurement (IP FPM) technology, which delivers real-time service performance measurement per service per user.  This makes network performance visible and predictable, helping carriers locate specific network performance bottlenecks.

"We are glad to cooperate with Huawei in the SDN IPRAN field and successfully commercialize the SDN IPRAN. We expect these innovations to improve network operation efficiency, promote rapid innovative service delivery and go-to-market, further improve user experience in UMTS/LTE services, and create more value for our customers," said Mr. Qiao Guiping, general manager of Sichuan Unicom.

http://pr.huawei.com/en/news/hw-346708-sdn.htm#.U7F42_ldVF4

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IBM Inaugurates SoftLayer Data Center in London

IBM 's SoftLayer group is opening a new data center in London this month.

The new facility will have capacity for more than 15,000 physical servers and will offer the full range of SoftLayer cloud infrastructure services, including bare metal servers, virtual servers, storage and networking. It will seamlessly integrate via the company’s leading private network with all SoftLayer data centers and network PoPs around the world, including the existing SoftLayer Amsterdam data center and London network Point of Presence (PoP), both launched in 2012.

“We already have a large customer base in London and the region; we’re excited to give those customers a full SoftLayer data center right in their backyard, with all the privacy, security, and control the SoftLayer platform offers,” said Lance Crosby, SoftLayer CEO. “The work these businesses are doing—the solutions and services that they are building in the cloud—is inspiring. Organizations of all sizes are using SoftLayer services to disrupt their industries or even their own operations, creating new business models and applications.”

http://www.softlayer.com/London

• The London facility is the latest of 15 new data centers that IBM plans to open as part of a $1.2 billion dollar global investment to strengthen and extend its cloud services in Europe and around the world.

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Jibe Mobile Launches joyn for DT's COSMOTE Romania and Slovak Telekom

Deutsche Telekom's regional operating companies in Romania and Slovakia, COSMOTE Romania and Slovak Telekom, rolled out their joyn services developed by Jibe Mobile and delivered over the Jibe IP Communication Cloud.

joyn powered by COSMOTE and joyn by Telekom, provided by Jibe Mobile, let customers use a single application to connect via video call, text, instant messaging, group messaging, as well as share their favorite photos and videos — on their iPhone and Android- powered smartphones.

"This rollout further demonstrates the significant role that Jibe is playing to help carriers
transform the future of telecom services for mobile consumers throughout the world by delivering
IP communications services rivaling the best of OTT,” said Amir Sarhangi, co-founder and CEO
of Jibe Mobile. “Jibe's cloud-based technology and economics are enabling the rapid cost efficient transition to a globally connected IP mobile network able to deliver the most innovative and engaging communication services."

http://www.jibemobile.com

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Cisco Acquires Assemblage for One-Click WebRTC/HTML5

Cisco announced its acquisition of Assemblage, a start-up developing WebRTC/HTML5 collaboration tools.  Financial terms were not disclosed.

Assemblage offers real-time collaboration apps for shared whiteboarding, presentation broadcasting and screensharing. Users are able to collaborate simply via their browser with one-click, instantly accessing collaboration apps delivered via the cloud. Assemblage’s technology also integrates with popular third party cloud services and supports 40 different file types to enable quick and efficient collaboration.

Cisco said the acquisition brings a strong team of engineers with deep web development expertise to Cisco’s Collaboration Technology Group.  The goal is to integrate Assemblage's technology into Cisco's next-generation collaboration platform.

http://blogs.cisco.com/news/cisco-announces-acquisition-of-assemblage/
http://www.assemblagehq.com/

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OIF and ONF Collaborate on Transport SDN

The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) and the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) are collaborating on Transport Software Defined Networking (Transport SDN) demonstrations being conducted this year in several carrier-hosted labs.

The testing, which will begin in late August in a number of global carrier labs, will leverage the OIF’s carrier representation, knowledge of transport networks, and worldwide interoperability testing experience for optical equipment, with ONF’s leadership role for the OpenFlow protocol and SDN architecture. OpenFlow extensions for optical transport developed in the ONF Optical Transport Working Group will be prototyped in the demo.

The OIF is currently working on several initiatives supporting Transport SDN including a carrier-driven Requirements Document and an SDN Framework Document identifying SDN application programming interfaces for a carrier environment.

ONF currently has a number of carrier-focused initiatives underway, including SDN transport, mobile and wireless network applications, carrier-grade SDN, and large-scale network migration.

“We expect SDN, in tandem with Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), to shape the future of telecommunications networks,” said Vishnu Shukla, of Verizon and OIF president. “It is exciting to have these two prominent groups combining resources, innovative thinking and industry support to put together a very relevant and important demo.”

“We are pleased to join forces with the OIF, who have been contributing to our efforts to extend OpenFlow to support optical transport networks,” said Dan Pitt, executive director of the Open Networking Foundation. “The OIF/ONF Transport SDN demonstration will showcase how transport networks will benefit from SDN and NFV.”

http://www.oiforum.com
http://www.opennetworking.org

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Crehan Research: Intel's Grantley Platform to Drive Server Networking

A new report from Crehan Research forecasts that 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) will finally eclipse one Gigabit Ethernet (1GbE) by 2016 to become a majority of total shipments, which closely follows the mass adoption of servers based on Grantley, Intel’s latest micro-architecture platform.

“Although Romley and Nehalem, Intel's prior two server platforms with new processor micro-architectures, were capable of driving enough bandwidth to warrant the incorporation of 10GbE networking, many supporting factors to push broader 10GbE adoption were not yet in place,” said Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research. “With the impending arrival of Grantley, these supporting factors – including broad market portfolios of lower-priced adapters and data center server-access switches, in addition to more compelling 10GBASE-T offerings – are falling into place to facilitate strong growth in the 10GbE server attach rate,” he said.

In its 4Q12 report, published in early 2013, Crehan Research identified three major stages of mainstream 10GbE server networking adoption, the first centering around blade servers and converged networking, the second around public cloud and hyper-scale data centers and the third around enterprise rack and tower servers. These three major stages are also correlated with the broad adoption of Intel’s micro-architecture server platform cycles, respectively, Nehalem, Romley and Grantley.

http://www.crehanresearch.com/

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Zayo Ready to Deliver 100G Wavelengths over European Network

Zayo has completed a network upgrade that enables it to provide 100G wavelength services over its long-haul European network.

Zayo’s long-haul network extends from London to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Paris, and Paris to London. Its 100G optical platform has been gradually updated over a nine-month period and is now fully deployed and available for implementation by customers.

The network upgrade was completed in conjunction with its recent expansion in Western Europe. Through its acquisition of Geo Networks in May 2014, Zayo added over 2,100 route miles to its European network. Zayo will add an additional 350 metro route miles to its network through the acquisition of Neo Telecoms, which is expected to close in the third quarter of 2014.

European Vice-President Alastair Kane said, “This expansion of our 100G capability is testament to our continued investment in Europe and dedication to providing our customers with the latest technology to accommodate bandwidth needs. With these long-haul capabilities in place, we can provide significantly enhanced service between our metro networks”.

http://www.zayo.com

Earlier this year, Zayo Group has acquired Geo Networks, a London-based dark fiber provider, for an undisclosed sum.

The acquisition will add over 2,100 route miles to Zayo’s European network, and connectivity to 587 on-net buildings. Geo's network owns and operates a high capacity fiber network in the UK, providing managed networks, dark fiber and co-location services to a variety of high-bandwidth sectors including media companies, service providers, financial services, data centers and gaming organizations.

Geo’s 100-route mile London network is housed in the London sewer system, which minimizes the threat of physical faults, boosting reliability and security, and enabling rapid deployment with minimum disruption.  The network reaches 130 data centers across the UK. Geo also operates a diverse optical fiber subsea system, East-West Ring, providing diverse connectivity to Dublin, a strategic hub for data centers and cloud service providers.

With this acquisition, Zayo will have 79,000 miles of fiber in 8 countries, and connectivity to more than 650 data centers.

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Advancements in Semiconductor Quantum Dots with Single-atom Precision

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT), the Paul-Drude-Institute (PDI; Germany), and the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL: USA) have cooperatively developed a novel quantum dot (artificial atom) and used it to crate artificial molecules with single-atom precision.

The achievement was achieved using a clean surface of semiconductor single crystal thin film manufactured by Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) by using a low-temperature, Scanning Tunneling Microscope to integrate atoms one-by-one with an atom manipulation technique.

A quantum dot (QD) is a nanostructure that confines electrons in a nanometer-level narrow space to make quantum mechanical effects evident.

Potential applications include optical and electronic devices, display panels, biotechnology, solar cells, and quantum information processing. However, the influence of microfabrication error becomes more serious as the manufactured device becomes smaller. Conventional lithography and self-assembling methods are problematic in the processing precision.


NTT said if the fabrication and characterization of quantum structures with atomic precision become available at the semiconductor substrate surface, this will be a major leap toward the realization of a new integrated circuit technology expected about 10 years from now.

http://www.ntt.co.jp/news2014/1406e/140627a.html

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DOCOMO to Offer Japan's First eSIM for M2M Devices

NTT DOCOMO is launching Japan's first Embedded Subscription Identity Module, or eSIM, a new type of SIM that works on mobile networks of various international operators, for M2M Devices.  Conventionally, a unique SIM is required for each operator.

The eSIM is able to register phone numbers and other subscription-identity data of DOCOMO and other international operators in machine-to-machine (M2M) devices, such as connected automobiles, industrial equipment and many more.

DOCOMO said it has been actively involved in the establishment of an eSIM global standard, which was officially released in December 2013.

http://www-935.ibm.com/industries/automotive/

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Toyota Picks IBM to Build Platform for Advanced In-Car Services

Toyota Motor Corporation has selected IBM to build and design a new application development platform for in-car services.  The project is part of Toyota’s new telematics service, called T-Connect, and aims to accelerate application development and deployment as well as enhance in-car services that will shape the future of connected vehicles.

Toyota and IBM will work together to create an onboard devices and application development environment for Toyota Open Vehicle Architecture. This single development platform will bring together an ecosystem of mobile app developers and content providers that provide content for T-Connect. Using the IBM platform, app developers and content providers will be able to better collaborate on building and designing apps for in-car services.

IBM Lotus Expeditor for Automotive is middleware that creates composite applications. It provides client integration tools to deploy and manage composite applications as part of a flexible environment.

"As the industry continues to move toward bringing fully connected vehicles to market, new requirements for leveraging innovations in technologies like mobile continue to emerge,” said Dirk Wollschläger, general manager, Global Automotive Industry, IBM. “The connected vehicle transformation will require collaboration across disciplines. We are proud to start on that path with Toyota and nurture the power of its thriving ecosystem.”

http://www.toyota.com
http://ibm.com/automotive

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ETSI Releases KPI Standard for Data Center Energy-efficiency

ETSI has published a Data Centre Energy Management (DCEM) indicator standard to help measure energy efficiency and compare energy management efficiency in data centres.

The DCEM Global KPI specifies the coefficient or "Global KPI" of the eco-efficiency and energy management of data centres. It combines two indicators: one taking into account different sizes of data centre (S, M, L or XL) and a second incorporating 9 different levels of performance, similar to the energy classification model used for home appliances.

ETSI said its work will allow benchmarking of data centres or ITC locations in a wide range of industrial sectors.

http://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_es/205200_205299/2052000201/01.02.01_60/es_2052000201v010201p.pdf

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Verizon Suffers Billing System Outage

Verizon was hit by a widespread outage of its online customer portal and billing system on Friday and Saturday across much of the U.S.  Many users were unable to log-in to their accounts and some locations reported difficulty activating new accounts.

Communication services were not affected.

#VerizonOutage

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Orange Business Adds Salesforce to its Secured Cloud Hub

Orange Business Services will be adding Salesforce to its secure cloud hub, Business VPN Galerie.

Launched in 2010, Business VPN Galerie is the world’s first hub linking Orange VPN customers to cloud services via trusted network gateways.

The VPN Galerie enables customers tp access Orange and partners’ infrastructure and software as a service, while benefitting from the advantages of the Orange Business Services cloud-ready network. These include end-to-end management and support, reliability, performance and security. Customers can maintain their existing user access methods and corporate security policies for all Business VPN Galerie services.

“Business VPN Galerie was the world’s first cloud-ready network offer on the market. By connecting Business VPN Galerie with Salesforce, we are strongly enriching the ecosystem of applications available through Business VPN Galerie,” says Didier Duriez, senior vice president Global Solutions and Services, Orange Business Services.

http://www.orange-business.com/fr/produits/business-vpn-galerie

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Orange Silicon Valley Invites Start-ups to Test in its GigaStudio

Orange Silicon Valley announced the opening of its GigaStudio, a lab dedicated to helping start-ups test ultra-high bandwidth use cases in a secure 1 Gbps test bed environment. The company will be providing free access to GigaStudio for interested companies.

Orange Silicon Valley is seeking the early adopters and evangelists in the ultrafast Internet ecosystem. The GigaStudio will hold events to champion gigabit use cases and applications.

Orange Silicon Valley said gigabit speed fundamentally reshapes the consumer experience.  "Gigabit thinking" refers to how gigabit will fundamentally reshape the consumer experience. While common wisdom equates gigabit Internet with more and higher resolution video consumption, the technology demands a reset of product design thinking. By definition, gigabit Internet means that companies are no longer constrained by bandwidth limitations and the requirement to optimize for speed. Additional fiber benefits include low latency for gaming applications, symmetrical connections for faster uploads/cloud syncing, and effectively unlimited multi-tasking for consumer households.

In the French market, Orange Fiber has 400,000 customers and 3 million French households are eligible for fiber today.

Gabriel Sidhom, VP of Technology Strategy & Development at Orange SV, commented: "Orange is fully committed to rolling out very high broadband networks throughout Europe: Spain, Poland, and especially France with the target of covering 60% of the population by 2020. We are opening the Orange GigaStudio doors for high bandwidth startups to access our customer base. I encourage you to bring your ideas, come connect to our dedicated gigabit connection, and shape the Internet of tomorrow with us."

Orange Silicon Valley will hold the first Orange GigaStudio information session on July 31st.

http://www.orangegigastudio.com

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Verizon Digital Media Services Expands its Global CDN

Since its acquisition of EdgeCast Networks at the beginning of this year, Verizon Digital Media Services has added more than 20 new points of presence (POPs) to its global content delivery network. New POPs include Warsaw, Stockholm, Milan, Vienna, Melbourne, Helsinki, Kaohsiung, Batam, Jakarta and Sao Paulo. The company also expanded its presence with additional POPs in many cities already served, including London, Madrid, Paris and Amsterdam. These additions offer customers even greater connectivity and performance within these markets.

Verizon said each new POP is built securely on the latest generation of delivery servers, with pre-built dedicated space for rapid expansion. The POPs have multiple diverse connections into last-mile networks and are provisioned to support the full suite of Verizon EdgeCast services.

“The majority of our customers offer their services to a global audience. Our continued worldwide expansion means content is as close as possible to the end-user’s digital doorstep,” said James Segil, chief marketing officer, Verizon Digital Media Services. “Continuing to add points of presence to our network helps our customers deliver even their largest files quickly and efficiently no matter whether the viewer is watching video, shopping, gaming or sharing content.”

One example of the global CDN expansion occurred in a massive and diverse carrier-neutral Brazil colocation site in Sao Paulo. Serving as one of the most important Internet exchanges in the region, this Verizon-owned data center is in Sao Paulo’s high-tech corridor and has redundancy links across both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

http://www.verizondigitalmedia.com

In December 2013, Verizon agreed to acquire EdgeCast, a content delivery network company based in Santa Monica, California. Financial terms were not disclosed. The deal closed in January 2014.

Edgecast operates a series of CDN "SuperPOPS" in over 30 locations around the world.  Unlike earlier CDNs, which placed a small number of servers in thousands of locations, Edgecast focused on a smaller number of strategic global locations near primary Internet Exchange Points. These caching servers are located in data centers where major backbone providers operates Internet exchanges.

EdgeCast claims more than 6,000 accounts, including some of the world’s leading Web brands for global media delivery and acceleration services.

Verizon Digital Media Services plans to integrate EdgeCast capabilities in its own network.

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Verizon Enterprise Partners with VMware on Mobile Device Management

Verizon Enterprise Solutions and VMware announced an expansion of their strategic relationship to include mobile security and enterprise mobility management solutions.

Under the partnership, Verizon will now provide AirWatch by VMware Enterprise Mobility Management Platform as part of the Verizon mobile device management portfolio for on premise deployments.

“As enterprises respond to changing employee demographics and expectations, we continue to build out our mobile device management portfolio to offer customers choices that drive business efficiency and employee engagement,” said John Harrobin, chief marketing officer, Verizon Enterprise Solutions. “Our relationship with VMware brings advanced enterprise mobility solutions to organizations across a number of sectors.”

http://newscenter.verizon.com/corporate/news-articles/2014/06-24-verizon-vmware-expansion/

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Zain Completes First VoLTE Call in Kuwait

Zain completed the first Voice over LTE (VoLTE) call over its commercial LTE network in Kuwait. NSN is the VoLTE solution provider. Nokia Networks’ VoLTE solution consisted of its IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem), Subscriber Data Management, and Open TAS (Telecommunications Application Server).  Open TAS provides supplementary services that are applicable for voice, messaging, and video sessions for subscribers in LTE and other broadband networks.

“Zain further affirms its leadership position by introducing the latest technologies to constantly improve its customers’ experience,” said Omar Saud Al Omar, Chief Executive Officer of Zain Kuwait. “Today’s VoLTE success with Nokia Networks’ solution is an important milestone in our planning for the future, which will translate into providing enhanced mobile broadband services to our customers across Kuwait, offering them an opportunity to enjoy unparalleled quality.”

http://nsn.com/news-events/press-room/press-releases/nokia-networks-zain-make-kuwait-s-first-high-definition-voice-call-in-live-lte-network

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Zain KSA Picks Nokia for Network Upgrade

Nokia Networks signed a large contract with Zain KSA to modernize and expand the operator’s network in Saudi Arabia.

Under a program called RELOAD, Nokia Networks will deploy its compact Single RAN Advanced to refarm part of Zain KSA’s 2100 MHz 2G and 3G frequencies for LTE. Carrier aggregation of FDD-LTE spectrum will be used for LTE-Advances services.  Nokia's Flexi Zone small cells will be installed for enhanced coverage, and Zain will also deploy Nokia's NetAct for monitoring, managing and optimizing its 2G, 3G and 4G networks.

Nokia Networks said this upgrade will also feature its its "Liquid" distributed cloud solution, which is enabled by its Radio Applications Cloud Server (RACS). This will provide Zain KSA with enhanced 4G throughput and backhauling savings, and will put it into a position to deliver customized applications such as augmented reality and location-based services due to its exposure to real-time network data.

Hassan Kabbani, CEO of Zain KSA, said: “We want to reload our network infrastructure with the very latest of technologies in order to address the high demand for more interesting services. We are confident that Nokia’s unique technologies such as Liquid Applications will greatly improve customer experience and position Zain KSA as a technology leader in the Saudi market.”

Igor Leprince, Senior Vice President & Head of MEA, Nokia Networks, said: “This huge project exemplifies the strong partnership we have developed over the years and will result in Zain KSA’s network being one of the best in the region.”

http://nsn.com/news-events/press-room/press-releases/nokia-networks-posts-mea-firsts-in-deal-to-modernize-expand-zain-s-network

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Pluribus Teams with Sanmina

Sanmina will manufacture the next generation of Pluribus Networks' Freedom F-Series high-performance network computing appliances.

Sanmina is a leading provider of integrated manufacturing solutions making some of the world's most complex and innovative optical, electronic and mechanical products.

The Pluribus Freedom F-Series includes its Netvisor software platform, a network hypervisor that delivers control and visibility by automating the network just like a server, enabling a rich set of in-network fabric, analytics and virtualization services. The Freedom product line bridges the DevOps-NetOps gap by extending virtualization to the network and has been deployed in more than 20 countries in some of the most demanding content delivery, financial trading and enterprise messaging networks.

"Sanmina provided the critical expertise we needed in high-speed printed circuit board (PCB) technology and system design that helped make the Freedom F-Series a reality," said Kumar Srikantan, president and chief executive officer of Pluribus Networks. "Their ability to design and prototype the product here in Silicon Valley meant we could work closely with them every step of the way. Pluribus is now leveraging Sanmina's global footprint to transfer production to a lower-cost region. By being local and global, Sanmina allowed us to bring our products to market quickly and cost-effectively."

http://www.sanmina.com
http://www.pluribusnetworks.com

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Blueprint: The Ethernet of Things

By Nicholas Ilyadis
Vice President and Chief Technical Officer, Infrastructure & Networking Group 
Broadcom Corporation

It’s hard to avoid the buzz these days about the Internet of Things (IoT), the next evolution of computing where the connections are made, not just between PCs and servers or across mobile devices but to billions of devices across the Internet. As IoT gains traction, connections are being made among wearable devices, thermostats, cars, medical devices and myriad other things in order to communicate, share data and take action.

As IoT proliferates, the demands on enterprise, service provider and home networks grow exponentially, placing additional demands on network architects and administrators to build and maintain networks that operate effectively and efficiently. A key component of that is the wider adoption of Ethernet connectivity, which has been migrating to 10 gigabits per second (Gbps), 40 Gbps and, eventually, 100 Gbps capacity. Trusted Ethernet represents the underlying networking layer on which IoT devices and the operating systems and software applications that power them run.

IoT growth predictions can be stunning. Research firm IDC predicts the number of connected things on the planet to reach 212 billion by the end of 2020. According to the Cisco Global Cloud Index, annual global data center IP traffic will reach 7.7 zettabytes by the end of 2017. A zettabyte is one byte times 10 to the 21st power. That’s a huge amount data to be in motion across Ethernet networks and at rest in storage devices.

IoT connections are being made not just on wired networks, but also on fast-growing wireless networks using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology. Much of the IoT buzz is driven by fascinating new things that are being developed by multiple companies. In addition to a range of non-conventional Internet-connected devices such as smart appliances, IoT includes a growing number of intelligent wearable products such as fitness trackers that provide real-time data on the user’s vital signs and activity levels. In industrial settings, an IoT device embedded in a jet engine can send statistics on how the engine is running to system controllers.

But all those devices – and more – generate and consume data that has to go somewhere. The networking industry is responding to this coming data deluge with innovations that are intended to move data quickly, efficiently and reliably:

• Software-Defined Networking (SDN). SDN delivers a network-wide software platform to deliver better coordination, control and programmability in order to reduce the complexity of these modern networks. Ethernet switches are ideally suited for SDN as they provide the fabric of the Internet and data centers.
• Network Function Virtualization (NFV). Complementing SDN, NFV moves networking functions from dedicated appliances – such as routers and switches -- to general purpose servers that run virtualization technology in order to make Ethernet networks more scalable, agile and efficient.
• Cloud Computing. The cloud delivers the additional computing capacity required to satisfy growing demand to an enterprise or small business from a third party. With the cloud, organizations can crank up capacity to meet growing user demand without having to invest in new IT infrastructure. In addition, the ability to host processing and data in the cloud provides a mechanism to relocate that capacity to geographic locations where the data is being created as well as control the devices that are generating the data. Cloud Computing also depends on a well-designed Ethernet network, since low latency and high bandwidth are required to actualize the value.
• Big Data. As more things seek to connect to the Internet and each other, the volume of data traversing networks increases, but the larger those data haystacks grow, the harder it is to find the all-important needles within them. Big Data analyzes vast databases of information to glean the most relevant insights from which end users will most benefit. Ethernet, with its high capacity and low latency capabilities, is again ideal for interconnecting the servers that crunch this data.
• Green Data Center. As data centers grow in size and complexity, energy costs can skyrocket and efficiency can suffer. The New York Times reported in 2012 that data centers may waste as much as 90 percent of the electricity they obtain from their local electric utility. Migrating to more energy-efficient and higher capacity Ethernet connectivity does much to green-up the data center. One study shows that if networks migrated to 10G Energy Efficient Ethernet, from 1G devices, CO2 emissions could be reduced by up to 3.5 million metric tons, which is the equivalent of taking 2.3 million cars off the road or eliminating consumption of 1.3 billion gallons of gasoline or 27 million barrels of oil.

Network automation tools such as SDN, NFV and others, combined with Ethernet connectivity at 10Gbs and faster speeds, will together deliver a networking foundation onto which the software layer for IoT devices will run. That physical network will be complemented by wireless connectivity with processors built into Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-based devices to extend network connections. Together, they will allow end users to get the most out of the billions of connected things expected in the future.

About the Author
Nicholas (Nick) Ilyadis serves as Vice President and Chief Technical Officer of Broadcom’s Infrastructure and Networking Group (ING), responsible for product strategy and cross portfolio initiatives for a broad portfolio of Ethernet chip products including Network Switch, High Speed Controllers, PHY, Enterprise WLAN, SerDes, Processors and Security.

Prior to Broadcom, Ilyadis served as Vice President of Engineering for Enterprise Data Products at Nortel Networks and held various engineering positions at Digital Equipment Corporation and Itek Optical Systems.  Ilyadis holds an MSEE from the University of New Hampshire and a BTEE from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

About Broadcom
Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ: BRCM), a FORTUNE 500® company, is a global leader and innovator in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications. Broadcom® products seamlessly deliver voice, video, data and multimedia connectivity in the home, office and mobile environments. With the industry's broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art system-on-a-chip solutions, Broadcom is changing the world by Connecting everything®. For more information, go to www.broadcom.com.

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Google Cloud Platform Gains Analytic and Mobile Tools

Google introduced a number of new tools to help developers build applications and gain insight on data sets hosted on the Google Cloud Platform.  The new cloud capabilities include:

Cloud Dataflow, a fully managed service for creating data pipelines that ingest, transform and analyze data in both batch and streaming modes. Cloud Dataflow is a successor to MapReduce, and is based on Google's internal technologies like Flume and MillWheel.

Google Cloud Save, the latest release enables Android applications to synchronize data between devices with push notifications with no server code required.

Cloud Debugger, a new tool that provides a full stack trace and snapshots of all local variables for any watchpoints set in code with no performance impact.

Cloud Trace, a tool that provides deep insights into the performance of cloud applications. It helps visualize and understand the time spent by an application for request processing.  A developer can compare performance between various releases of an application, see latency distributions and correlate application changes to performance changes.

Google Cloud Monitoring powered by Stackdriver, designed to identify and address unusual behavior across your application stack. Cloud Monitoring is aware of popular open source applications and will automatically generate dashboards and alerting tuned for them.

Cloud Platform integration into Android Studio, simplifies the process of adding a Google App Engine backend to a mobile app. Android Studio now has three built-in App Engine backend module templates including Java Servlet, Java Endpoints, and an App Engine backend with Google Cloud Messaging.

http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/

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Swisscom Selects PLUMgrid OpenStack Networking Suite

Swisscom has selected PLUMgrid's OpenStack Networking Suite as a foundational element of its cloud-based IT infrastructure.

PLUMgrid features a highly distributed, software-based network virtualization platform designed for cloud operators and large-scale cloud environments. The company said its technology enables Swisscom to leverage existing physical infrastructure to build a secure multi-tenant virtual network with PLUMgrid’s Virtual Domains and reduce the provisioning time from weeks to seconds.

Swisscom is Switzerland’s leading telecommunications provider and ranks as one of the leading Swiss providers specializing in the integration and operation of complex IT systems, with 6.4 million mobile customers, more than one million Swisscom TV customers and roughly 2 million retail broadband connections. The carrier has decided to use OpenStack as its core component for cloud virtualization orchestration.

“Over the next few years we’ll migrate the majority of our IT applications and services to our cloud, and OpenStack is the core of our cloud virtualization orchestration,” said Lukas Fluri, Head of Cloud Development at Swisscom. “PLUMgrid delivers not only best-in-class technology that ensures a highly secure environment for our customers but also ease of use, integration with OpenStack, and the flexibility needed for today’s clouds.”

“Swisscom sets high standards of support, services and security for its customers,” said Awais Nemat, Co-Founder and CEO at PLUMgrid. “The industry’s most advanced, scalable, and high-capacity VNI, PLUMgrid OpenStack Networking Suite allows Swisscom to quickly, easily and efficiently offer new services and give their customers greater security, performance, visibility, and control over their cloud infrastructure.”

http://www.plumgrid.com

PLUMgrid, a start-up based in Sunnyvale, California, offer its PLUMgrid Platform, an infrastructure virtualization solution that enables the creation of on-demand programmable networks, which the company calls Virtual Domains. The goal its to allow administrators to create, copy and deploy secure multi-tenant virtual networks in seconds.

The PLUMgrid Platform integrates security, operations and maintenance tools, and network visibility and analytics.  It runs on existing standard-based x86 servers to deliver dynamic and scalable virtual data center networks. The company says network services can be added or removed in seconds, without network disruption or downtime.

PLUMgrid is building an ecosystem of industry partners, including A10 Networks, Arista Networks, Broadcom, Cavium, Check Point Software Technologies, Citrix, Cumulus Networks, F5 Networks, Ixia, Mellanox Technologies, Palo Alto Networks, Silver Peak and Zerto.

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NETGEAR Delivers Triband WiFi Router Powered by Broadcom

NETGEAR introduced its new Nighthawk X6 AC3200 Tri-Band WiFi Router (R8000)-- the first tri-band WiFi router based on the new Broadcom 5G WiFi XStream platform.

The WiFi router uses six high-performance antennas and three network bands, one 2.4GHz and two 5GHz, to deliver a combined WiFi speed of up to 3.2 Gbps (1300+1300+600 Mbps) -- the fastest to date. It balances the network load to ensure the best WiFi performance for each device and deliver the maximum wireless range.

The Nighthawk X6 is powered by a 1GHz dual core processor with three additional offload processors. It supports NETGEAR Beamforming, a smart, signal-focusing technology that improves WiFi connections by locking onto a wireless device on the network and pinpointing WiFi signals directly at the device.

In a typical dual band router, for example, the video streamer and the Internet gamer have to effectively "time-share" the 5GHz band. With the Nighthawk X6 Tri-Band Router, however, video streaming and Internet gaming traffic can each operate on separate 5GHz bands so that each of them gets double the speed of a dual band router.

"Home networks are being weighed down by an exploding number of WiFi devices demanding bandwidth for more and more video content," said Sandeep Harpalani, NETGEAR's director of product marketing for Retail Network Products. "Nighthawk X6 solves these issues by not only providing more WiFi bandwidth but also segmenting slower and faster devices across different WiFi bands, and balancing the number of devices in each band to deliver the best-in-class experience for streaming, sharing and gaming."

Broadcom noted that the average household is expected to own roughly 50 Internet-connected devices by 2022, up from approximately 10 today. Its 5G WiFi XStream Platform features five core "Penta Core" central processing unit (CPU) to maximize network capacity. SmartConnect software is used to ensure each Wi-Fi device operates on best frequency band. The platform automatically separates coexisting 802.11n and 802.11ac Wi-Fi devices into distinct frequencies.

http://www.netgear.com/
http://www.broadcom.com

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Google Drive for Work Offers Unlimited Storage for $10/Month

Another shot in the online storage wars -- Google announced Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, individual file sizes up to 5TB, advanced audit reporting and new security controls for $10/user/month.

Google Drive for Work offers 24x7 phone support and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. It include all of Google’s productivity apps like Docs, Sheets, Slides, Sites and Hangouts.  Google is also adding enterprise-grade security and compliance, including a SSAE 16 / ISAE 3402 Type II, SOC 2-audit, ISO 27001 certification, adherence to the Safe Harbor Privacy Principles, and can support industry-specific requirements like HIPAA.

http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/driveforwork/index.html


Earlier this month, Microsoft announced 1 TB of OneDrive storage for all versions of Office 365, including the 5-person home version that costs $9.99 per month and the personal version costing $6.99 per month.

Microsoft said the landscape for online services is quickly changing and that merely providing cloud storage is table stakes.  By providing 1 TB with Office 365, Microsoft effectively supersedes the storage-only providers.  For those who only want online storage and not Office 365, OneDrive pricing has been cut 70% to $1.99 for 100GB and $3.99 for 200GB.

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ZTE Launches 400G OTN Platform for Metro Cores

ZTE introduced a 400G OTN solution based on its ZXONE 8000 large-capacity cross-connect platform and ZXONE 9700 Packet OTN platform.

The 400G OTN solution is aimed at metro/regional core infrastructure networks. It features multiple modulations including Nyquist QPSK, 16QAM and 8QAM. Additionally the 400G OTN solution supports software-defined optical networking using ZTE-designed low-power chip sets, and photonic components.

“Faced with the challenges of rapid traffic growth, high bandwidth data centre applications and cloud computing, carriers have increasingly been considering building large capacity, evolving and ‘elastic’ networks. The ZTE 400G transmission equipment with multiple, adaptive modulations will be a must for all future networks,” said Mr. Wei Xiaoqiang, Director of ZTE BN products.

http://wwwen.zte.com.cn/en/press_center/news/201406/t20140625_425310.html

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Juniper Enhances its SRX Services Gateway

Juniper Networks introduced a set of enhancements to its SRX Series Services Gateways to help large organizations manage a broad range of deployments and use cases while simplifying administrative overhead. The enhancements offer simplified and centralized management and an open services platform for essential security features, including intrusion prevention system (IPS), unified threat management (UTM) and application visibility.

Some highlights:

• Junos Space Security Director's integrated logging and reporting and role-based access controls can now be used to manage next generation security services including user firewall, application security (AppSecure) and UTM. A single, central management platform delivers a simple method for managing all Juniper Networks firewalls, eliminating the complexity and time needed to support multiple management platforms.
  
• Juniper Networks SRX now integrates directly with Active Directory to apply user role-based firewall policies without requiring any additional devices or agents.
   
• AppID delivers granular management of application visibility and control on a per policy basis. It can be used to combine security for the data center and enterprise edge into a single box. The new AppID engine includes a heuristics engine optimized for identifying evasive or tunneled applications. This feature is important for blocking risky applications such as peer-to-peer applications or adding control over social, video and communications applications such as Skype or BitTorrent. AppID will also identify nearly twice as many unique applications as before.
  
• Firefly Perimeter, Juniper's virtual firewall, now supports NGFW capabilities like IPS and UTM. These services enable Firefly Perimeter customers to layer additional levels of security into their networks to protect against exploits trying to compromise weaknesses in applications and protect against malware, spam and other content-based threats.

http://www.juniper.net

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Alcatel-Lucent Invests in EBlink for Wireless Fronthaul

Alcatel-Lucent announced a EUR 3 million investment in Eblink, a company based near Paris, France that offers a wireless fronthaul solution for connecting base stations and small cells.

EBlink's radio system support up to three sectors, or tri-band sectors and is CPRI compatible.  It is currently available in the 5.8 GHz band, and the company expects to add additional licensed and unlicensed bands in the near future.

ALU also signed a commercial and technological partnership agreement with EBlink.

Alcatel-Lucent said EBlink’s wireless solutions complement its own wireless LTE and small cells offerings.

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

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FlexPod Passes $3 Billion in Sales for Cisco and NetApp

Cisco and NetApp passed the $3 billion milestone in sales for their FlexPod integrated infrastructure solution, which combines compute, networking and storage into a single unit.  FlexPod unit shipments have grown 81 percent year-over-year, with demand for FlexPod solutions now reaching a $2 billion annualized demand run rate. FlexPod is deployed with more than 4,100 customers and available in over 100 countries, an increase from 2,300 customers, and 70 countries last year.  The product was first shipped in 2010.

"Our partnership with Cisco on the FlexPod integrated infrastructure redefined how enterprises deployed private cloud infrastructure," said Tom Georgens, Chairman and CEO, NetApp. "As the data center extends to include public cloud services for better economics and infinite scale, NetApp and Cisco are again leading the way, helping customers realize the transformative business benefits of hybrid cloud.”

“As CIOs look to simplify IT and focus on delivering business outcomes, there’s been a major industry shift toward integrated infrastructure,” said John Chambers, Chairman and CEO, Cisco. “In 2010 Cisco and NetApp launched FlexPod to deliver a more efficient, agile data center infrastructure to customers. Together, we’re evolving the FlexPod architecture together to help our customers unleash their applications and realize the promise of hybrid cloud environments.”

http://newsroom.cisco.com
http://www.netapp.com

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ZTE Wins TD-LTE Contract in Dominican Republic

Wind Telecom has selected ZTE to build the first 4G TD-LTE network in the Dominican Republic. The network will operate in 2.5 – 2.7 GHz spectrum and cover major cities and rural areas of the nation.

ZTE said its unified platform EPC and eNodeB solutions, based on ZTE’s proprietary Cloud Radio technology, will help Wind Telecom achieve savings in capital expenditure, and operation and maintenance costs, and lay solid foundations for future growth.

ZTE will also provide mobile devices that will appeal to users and help them take advantage of the broadband capabilities of the new network.

"This next-generation network is an investment in the future of the Dominican Republic,” said José Clase, Chairman of the Board of Wind Telecom. “This platform will help bridge the digital divide and raise the economic competitiveness of the Dominican Republic by helping to lift the standard of education. The high-speed network connectivity will also deliver an enhanced user experience for consumers.”

ZTE has deployed commercial 4G TD-LTE networks for operators globally including China Mobile, China Mobile Hong Kong, Bharti Airtel and Hi3G in Sweden.

http://wwwen.zte.com.cn/en/press_center/news/201406/t20140624_425255.html

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Equinix Picks Ciena 6500 for Metro Connectivity and Cloud Exchange

Equinix is utilizing Ciena’s 6500 platform in its metropolitan networks in the United States, Europe, Middle East and Asia-Pacific.  The deployment supports 100G connectivity to Service Provider and enterprise customers today – with a path to 400G and beyond in the future.

In addition, Ciena’s V-WAN network resource broker and scheduling application, as well as its network management capabilities, lay the foundation for multi-layer SDN control.

Ciena’s coherent optical technology and software also supports the Equinix Cloud Exchange, a new service that combines the automated interconnection of cloud, network and managed service providers with advanced service orchestration, providing enterprises with simple, scalable, direct access to multiple cloud services.

Ciena said this deployment illustrates how its OPn architecture can facilitate network integration within and between the data center to transform connectivity, compute and store into a programmable platform for a variety of new services.

The Equinix Cloud Exchange gives customers the ability to create a private and secure 1Gb or 10Gb connection to transfer data between their own infrastructure and multiple cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

“Many Equinix customers are looking for the ability to expand their networks globally and they require high speed connections within a metro, or globally, between our IBX data centers. Through our relationship with Ciena, we can offer customers a dynamic and automated interface to the hundreds of network and cloud service providers inside our data centers and meet their needs for next-generation connectivity solutions,” stated Ihab Tarazi, Chief Technology Officer at Equinix.

“Enterprises and service providers today require ‘on-demand’ network capabilities, and market leaders like Equinix are in an excellent position to capitalize on this industry shift. We’ve worked closely with Equinix to design an intelligent, open and programmable network architecture that delivers elastic, high-speed, high-performance for inter- and intra- data center connectivity. Equinix Cloud Exchange customers in major markets worldwide will have access to affordable, private connectivity on demand to support their cloud and network service requirements,” said Francois Locoh-Donou, Senior Vice President, Global Products Group, Ciena.

http://www.equinix.com
http://www.ciena.com

• In April, Equinix launched its new Cloud Exchange, an advanced interconnection solution that enables seamless, on-demand and direct access to multiple clouds and multiple networks.  The goal is to give enterprises direct access to services for building sophisticated hybrid cloud solutions inside Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers.
  With the Equinix Cloud Exchange customers can connect to Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute in Silicon Valley, Washington, D.C. and London with planned expansions into 13 additional markets by the end of 2014.  Customers can also access Amazon Web Services via the Equinix Cloud Exchange in Silicon Valley, Washington, D.C. and London. In addition, Equinix is working with other key cloud and network service providers to provide access to their services via the Cloud Exchange. Equinix provides a Cloud Exchange Portal and APIs to simplify the process of managing connections to multiple cloud services. Businesses can use the Portal and APIs to allocate, monitor and provision virtual circuits in near real-time with the provisioning of those circuits automated end-to-end from the Cloud Exchange to the service provider.
  Equinix expects to be serving a total of 19 markets by the end of 2014 with its Cloud Exchange.

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tw telecom to Launch Ethernet via Equinix Cloud Exchange

tw telecom is preparing to launch Business Ethernet connectivity directly to the new Equinix Cloud Exchange.  The carrier expects to be the first to provide Ethernet service in the Seattle SE3 International Business Exchange (IBX) data center facility. The service will enable seamless and direct access to multiple cloud services and providers on the Equinix Cloud Exchange

The presence in Seattle also enables tw telecom to offer SE3 tenants secure performance and optimized connectivity directly to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud via a direct connection to the Western US and GovCloud regions.

"We are excited to have tw telecom connect to SE3 and look forward to supporting their present and future data center needs," said Jim Poole, vice president, global service providers, Equinix. "Seattle is a very strategic market for our customers as they implement robust networking and cloud solutions to facilitate business growth. This relationship with tw telecom demonstrates our ability to collaborate with one of the nation's top network service providers to offer a robust IT backbone to our customers."

"As our customers' business needs continue to evolve, security, capacity and access to the cloud are critical priorities for us to help solve their most pressing challenges," said David King, vice president and general manager, tw telecom Seattle. "Expanding our relationship with Equinix here in Seattle is a critical step in helping solve capacity challenges while offering more efficient access to the cloud for our customers. Working with Equinix and leveraging its Cloud Exchange ecosystem provides the speed to market, cost efficiency and return on investment that are paramount to our customers' success."

http://www.equinix.com
http://www.twtelecom.com

• Earlier this month, Level 3 Communications agreed to acquire tw telecom in a deal that will combine its global fiber network and international data centers with tw telecom's extensive metro footprint in major U.S. markets. The stock-and-cash transaction is valued at $40.86 per TWTC share, or $5.7 billion in aggregate, based on market close as of June 13, 2014. tw telecom stockholders will receive $10 cash and 0.7 shares of Level 3 common stock for each share of tw telecom common stock that is owned at closing.
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Nutanix Lands OEM Deal with Dell for Data Center Appliances

Dell will offer a new family of converged infrastructure appliances based on Nutanix web-scale technology under an OEM deal announced by the firms.

The companies said the combination of Nutanix’s software running on Dell’s servers delivers a flexible, scale-out platform that brings IT simplicity to modern data centers.

Specifically, the new Dell XC Series of Web-scale Converged Appliances will be built with Nutanix software running on Dell PowerEdge servers, and will be available in multiple variants to meet a wide range of price and performance options. The appliances will deliver high-performance converged infrastructure ideal for powering a broad spectrum of popular enterprise use cases, including virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), virtualized business applications, multi-hypervisor environments and more.

Nutanix’s web-scale software runs on all popular virtualization hypervisors, including VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and open source KVM, and is uniquely able to span multiple hypervisors in the same environment. The Dell XC Series appliances are scheduled for availability in the fourth quarter of this year and will be sold by Dell sales teams and channel partners worldwide.

The agreement also includes joint sales, marketing, support and service investments, as well as alignment of product roadmaps.

“Nutanix is a recognized leader in the converged infrastructure market with a software-driven offering that fits with Dell’s efforts to redefine datac enter economics and simplify IT for our customers,” said Alan Atkinson, vice president and general manager, Dell Storage. “By combining market-leading infrastructure and software technologies from both companies with Dell’s world-class go-to-market capabilities, we believe our new solutions will be positioned to be a significant player in the growing, multi-billion dollar converged infrastructure market.”

http://www.nutanix.com/2014/06/24/nutanix-announces-global-agreement-with-dell/

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Puppet Labs Extends Automation from Servers to Networking/Storage

Puppet Labs is extending its software automation tools across networking and storage platforms for data centers.  The company's Enterprise product already is the leading server automation solution.

The newly launched Puppet Supported certification program now aims to ensure interoperability of the Puppet automation tools across an entire data center.  Launch partners for this program include Arista Networks, Brocade, Cisco, Cumulus Networks, Dell, EMC, F5, Huawei and NetApp. Puppet Labs is certifying Puppet Enterprise for platforms and devices.

Puppet Labs said this collaboration will allow organizations to deploy software faster and with fewer errors, iterate more quickly, and rapidly adapt to fast-changing business needs.
“With the Puppet Supported Program, we're extending our software automation leadership into networking and storage, allowing organizations to break down the barriers between IT silos that have traditionally created bottlenecks and delays," said Luke Kanies, founder and CEO of Puppet Labs. "Our goal is to extend the reach of automation to every device in the data center, making it easier than ever for organizations to deliver great software quickly and reliably. That's a big competitive advantage in today's technology-driven business environment."

http://puppetlabs.com/about/press-releases/puppet-labs-partners-leading-vendors-deliver-automation-networking-and-storage

• Earlier this month, Puppet Labs announced $40 million in new funding from existing investors Cisco, Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Triangle Peak Partners, True Ventures and VMware.  Puppet Labs, which develops IT automation software, said it now has over 18,000 enterprises using its software to accelerate operations. The software can automate repetitive tasks, deploy applications across multiple machines, proactively manage infrastructure where on-premise or in the cloud.
  Puppet Labs is based in Portland, Oregon, and has about 300 employees. The company will use the new funding to expand internationally.
  Puppet's has now raised a total of $86 million since June 2009.

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