VMware to Acquire AirWatch for Mobile Mgt. & Security

VMware agreed to acquire AirWatch, a leading supplier of enterprise mobile management and security solutions, for approximately $1.175 billion in cash and approximately $365 million of installment payments and assumed unvested equity.

AirWatch, which is headquartered in Atlanta, offer Mobile Device Management, Mobile Application Management and Mobile Content Management. It claims more than 10,000 customers globally and has about 1,600 employees across nine global offices.  AirWatch is privately-held.

VMware said the acquisition expands its End-User Computing group.  The AirWatch team will continue to report to founder and chief executive officer John Marshall as part of VMware's End-User Computing group, led by Sanjay Poonen, EVP and GM. Alan Dabbiere, AirWatch's co-founder and chairman, will be overseeing a new AirWatch operating board which will report to Pat Gelsinger, VMware CEO.

The acquisition will be funded through a combination of balance sheet cash and proceeds from approximately $1B of additional debt to be provided by EMC. VMware will also continue with its ongoing share buyback program.

"Our vision is to provide a secure virtual workspace that allows end users to work at the speed of life," said Sanjay Poonen, EVP and GM of VMware's End-User Computing group. "The combination of AirWatch and VMware will enable us to deliver unprecedented value to our customers and partners across their desktop and mobile environments."

http://www.vmware.com
http://www.air-watch.com

• VMware also announced preliminary Q4 2013 financial results for the fourth quarter of 2013:  the company now expects Q4 2013 revenues to be $1.48 billion, an increase of 15% from the fourth quarter of 2012. Excluding revenues attributable to Pivotal Software Inc. and all divestitures that occurred in 2013, revenues for the fourth quarter are expected to have increased 20% from the fourth quarter of 2012.
  
  "I'm delighted with our overall Q4 performance, with total revenue expected to exceed the high end of our guidance range," said Jonathan Chadwick, chief financial officer and executive vice president, VMware.
  
• In February 2013, AirWatch received $200 million in Series A funding.  Investors included Accel Partners and Insight Venture Partners.  

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Tata Communications Completes 100G Upgrades to Pacific Cables

Tata Communications completed a 100G upgrade along the TGN-Pacific (TGN-P) submarine cable system that connects the U.S. to Japan and three routes in the TGN-Intra-Asia (TGN-IA) market across Asia. With these upgrades complete, Tata Communications now has 100G deployed across major routes around the world on its own infrastructure -- the first private subsea cable owner to achieve this.

The upgrades on the TGN-P submarine cables – which is the longest segment in route km and believed to be the highest capacity subsea cables deployed in the Pacific – used Ciena’s 6500 Converged Packet Optical platform and GeoMesh solution.  As a result, Tata Communications now offers 100G transport services on its TGN-P submarine cable system that links the U.S. to Japan, a distance spanning 22,300 km. The cable connects Emi, Chiba to Hillsboro, Oregon and Toyohashi as well as Aichi Prefecture to Hillsboro, Oregon. In addition, Ciena’s solutions also supports Tata Communications’ Intra-Asia network, which spans roughly 6,700 km.

Genius Wong, Senior Vice President, Global Network Services, Tata Communications says, "We continue to make significant investments to our global network as we understand that connectivity is one of the most critical backbones in a world where hyper-connectivity has become a part of the everyday fabric of life and business. Investments such as the 100G upgrade to our TGN-Pacific submarine cable and Intra-Asia routes enable us to meet customer demand for high-bandwidth services and applications, whilst ensuring end-to-end network performance for our enterprise and carrier customers across the US and Asia."

http://www.tatacommunications.com/global-ring-network
http://www.ciena.com

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Telstra Global Expands MPLS Network

Telstra Global activated new MPLS Points-of-Presence (PoPs) in Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam and Chicago.

The company's MPLS network now offers more than 1,900 POPs worldwide, including 377 PoPs in Europe and 341 PoPs in the United States.

Telstra Global's Network Operations Centre proactively monitors the new PoPs and associated infrastructure via the Customer Control Centre – a unified portal interface designed to enhance communications between Telstra Global and its customers particularly during times of issue resolution and performance management.

http://www.telstraglobal.com/

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Pacnet Enhances Wavelength Protection of International Private Lines

Pacnet is enhancing its Wavelength Premium International Private Line (Wave Premium) service now that its 100G Asia-Pacific network upgrade has been completed. The expanded network capacity provides carriers and service providers higher availability and priority restoration capabilities through unparalleled route diversity.

Pacnet offers Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with service credits up to 100 percent of monthly service charges, and will significantly decrease restoration time when a subsea outage occurs. With multiple subsea cables connecting major markets in the region, Pacnet has the ability to provide carriers and service providers multiple route options and assurances for restoration.

“The vast majority of subsea outages are caused by external aggression, not technical defaults or other operational issues and the time required to make repairs results in significant business impact for customers,” said John Garrett, President of Carrier Services, Pacnet. “With the 100G upgrade, our capacity enables us to offer a resilient, meshed network that provides customers redundancy with multiple routes to the same destinations.”

Pacnet owns and operates Asia’s largest Trans-Pacific and intra-Asia subsea fiber optic cable network that spans 36,800 kilometers and connects to cable landing stations and Points of Presence (PoPs) in key Asian markets including Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo. With up to 10.24 Terabytes per second (TBps) of combined design capacity and multiple landing points in most locations, Pacnet provides customers with low latency connectivity and network resilience through increased route diversity.

http://www.pacnet.com

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FCC Opens Auction for 1915-1920 MHz and 1995-2000 MHz Bands

The FCC's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau commenced the qualified auction of 176 H Block licenses in the 1915-1920 MHz and 1995-2000 MHz bands (Auction 96). The FCC qualified 23 bidders to participate in the auction.

Bids are being taken electronically using RSA SecurID tokens.  Three rounds of bidding will be held each day. Anonymous bidding procedures are in effect for Auction 96.

http://wireless.fcc.gov/auctions/default.htm?job=auctions_home

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Verizon to Add SAP HANA to Cloud Infrastructure

Verizon Enterprise Solutions plans to deploy the SAP HANA platform in Verizon's data centers, making it available to customers across Verizon's cloud offerings, including eCloud, Managed Hosting and the new Verizon Cloud.

SAP HANA is the in-memory data base platform at the core of SAP's cloud vision. SAP HANA was introduced to the market two years ago and has since gained more than 3,000 customers.

"As cloud computing trends upward in our industry, our ecosystem will play an even more important role in our overall strategy and vision for offering a complete portfolio of cloud solutions," said Bob Grazioli, global head, Cloud Ecosystem, SAP. "Through collaboration with leading companies such as Verizon, we intend to provide our customers with even more choices to run applications developed on SAP HANA.  We expect that our partners' cloud offerings will be able to offer SAP customers the world-class service and innovation they have come to expect from SAP."

Verizon Cloud was announced in October 2013 and is currently in beta.

http://www.verizon.com
http://www.sap.com

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AT&T to Double Down on Austin Fiber Rollout as Sales Exceed Expectations

AT&T confirmed that sales of the fiber broadband service in Austin, Texas has exceeded its expectations. AT&T now plans to expand the all-fiber network to reach twice as many Austin area households in 2014. Planned expansions in 2014 include areas of Zilker, Homestead, and North Lamar, among many other neighborhoods throughout the city.

AT&T U-verse with "GigaPower" currently offers consumer broadband speeds at up to 300 megabits per second, AT&T plans to increase speeds to up to 1 Gbps later this year.

"Austin's response to our blazing fast broadband and enhanced TV services has been incredible and validates why we decided to roll this out in Austin first," said Dahna Hull, vice president and general manager, Austin, AT&T Services Inc. "Austinites consume data at rates 15 percent to 20 percent higher than the average U-verse user, and the overwhelming adoption of our new U-verse High Speed Internet 300 broadband service confirms that this community also values time and speed."

http://www.att.com

• AT&T noted that it first began serving Austin more than 134 years ago and today has a base of 2,600 active employees and close to 1,000 retirees in Austin, and 63 AT&T retail stores in and around the city.

• In April 2013, Google selected Austin as the second rollout city for its Google Fiber project.  AT&T announced its fiber project in Austin days later.

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Austrian Utility Carrier Tests WDM-PON with ADVA

ADVA Optical Networking, Energie AG Oberösterreich Data GmbH (Data GmbH) and ELCON Systemtechnik GmbH,are conducting a WDM-PON trial in Allhaming, Austria.

The network uses dedicated wavelength connections to subscribers, achieving symmetrical access speeds exceeding current commercial offerings by more than a factor of 10. Allhaming was chosen for the trial because of its location in an underserved rural area with poor broadband access.

ADVA said the trial forms part of the collaborative EU PIANO+ projects TUCAN and IMPACT that are fostering the development of ultra-broadband WDM-PON networks.

“This trial isn't just about technology, it's about people, it's about communities, it's about the digital society,” commented Jörg-Peter Elbers, vice president, Advanced Technology, ADVA Optical Networking. “Working with the residents of Allhaming, you see firsthand how important dependable access to high-speed broadband is. People of this municipality are now able to video chat with distant relatives, participate in online learning and benefit from all the other applications that depend upon broadband access. All this is possible because of our WDM-PON technology. What's even more exciting is that this is only the first stage of the trial. In 2014, we will go even further – connecting more users and bringing additional technology developed with other collaboration partners, such as Oclaro, that provides the integrated tunable laser devices for the trial.”

http://www.advaoptical.com/

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DragonWave Supplies Microwave Backhaul for Gogo's Expansion

DragonWave has been selected as a microwave solutions provider for backhaul connectivity as part of Gogo‘s ongoing expansion efforts. Gogo will use the DragonWave Horizon Quantum and Horizon Compact+ radios for linking its remote tower locations back into a wired network.  DragonWave’s links are designed into the Gogo network by Future Technologies Venture.

Gogo's in-flight services are available on more than 2,000 commercial aircraft and more than 6,500 business jets.

“Our requirements are unique in that we needed to find a cost effective, reliable and quick solution to link our customers back into a wired network from our remotely positioned towers,” said Anand Chari, Gogo’s Chief Technology Officer. “We’ve selected DragonWave, as we’ve had a strong relationship with them over the past few years and have had reliable performance, service and support of the company’s products, which, in turn, has helped us provide a reliable quality of service to our inflight customers”

“We’ve enjoyed helping support the unique vision Gogo is pursuing to provide airline travelers around the world with dependable inflight entertainment services,” said Peter Allen, DragonWave President and CEO. “Probably the best compliment one gets from a customer is repeat business, and we’re committed to help Gogo succeed as they expand their business of connecting passengers to the Internet at 30,000 feet."  

http://www.gogoair.com
http://www.dragonwaveinc.com

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NextG-Com Launches LTE Release 11 Protocol Stack

UK-based NextG-Com has launched an LTE protocol stack compliant to 3GPP Release 11 and designed for niche markets such as machine-to-machine (M2M) devices, LTE backhaul, relay nodes, routers and gateways.

The company said its ALPS 520 suite has been tested against 3GPP standard conformance test cases and includes a host of tools - Trace, ASN.1, SE-RTOS™ - that help to accelerate product development and reduce third party licensing costs. It also includes L1 adaptation layer APIs which can be customized based on the different MAC and Physical Layer architecture. These APIs makes ALPS 520 portable to different real-time operating systems (RTOS) on different platforms.

http://www.nextgcom.co.uk

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Mobily Picks NSN for Network Upgrade in Riyadh

Mobily (Etihad Etisalat Company) has selected Nokia Solutions and Networks’ Single RAN to upgrade its network, including refarming of the GSM 900 MHz band to 3G.  NSN will upgrade Mobily’s 2G, 3G (WCDMA) and TD-LTE networks in the centeral region including Riyadh, the largest city in Saudi Arabia.

Under the contract, NSN is providing Mobily with its Flexi Multiradio 10 Base Station. The company is also providing its network management software, NetAct and Performance Manager to enable consolidated monitoring, management, and operation of Mobily’s 2G, 3G and LTE networks. The services scope includes network planning, optimization, system integration, implementation and care services for a smooth upgrade and expansion of the operator’s networks.

http://www.nsn.com

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