New Pacific Cloud Xchange Cable to Bring 100 x 100Gbps on US-Japan Route

Global Cloud Xchange (formerly Reliance Globalcom) unveiled plans for a new trans-Pacific submarine cable linking California and Japan and designed for flexible access options.

The Pacific Cloud Xchange (PCX) cable will be a four fiber pair system with initial design capacity per fiber pair at 100 x 100 Gbps using next generation Coherent Submarine Fiber. The new system will be ready for service in 2015.

Global Cloud Xchange is currently finalizing its submarine cable vendors and additional partners.  Global Cloud Xchange will announce the awarding of the PCX supply contract in second quarter 2014 and expects to bring the system into commercial service in 2015.

"The cable with its open architecture and flexible landing station technology will allow companies to rent and own subsea capacity from speeds of 10 megabits to 1000 gig between Silicon Valley and key technology centers in Asia and India," said Bill Barney, CEO, Global Cloud Xchange. "With flexible access speeds and open co-location, the system will be designed to allow start-ups and smaller cloud operators to buy and rent fiber affordably in a scalable model."

"The new fiber system, which runs approximately 8,300 kilometers between Japan (Tokyo) and California (Silicon Valley), will create a next generation IP and Cloud environment held together with a single AS number and connecting into Tier III+ data center facilities on the ground," Barney added.

http://www.globalcloudxchange.com

• Global Cloud Xchange owns and operates the world's largest private undersea cable system spanning 67,000 route kms which. The company also has extensive global VPLS-enabled Ethernet

Read More

FCC Opens 5GHz Spectrum for Outdoor Wi-Fi

The FCC adopted new rules making 100 MHz of spectrum in the 5 GHz band more accessible for Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (U-NII) devices.

U-NII devices play an important role in meeting public demand for wireless broadband service.

Currently U-NII devices operate in 555 megahertz of spectrum in the 5 GHz band, and are used for Wi-Fi and other high-speed wireless connections.

The new rules remove the current restriction on indoor-only use and increase the permissible power which will provide more robust access in the 5.150-5.250 GHz band.

The FCC said the new ruleswill allow U-NII devices to better integrate with other unlicensed portions of the 5 GHz band to offer faster speeds and reduce congestion at crowded Wi-Fi hot spots such as airports and convention centers.

The Commission also modified certain technical rules to improve protection for incumbent systems by requiring manufacturers to secure their devices against illegal modification which could cause
interference to incumbent users in the band.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler wrote: "This is a big win for consumers who will be able to enjoy faster connections and less congestion, as more spectrum will be available to handle Wi-Fi traffic. It will make it easier to get online wirelessly in public places like airports and convention centers, as well as in your living room. This is also a big win for American innovators. The changes we are making will provide fertile ground for the growth of “Gigabit Wi-Fi” – the latest generation of ultra-high-speed, high-capacity Wi-Fi that can provide data speeds in excess of 1 Gigabit per second."

http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-increases-5ghz-spectrum-wi-fi-other-unlicensed-uses

Read More

FCC Sets Stage for Auction of 65 MHz of AWS Spectrum

The FCC adopted new rules that set flexible-use regulatory, licensing, and technical rules for 65 megahertz of spectrum in the AWS-3 band, which includes the 1695-1710 MHz, 1755-1780 MHz, and 2155-2180 MHz bands.  The action establishes a band plan that makes spectrum available in a mix of spectrum block and geographic license area sizes to meet the needs of large and small wireless providers.

The FCC said its order also establishes construction deadlines and other service rules, including a requirement that AWS-3 devices be interoperable within AWS-3 and AWS-1 frequencies.

This spectrum will be available on a shared basis with federal incumbents in accordance with detailed plans for these agencies to relocate out of the frequencies or share within the frequencies.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler wrote: "The new capacity will expand the workhorse AWS-1 commercial wireless band to enable faster wireless speeds and more capacity to help satisfy consumers’ voracious appetite for mobile data. This proceeding represents a step forward in spectrum policy. Some of the spectrum being auctioned is already available in the Commission’s inventory. But 40 megahertz of the spectrum to be  auctioned is used nearly exclusively by federal agencies today."

http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-sets-stage-auction-65-mhz-spectrum-mobile-broadband

Read More

Arista Networks' S-1 SEC Filing - Big Sales to Microsoft

Arista Networks filed an S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering of its shares.  The company intends to list under the symbol "ANET".

Earlier this month Arista Networks announced two new 100GbE modules for its 7500 Series switches:

• 7500E Series 6 port 100GbE card with support for CFP2 optics up to 40km over single mode fiber is orderable in Q2 2014 with pricing starting at $6600 per 100GbE port
• 7500E Series 12 port 100GbE card is planned for availability in 2H 2014 along with a full range of QSFP-100 optics and cables.

In November, Arista introduced its "Single Tier Spline" architecture for simplifying data centers by simplifying cabling, consolidating servers, migrating between virtual to physical networks and controling IP storage. The idea is to collapse the leaf and spine together into a single-tier network for performance and latency sensitive cloud applications. Arista said its design can bring true deterministic performance for up to 2000 hosts in one cluster while lowering operating and capital asset costs by 40%.

Arista Networks' S-1 statement can be found on the SEC website here:

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1596532/000095012314000891/filename1.htm

A few items revealed in the S-1 filing:

Arista reported an 81% annual growth rate for the first nine months of 2013
2010 revenue was $71.7 million
2011 revenue was $139.8 million
2012 revenue was $193.4 million
2013 revenue (first 9 months) was $246.5 million

The annual growth rate from 2010 to 2012 was 64%.

2010 net income (first nine months) was $2.4 million
2011 net income (first nine months) was $34.0 million
2012 net income (first nine months) was $20.3 million
2013 net income (first nine months) was $27.5 million

During 2011 and 2012 and for the nine months ended September 30, 2013, sales to Arista's 10 largest end customers accounted for approximately 41%, 43% and 48% of our revenue, respectively.

Sales to Microsoft accounted for 10% of 2011 revenue, 15% of 2012 revenue, and 24% of revenue for the nine months ended September 30, 2013.

Arista also disclosed an intellectual property dispute with a company (Optumsoft) controlled by an Arista co-founder, David Cheriton.

Read More

Cloudera's Latest Funding Round Brings Up $900 Million

Cloudera confirmed that its latest funding round, which included a strategic investment from Intel, amounts 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.

“The market opportunity for companies to gain insight and build transformative applications based on Hadoop is tremendous,” said Tom Reilly, CEO of Cloudera. “Clearly, demand is accelerating and the market is poised for growth – for all of the players in this space, and we believe Cloudera will be the company to lead this global shift in extracting value from data. This position of strength and leadership is evidenced by the strong support of public market investors, large institutional investors and now key strategic investors including Intel, who’ve made sizable and significant contributions to cement our platform offering.”

Cloudera offers enterprise analytic data management software powered by Apache Hadoop, which is the underlying technology behind a growing number of Big Data projects.

Why so hot?  Cloudera cited the following indicators on its target market:

• Gartner estimates the market for data management infrastructure (database management systems including data warehousing, storage management, BI, ECM and data integration, and related systems as $74 billion in 2014, growing to $94 billion by 2017.
• IDC predicted the big data technology and services market will grow at a CAGR of 27% from 2012 to 2017, growing to $32.4 billion, and that the Internet of Things will generate 30 billion autonomously connected endpoints.
• Gartner predicted that Big Data would drive $232 billion in IT spending through 2016.
• IDC estimates that the amount of data in the world will grow fifty-fold from 2010 to 2020.

http://www.cloudera.com/content/cloudera/en/about/press-center/press-releases/release.html/?ReleaseID=1913444

Read More

HP Introduces Cloud Managed Wireless Access Points for SMBs

HP announced new cloud-managed and on-premise wired and wireless network solutions designed for branch offices or SMBs.

The HP Cloud Managed Network Solution, which takes the place of an on-premise WLAN controller, lowers upfront deployment costs and does not require on-site IT staff to manage the network.

For on-premise, HP is introducing two WLAN controller appliances that scale to support up to 30,000 devices.

The rollout also includes new HP 560 and 517 IEEE 802.11ac wireless access points, which offer speeds three times faster than 802.11n. The HP 560 access points will also be OpenFlow-enabled, empowering customers to leverage SDN applications without having to rip and replace existing infrastructure.

HP is also partnering with Citrix and MobileIron to offer mobile device management (MDM) integration with the HP Intelligent Management Center (IMC) platform.

In addition, HP is launching a Location Aware SDN application that locates any wireless-enabled device indoors with approximately two meter accuracy.  The solution could be use in context-aware retail, asset management and security applications. This application will be integrated with the HP Virtual Application Networks (VAN) SDN controller.

“Our customers are telling us that their networks are primarily cost centers that are too complex to manage, while they are at the same time facing increasing end-user demand for a better mobile experience,” said Bethany Mayer, senior vice president and general manager, Networking Business Unit and Network Functions Virtualization Business, HP. “With HP’s cloud-managed and SDN-enabled unified wired and wireless solutions, we are enabling IT organizations to provide an improved mobile user experience, as well as offering simplified management and investment protection.”

http://www.hp.com

Read More

Numergy Selects Nuage's SDN for Cloud Infrastructure

Numergy, a French company that plans to open two data centers this to support cloud services, has selected Nuage Networks' SDN platform and Alcatel-Lucent’s 7750 service router. The deployment will include Nuage's Virtualized Services Platform (VSP) and 7850 Virtualized Services Gateway (VSG).

“We are pleased to implement the Nuage Networks product suite in our cloud infrastructure. The Nuage Networks SDN technology allows us to address key performance and compatibility requirements for an open environment. This will allow us to virtualize our infrastructure and to offer our customers cloud services in a more dynamic way,” said Erik Beauvalot, Chief Operating Officer of Numergy.

“We are excited to work with Numergy in support of their cloud initiative, that will allow them to deliver attractive and innovative cloud services to French and European companies, but also to make their infrastructure more agile, secure and responsive,” added Matthieu Bourgignon, head of Sales for Alcatel-Lucent France.

Nuage said key benefits of its solution include:

• Service provisioning speed and agility: Setting up networks in an SDN can be as easy and timely as creating virtual machine (VM). Unlike traditional networks that are highly configuration driven and manual, Nuage Networks allows network connectivity to follow seamlessly and instantaneously according to pre-defined policies.
• Control: The solution provides a common policy framework through which Numergy maintains full control and visibility of their infrastructure,  while ensuring that performance and access rules are met.
• Network flexibility and holistic management: SDNs enable “network experimentation without impact. “ Nuage Networks allows Numergy to bypass traditional datacenter network restrictions and experiment freely with new network configurations that better support customer scenarios.

http://www.nuagenetworks.net

Read More

Cloud Innovation: Nuage Responds on Today's Frontiers

Where are the frontiers in Cloud Innovation today?
Houman Modarres, Senior Director, Marketing, at Nuage Networks, says the frontier lies in making cloud infrastructure every bit as flexible as virtualized compute has already become. The networks must become more closely aligned with applications.

 See 2 minute video: http://youtu.be/BMXNoPYtTn8

Filmed at: NetEvent's Cloud Innovation Summit, Saratoga, California.

 

Read More

Microsoft's Nadella Appoints Scott Guthrie to Lead its Cloud Business

Microsoft's new CEO, Satya Nadella, announced the selection of Scott Guthrie to head the company's Cloud and Enterprise organization.  Guthrie joined Microsoft in 1997 and has made critical contributions to .NET and has been the driver behind Microsoft Azure.

In addition, Phil Spencer was selected to take on a new role leading Xbox, combining the Xbox and Xbox Live development teams with the Microsoft Studios team, and Stephen Elop was selected to lead the Microsoft Devices Group.

http://www.microsoft.com

Read More

Cloud Innovation: Dell Responds on Today's Frontiers

Where are the frontiers in Cloud Innovation today? Arpit Joshipura, VP of Product Marketing at Dell, says innovation in cloud networking can be seen in two parts - the infrastructure and the software.  Dell is pursuing both. In infrastructure, the company has just announced its highest density data center switch.  In software, it following a disaggregated path to open system.  It has also just introduced an Active Fabric Controller for SDN.

Filmed at: NetEvent's Cloud Innovation Summit, Saratoga, California.

http://youtu.be/kOUoQfIOafs

Read More

Telenor Picks Ericsson for Network Build in Myanmar

Telenor has awarded a 5-year contract to Ericsson to support its nationwide network rollout in Myanmar. Late last year, Telenor also awarded Ericsson with a frame agreement to supply radio-access network (RAN) and associated services for a significant portion of Telenor's network in the country.

Telenor's network in Myanmar is expected to cover 90 percent of the country's population of more than 60 million in five years.

Petter Furberg, CEO of Telenor Myanmar, says: "We are pleased to add Ericsson to the group of global partners we will be working with as we develop the Telenor Myanmar telecommunications network. This is a historic project for Myanmar and for Telenor, and strong partners like Ericsson will be critical to its success."

http://www.ericsson.com

In June 2013, Telenor and Qtel (Ooredoo) were each awarded licenses to build mobile networks in Myanmar.

Telenor said it plans to rapidly roll out a modern telecommunications network and services. Telenor plans to build a state-of-the-art mobile network using HSPA and LTE-ready technologies reaching nationwide coverage within five years. First services are expected to launch in 2014.

Ooredoo noted its significant experience of developing, delivering and investing in communication services in the ASEAN region.  Its assets include Indosat, the Indonesian fixed and mobile communications services provider.  Through its partnership with STT, Ooredoo is also an active investor in Starhub, Singapore’s leading integrated communications provider, which offers some of the region’s most advanced communications services for consumers and business. Also through the STT partnership, Ooredoo is invested in LTC, the incumbent fixed and mobile network provider in Laos. Underpinning the importance of broadband services, Ooredoo operates wi-tribe, a broadband network provider with operations in Pakistan and the Philippines.

Read More

TELUS Appoints new CEO and Chairman

TELUS announced the appointment of Joe Natale as President and CEO of TELUS.   Natale joined TELUS in 2003 as an executive vice president and has progressed through increasingly expansive roles, including President of TELUS Business Solutions and President of TELUS Consumer Solutions. Since 2010, Mr. Natale has served as TELUS’ Chief Commercial Officer.

TELUS also announced that Brian Canfield will retire following 58 years of exemplary service with TELUS and BC TEL. Mr. Canfield has served as TELUS' non-executive Chair since 1999, upon completion of the merger of BC TEL and TELUS.

Darren Entwistle has been appointed Executive Chair of TELUS.

http://www.telus.com

Read More