VMware's Photon Containers Promise "Just Enough" Virtualization

VMware introduced two new concepts for the cloud-native applications:  VMware vSphere Integrated Containers and VMware Photon Platform. The technologies enable containers in production on-premises and on VMware's public cloud, VMware vCloud Air.

"Today, VMware is announcing foundational infrastructure that will enable customers to deploy cloud-native applications in production with confidence," said Ray O'Farrell, chief technology officer and chief development officer, VMware. "It's all about choice. Customers will be able to jumpstart their container initiatives on top of their existing VMware vSphere environments or consume new infrastructure designed specifically for cloud-native applications."

VMware vSphere Integrated Containers: uses VMware vSphere at its foundation and enables IT teams to take advantage of their existing investments in VMware infrastructure, people, processes and management tools. The solution integrates with other container ecosystem solutions, including CoreOS Tectonic, Docker, Kubernetes, Mesosphere's Data Center Operating System and Cloud Foundry. VMware says vSphere Integrated Containers assures the integrity and authenticity of containers and their underlying infrastructure. VMware vSphere Integrated Containers will enable provisioning of persistent data volumes for containers in VMware vSphere environments. In addition, with VMware NSX, containers can be integrated with the rest of the data center, and can be connected to quarantine, forensics and/or monitoring networks for additional monitoring and troubleshooting.


The Photon Platform: a new, container-optimized platform developed for high churn workloads and an API-first model, promising "just the right level of functionality" to run cloud-native applications at scale.  The VMware Photon Platform is designed for DevOps teams planning to build out large pools of commodity computing capacity that solely run cloud-native applications. DevOps teams will have a choice of open container orchestration frameworks including Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, Mesos and Cloud Foundry to run on the platform. The technology -- components of which will be open sourced -- will also support dynamic continuous integration environments, platform as a service (PaaS) or SaaS deployments, and sizable data analytics clusters running Hadoop or Spark.

The VMware Photon Platform, which will include future integrations with VMware NSX, VMware Virtual SAN and VMware vRealize Suite, features the following technologies:

• VMware Photon Controller - A multi-tenant, API-driven control plane optimized for scale, churn and high-availability. Automation-savvy DevOps teams will be able to speed the creation of thousands of new containers per minute and support hundreds of thousands of total simultaneous workloads. The controller will be released as an open source project to help encourage broad input, testing and adoption from customers, partners and the community at large. The technology will also incorporate Project Lightwave, which provides enterprise-grade trust and security for containers.
• VMware Photon Machine - This technology will include a new ESX Microvisor based on the proven core of VMware ESXi. It also includes Project Photon OS, a lightweight Linux operating system for containerized applications and optimized for VMware environments.

http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-newsfeed/VMware-Previews-vSphere-Integrated-Containers-and-Photon-Platform-to-Accelerate-Cloud-Native-Apps-in-the-Enterprise/1984726#sthash.SkYqjpM5.dpuf

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Federal Aviation Administration to Migrate to Hybrid Cloud on AWS and Azure

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) awarded a contract valued at $108 million to CSC to consolidate data centers and migrate FAA data and systems to a hybrid cloud environment. The CSC team includes Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, as well as other strategic business partners.

Under the contract, the team will use the CSC Agility Platform cloud management tool to orchestrate efficient cloud deployment while leveraging alliance partners for data and cloud services.

The contract could be extended, with the potential to reach $1 billion in value over 10 years.

“CSC and our alliance partners are demonstrating the unique value that we as a team can bring to deliver an innovative, next-gen IT cloud solution that drives the FAA’s mission forward,” said Mike Lawrie, CSC’s president and chief executive officer. “By coming together as we have, we are in a unique position to help meet the agency’s operational and budgetary challenges over the life of the program.”

“Government adoption of cloud computing for mission applications is accelerating rapidly, and we are pleased to help FAA’s transition to the cloud,” said Teresa Carlson, vice president of Worldwide Public Sector, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “With AWS’s security and compliance standards – like FedRAMP, ITAR and SRG – CSC will be able to rapidly enable FAA to realize the benefits of agility, cost savings, and flexibility.”

“Microsoft is excited to continue working under the leadership of the FAA and CSC to deliver a secure, cost-effective and intelligent cloud with our FedRAMP JAB-approved Microsoft Azure,” said Greg Myers, vice president of Microsoft Federal. “This builds nicely on our collective success in moving the FAA to the cloud on the productivity side with Office 365. As the agency now moves to a hybrid cloud environment and consolidates its data centers, Microsoft’s Azure will work across applications, software, operating systems, and data to ensure success in support of the FAA’s mission of providing the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world.”

http://www.csc.com/newsroom/press_releases/133565-csc_team_wins_federal_aviation_administration_cloud_services_contract_valued_at_more_than_108_million

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Avi Enhances its Software Load-balancer with Security Features

Avi Networks, which offers a software-defined application delivery controller (ADC), introduced a new Continuous Security Insights (CSI) Module that help enterprises evaluate their security posture and quickly mitigate application threats and attacks – in real-time.

Avi said its CSI module is able to collect and analyze hundreds of telemetry data points at its strategic point-of-entry into the network.  This intelligence enables the ADC to make changes in traffic delivery. The recent POODLE SSL attack is an example of how this capability could be implemented. The POODLE SSL attack exploited vulnerabilities in the many Internet-based systems still running SSL 3.0 encryption protocol. While the solution was relatively simple – reconfigure all systems to turn off SSL 3.0 – network admins had no way of understanding the full impact of this network-wide reconfiguration, including possibly damaging end-user experiences on websites and other public-facing apps.

Key functionality of the Avi Continuous Security Insights (CSI) solution:

• Inspect: Constantly analyzes security configurations and user-to-application traffic to detect vulnerabilities, attacks and anomalies. 
• Inform: Notifies admins about the real-time security posture via alerts, logs and simple to understand metrics such as a SSL Score, DDoS Score, Security Insight and overall application health score.
• Mitigate: Takes proactive measures against anomalous behavior ranging from simple penalties for spurious transactions to traffic rate-limiting or blocking users for more serious threats.  

The Avi ADC v15.2 software is currently in pilot trials at several large financial services and e-commerce companies as well as a number of cloud service providers.

“Network administrators who cannot understand the current state of their systems cannot secure them,” said Dhritiman Dasgupta, VP of Marketing, Avi Networks. “For most enterprises today, we believe that a healthy security profile is not just a nice-to-have but is mandatory for guaranteeing the health of the overall application experience for today’s end users.”

http://www.avinetworks.com

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ZTE's Revenue of Profits Rise in First Half of 2015

ZTE reported operating revenue of RMB 45.9 billion for the first six months of 2015, up 22% over the first half of 2014, primarily reflecting growth in operating revenue for 3G system equipment in the domestic market, FDD-LTE system equipment in the domestic and international markets, TD-LTE system equipment in the international market, wireline switch and access systems in the domestic market and optical communication systems in the domestic market.

Operating profit was RMB 76 million for the period compared to a loss of RMB 210 million for the same period last year.

ZTE said China's domestic telecommunications industry is undergoing a stage of transition in both network and business model. During the first half of 2015, domestic carriers’ investment in equipment remained stable given the progress of 4G network deployment and expedited broadband development as a matter of national policy.  During the reporting period, the Group reported operating revenue of RMB 24.361 billion from the domestic market, accounting for 53.08% of the Group’s operating revenue.

http://wwwen.zte.com.cn/en/about/investor_relations/announcement/201508/P020150826636431955004.pdf

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Cisco to Optimize for iOS Enterprise Users

Apple and Cisco announced a partnership to optimize Cisco networks for iOS devices and apps, integrating iPhone with Cisco enterprise environments and providing unique collaboration on iPhone and iPad.  Specifically, Cisco will deliver experiences specially optimized for iOS across mobile, cloud, and premises-based collaboration tools such as Cisco Spark, Cisco Telepresence and Cisco WebEx in order to deliver seamless team collaboration and reinvent the meeting experience.

“Ninety-five percent of companies in the Fortune 500 count on Cisco Collaboration and Cisco networks to help their teams be more productive,” said Cisco Executive Chairman John Chambers. “Through this engineering and go-to-market partnership, we’re offering our joint customers the ability to seamlessly extend that awesome Cisco environment to their favorite iOS devices. Together, we’re going to help teams achieve higher levels of productivity and effectiveness.”

http://www.cisco.com
http://www.apple.com

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ZTE Signs Partnership Deal with Telefonica

ZTE announced a global partnership with Telefonica.

ZTE supplies a range of solutions to Telefonica, including gigabit passive optical network (GPON) technology, optical mesh network / large-capacity transmission solutions, Voice over Long Term Evolution (VoLTE), microwave transmission, etc..

http://www.zte.com.cn

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T-Mobile US Stops Unlimited LTE Tethering

T-Mobile is taking action to stop users who signed up for an unlimited 4G LTE plan for their smartphones and then use it heavily with tethering.  Although T-Mobile says it supports a limited amount of data usage for tethering use, the company says some users have abused the plan by consuming up to 2 TB of data per month.

In online posting, John Legere, CEO of T-Mobile, describes these users as "hackers" intent on stealing data from T-Mobile.

http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/issues-insights-blog/stopping-network-abusers.htm

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NETGEAR Unveils 28-port 10-Gigabit Switch

NETGEAR unveiled its ProSAFE 28-port 10-Gigabit Smart Managed Switch - the industry's first 28-port (24 copper, 4 SFP+) 10-Gigabit Smart Managed Switch purposely designed for small to mid-sized organizations (SMBs) with 10GBASE-T connectivity and Advanced L2+/Layer 3 Lite features.

Key Features:

• Advanced VLAN features such as Protocol-based VLAN, MAC-based VLAN and 802.1x Guest VLAN
• Advanced QoS (Quality of Service) with L2/L3/L4 awareness and 8 priority queues including Q-in-Q
• Static Routing (both IPv4 and IPv6)
• Private VLAN
• Dynamic VLAN assignment
• IGMP and MLD snooping
• Advanced Security
• IPv6 support for management, QoS and ACL
• Easy-to-use web-based management GUI or PC-based Smart Control Center application for multi-switch deployment

It has an MSRP in the U.S. of $4,624.00, although final pricing for end customers may vary depending on the reseller and bundled offerings.

http://www.netgear.com

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OpenStack is Changing the Face of Service Delivery

OpenStack is fundamentally changing the face of service delivery, say Lew Tucker, Vice President and CTO of Cloud Computing for Cisco.  Network providers, media companies, application developers and SaaS providers are all moving towards an open-source, cloud-model based on OpenStack.

This short video also hits on Cisco's role in OpenStack and how Comcast is moving ahead with its OpenStack designs.

https://youtu.be/v6yzWkAC2l8

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Hortonworks to Acquire Onyara for Apache NiFi Expertise

Hortonworks agreed to acquire Onyara, Inc., the creator of and key contributor to Apache NiFi, a top-level open source project. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Hortonworks,  which offers enterprise Apache Hadoop solutions, said the deal will help its customers to automate and secure data flows and to collect, conduct and curate real-time business insights and actions derived from data in motion. As a result of the acquisition, Hortonworks is introducing Hortonworks DataFlow powered by Apache NiFi which is complementary to its Open Enterprise Hadoop platform, Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP).

Apache NiFi was made available through the NSA Technology Transfer Program in the fall of 2014. Over the past eight years, Onyara’s engineers were the key contributors to the U.S. government software project that evolved into Apache NiFi. In July 2015, NiFi became a Top-Level Project, signifying that its community and technology have been successfully governed under the Apache Software Foundation.

“Hortonworks is focused on doing everything possible to enable our customers to transform their business through data-driven insights and actions,” said Rob Bearden, chief executive officer at Hortonworks. “Onyara’s impressive work on security and simplicity in NiFi, combined with their commitment to open source makes for a perfect addition to our technology team.”

http://nifi.apache.org
http://www.onyara.com/

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SSL Ships "Sky Muster" Satellite for Australia's Broadband Network

Space Systems/Loral (SSL) shipped "Sky Muster", a high performance, Ka-band satellite designed and built for Australia's new nbn broadband network.

Originally called NBN Co 1A, the satellite now awaiting launch, was renamed "Sky Muster" by the six-year-old winner of a country-wide contest. The young girl, who depends on satellite internet for her education, selected the name for its reference to the gathering of cattle, which captures how the satellite will help 'round-up' and connect Australians.

The satellite has now arrived at the European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, where it will be launched aboard an Ariane 5 launch vehicle by Arianespace.  SSL is also building a second satellite for the nbn network. The two satellites will work in conjunction with one another to provide expanded and advanced service coverage to some of the most remote places in Australia, as well as its coastal islands and external territories including Norfolk Island, Cocos Island, Christmas Island, and Macquarie Island in the Antarctic.

"The satellite for Australia's broadband network is a very advanced broadband satellite that will cover the entire Australian continent including its offshore islands," said John Celli, president of SSL. "It is gratifying to know that the work we do in Palo Alto will help connect underserved people to the rich resources available through the Internet."

http://www.nbn.com.au
http://www.sslmda.com

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Thoma Bravo to Acquire Majority Stake in DigiCert

Thoma Bravo, a leading private equity investment firm, agreed to acquire a majority interest in DigiCert from TA Associates, another private equity firm currently holding the majority share. Financial terms were not disclosed.

DigiCert is a global SSL Certificate Authority (CA) and the leading provider of trusted certificate management solutions.  The company provides its digital certificates to over 115,000 customers in more than 180 countries, and is one of the few CAs dedicated solely to advancing PKI-based solutions for enterprises and networked devices.  DigiCert is based in Lehi, Utah.

“DigiCert represents an outstanding investment opportunity to back a market leader with a tremendous management team in a sector we know well,” said Seth Boro, managing partner at Thoma Bravo. “SSL and certificate management technology play a critical part in securing the digital economy, and DigiCert has been a market leader in the space, known for its consistent innovation and first-rate customer service.”

http://digicert.com

Thoma Bravo Completes Acquisition of Riverbed

Sunday, April 26, 2015  Privatization, Riverbed  No comments

Thoma Bravo, a leading private equity investment firm, and Teachers’ Private Capital, the private investor department of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, completed their previously announced acquisition of Riverbed Technology. The acquisition is valued at approximately $3.5 billion, with Riverbed stockholders receiving $21.00 per share in cash.

“With this acquisition now complete, our team can begin to move forward with the strategic initiatives that will take us to the next stage of growth,” said Jerry M. Kennelly, chairman and CEO of Riverbed. “As a private company, Riverbed is better positioned to pursue our long term goals, and has greater flexibility to develop best-of breed technologies that deliver superior application performance for our customers. This flexibility, alongside Thoma Bravo’s deep experience growing companies in the application performance space, makes us very excited about the future.”

http://www.riverbed.com

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NVIDIA's GRID 2.0 Virtual Desktop Doubles Density to 128 Users per Server

NVIDIA introduced its GRID 2.0 virtual desktop solution featuring greater density and performance along with support from major server vendors, including Cisco, Dell, HP and Lenovo. NVIDIA has worked closely with Citrix and VMware to bring a rich graphics experience to end-users on the industry's leading virtualization platforms.

Highlights include:

• Doubled user density: NVIDIA GRID 2.0 doubles user density over the previous version, introduced last year, allowing up 128 users per server. This enables enterprises to scale more cost effectively, expanding service to more employees at a lower cost per user.
• Doubled application performance: Using the latest version of NVIDIA’s award-winning Maxwell GPU architecture, NVIDIA GRID 2.0 delivers twice the application performance as before — exceeding the performance of many native clients.
• Blade server support: Enterprises can now run GRID-enabled virtual desktops on blade servers — not simply rack servers — from Cisco, Dell, HP and others.
• Linux support: No longer limited to the Windows operating system, NVIDIA GRID 2.0 now enables enterprises in industries that depend on Linux applications and workflows to take advantage of graphics-accelerated virtualization.

http://www.nvidia.com

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AirVM Raises $8.0 for Cloud Enablement for VMware

AirVM, a start-up based in Ottawa, announced  $8.0 million in Series A funding for its cloud-enablement software.

AirVM's AirSembly software is a cloud management platform purpose-built for VMware to make it easier for service providers to sell, provision, manage, and bill for cloud services.

The funding was led by RHO Canada Ventures, joined by Build Ventures, and current investor Wesley Clover.

“AirVM has grown tremendously in 2015, and as we continue to add new partners, this Series A financing ensures ongoing innovation and growth to meet the demands of the cloud industry,” said Joshua Vautour, CEO and founder of AirVM. “We will continue to build on our momentum as the leading VMware cloud management platform company and expand into new markets.”

http://www.airvm.com

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Cisco: 44% of Organizations Planning Private Clouds

The cloud is moving into a second wave of adoption, according to a new study released by Cisco, as companies begin looking to cloud as a platform to fuel innovation, growth and disruption.

The Cisco-sponsored InfoBrief "Don't Get Left Behind: The Business Benefits of Achieving Greater Cloud Adoption" was developed by International Data Corporation (IDC) and is based on primary market research conducted with executives responsible for IT decisions in 3,400 organizations across 17 countries that are successfully implementing private, public and hybrid clouds in their IT environments.

The study finds that 53 percent of companies expect cloud to drive increased revenue over the next two years. Unfortunately, this will be challenging for many companies as only 1 percent of organizations have optimized cloud strategies in place while 32 percent have no cloud strategy at all.

Mature cloud adoption varies by country, with the United States and Latin America among the countries with the greatest percentage of organizations with repeatable, managed or optimized cloud strategies, and Japan with the fewest among the countries studied. The study notes the percentage of organizations with mature cloud adoption in each country:

• 34 percent USA
• 29 percent Latin America Region
• 27 percent UK
• 22 percent France
• 21 percent Germany
• 19 percent Australia 
• 19 percent Canada 
• 18 percent Korea
• 17 percent The Netherlands
• 9 percent Japan

By industry, manufacturing has the largest percentage of companies in one of the top three adoption categories at 33 percent, followed by IT (30 percent), finance (29 percent), and healthcare (28 percent). The lowest adoption levels by industry were found to be government/education and professional services (at 22 percent each) and retail/wholesale (at 20 percent). By industry, professional services, technology, and transportation, communications, and utilities expected the greatest impact on key performance indicators (KPIs) across the board.

More info is posted.

http://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=webcontent&articleId=1714059

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InfiniBand Trade Association Tests RDMA over Converged Ethernet

The InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA) has conducted the first Plugfest for RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) solutions. ifteen member companies participated, bringing their RoCE adapters, cables and switches for testing to the event.

A new RoCE Interoperability List has been posted on the IBTA website.

“The inclusion of RoCE interoperability testing as part of IBTA’s rigorous Plugfest events is a boon to the industry as we see RoCE gaining traction in enterprise-level data centers,” said Rupert Dance, chair of IBTA’s Compliance and Interoperability Workgroup. “System integrators want to be able to select products that meet their needs from a robust ecosystem, and interoperability testing helps provide assurance that those products will work together. The publication of the RoCE Interoperability List provides a critical resource in the advancement of this ecosystem.”

http://www.infinibandta.org
http://www.RoCEInitiative.org

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Autodesk to Acquire SeeControl for IoT

Autodesk agreed to acquire SeeControl, a San Francisco-based developer of an enterprise Internet of Things (IoT) cloud service platform. The SeeControl service helps manufacturers and systems integrators connect, analyze, control, and manage remote products, things, and assets and create new service revenue opportunities. Financial terms were not disclosed.

“A new future of making things is emerging, where any built object, product or environment can be embedded with sensors that can feed information back into the design process. The acquisition of SeeControl is the first step on Autodesk’s ongoing efforts to develop new technologies and solutions that will help our customers leverage the Internet of Things, starting by enabling them to capture, analyze, and utilize data from their products. We welcome the SeeControl team and ecosystem to Autodesk,” said Amar Hanspal, Autodesk Senior Vice President for Information Modeling and Platform Products.

http://www.autodesk.com

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Dell'Oro: Shipments Begin for Multi-Gigabit Ethernet Switches

Multi-Gigabit Ethernet Switches began shipping in 2Q15, a significant milestone for stepping up the speed of LAN connections at the enterprise edge, according to a new report by Dell'Oro Group, which is now tracking this market.

The top ten vendors tracked in the Enterprise Edge Report include: Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, Avaya, Brocade, Cisco Systems, Dell, Extreme Networks, Hewlett-Packard (including Aruba Networks), Huawei Technologies, Juniper Networks, and Ruckus Wireless.  

"HP and Cisco both shipped Multi-Gigabit Ethernet switches in the second quarter 2015.  HP began shipping Multi-Gigabit enabled ports on its 5400 in April and Cisco on its Catalyst 3000 in June.  This is an exciting change for the Ethernet industry because 2.5 Gbps and 5 Gbps switches will enable significant speed increases in the campus, or 'enterprise edge' environment with little additional cabling infrastructure upgrades," said Chris DePuy, Vice President of Enterprise Edge research at Dell'Oro Group.  "We expect that as 802.11ac Wave 2 Access Points incorporate Multi-Gigabit capabilities, this will drive demand for a switch upgrade cycle."

http://www.delloro.com

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Facebook Serves 1 Billion Users on Monday

Facebook passed a significant milestone on Monday when one billion people connected to the service is a single day.

Mark Zuckerberg notes that this means one in seven people on the planet connected to Facebook on Monday.

https://www.facebook.com/zuck?fref=ts

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ECI Supplies SDN App to Swedish Govt Agency

Trafikverket, the Swedish Transport Agenby, has selected ECI's LightAPPS SDN applications to automate and optimize its network operations. The deployment includes two SDN apps: LightINSIGHT and LightTIME.

LightINSIGHT offers in-depth insights into network resources and their utilization. The APP provides a 360 degree view of the network inventory, utilization trends, network health, as well as the status of new service penetration. LightINSIGHT's management dashboard significantly improves visibility of network resources and customer SLAs by tracking KPIs.

LightTIME enables customers to schedule services in advance. Via an intuitive GUI, service providers are able to book network resources in advance and know that the allocation will commence as planned. LightTIME also intelligently reduces network bottlenecks and shortens new service introduction.

Trafikverket is the government agency responsible for the long-term planning of the transport system in the country. Trafikverket is also in charge of the state road network and national railway network.

"Trafikverket had very clear goals in mind when selecting LightAPPS. In order to optimize our current network resources, we

http://www.ecitele.com

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Vertical Systems: Ethernet Port Growth Unprecedented in U.S.

AT&T, Level 3, Verizon, CenturyLink, Time Warner Cable, Comcast, XO and Cox (rank order) are top of the class in Vertical Systems Group's U.S. Carrier Ethernet LEADERBOARD results for mid-2015. Port shares were calculated using the base of enterprise installations of Ethernet services, plus input from surveys of Ethernet providers. The LEADERBOARD threshold is four percent (4%) or more of billable port installations.

"U.S. Ethernet port growth was unprecedented in the first half of 2015 and easily surpassed previous estimates. This market seems to be defying the law of large numbers, as there are few indications of the typical slowing growth patterns that we look for when services reach this size and maturity," said Rick Malone, principal at Vertical Systems Group. "Primary drivers for growth are massive migration from TDM to Ethernet services, robust demand for higher speed Ethernet private lines and rising requirements for connectivity to public and private Clouds."  

Other providers selling Ethernet services in the U.S. are segmented into tiers as measured by port share. The Challenge Tier includes providers with between 1% and 4% share of the U.S. retail Ethernet market. The following six companies attained a position in the mid-2015 Challenge Tier (in alphabetical order): Bright House, Charter, Cogent, Lightpath, Windstream and Zayo.

Pending mergers could shake up the Ethernet marketplace by the end of 2015. In April 2015, Comcast ended its bid to acquire Time Warner Cable in the face of strong consumer opposition and regulatory hurdles. In May, Charter announced a merger that includes both Time Warner Cable and Bright House. Currently pending regulatory approval, this deal has the potential to change the U.S. Ethernet competitive landscape as significantly as Level 3's acquisition of tw telecom in 2014. Both Charter and Bright House are Challenge Tier companies. Time Warner Cable is ranked fifth on the Mid-2015 U.S. Carrier Ethernet LEADERBOARD.

The Market Player tier includes all providers with port share below 1%. Companies in the Market Player tier include the following providers (in alphabetical order): Alpheus Communications, American Telesis, Birch Communications, BT Global Services, Cincinnati Bell, Consolidated Communications, Earthlink Business, Expedient, FairPoint, FiberLight, Fibertech (acquired by Lightower, August 2015), Frontier, Global Capacity, Global Cloud Xchange, GTT, Hawaiian Telecom, Integra, Lightower, LS Networks, Lumos Networks, Masergy, MegaPath, NTT America, Orange Business, RCN Business, Sprint, SuddenLink, Tata, TDS Telecom, TelePacific, Telstra, US Signal, WOW!Business and other companies selling retail Ethernet services in the U.S. market."

Detailed Ethernet share results for the U.S. market plus in-depth share analysis are available now exclusively through Vertical Systems Group's ENS (Emerging Networks Service) Research Programs.

http://verticalsystems.com

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NTT Comm Launches Direct Connect to Azure and AWS

NTT Communications launched a Multi-Cloud Connect feature for its Arcstar Universal One services, enabling enterprises to access third party public cloud services through its high-performance MPLS network for enhanced security and improved connectivity.

Multi-Cloud Connect will initially offer direct access to Microsoft Azure and AWS cloud platforms in Tokyo on August 26th, 2015, followed by London later this year.  The service is provided via a security-enhanced, private Layer 3 connection, not via the internet. NTT Comm is planning to expand the service globally.


Multi-Cloud Connect for Amazon is offered over dedicated 50Mbps, 100Mbps, 200Mbps, 300Mbps, 400Mbps, and 500Mbps, as well as best-effort 100Mbps and 1G connections.  Multi-Cloud Connect for Microsoft Azure is offered over dedicated 10Mbps, 50Mbps, 100Mbps, 500Mbps, and 1Gbps connections.

http://www.ntt.com/universalone_e/data/features.html

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Ciena Boosts its 5430 Packet-Optical Platform to 15 Tbps

Ciena announced several new hardware and software capabilities for its 5430 Packet-Optical Platform designed to improve service velocity for high-bandwidth, on-demand applications and to enhance service economics,

Ciena's newly upgraded 5430 provides up to 15 Terabits (Tbps) of capacity to service provider, submarine and cable networks.

The upgrades, which are powered by Ciena’s next-generation family of silicon chips, provide up to five times more port density, four times switching capacity and 60 percent reduction of power consumption per switched Gb/s than the current platform – all in the same footprint and with in-service upgrades to mitigate service interruption. Each port can be individually programmable to operate in QPSK or 16QAM modulation, enabling providers to maximize capacity for any reach with a single card. In addition, a new set of packet networking features has been introduced on the 5430 to offer rich Metro-Ethernet-Forum(MEF) based services for consistent service delivery, faster turn-up and provisioning, and seamless evolution from circuit to packet.

Utilizing Ciena’s field-proven OneConnect Intelligent Control plane, the 5430 also provides greater network agility and automation by offering intelligent software to optimize operations and reduce costs, accelerate service turn-up and set the foundation of a more dynamic network infrastructure.

Ciena confirmed that the enhanced platform is currently being deployed by a number of leading service providers globally, including SK Telecom, Korea’s largest telecommunications company, to support mobile and next generation business and consumer broadband offerings.

“To succeed in today’s on-demand world, providers need networks that are agile, scalable and highly-resilient not only in the core, where traffic is concentrated, but at submarine landing stations and wireless aggregation points as well. Our next-generation family of silicon chips powers the 5430 platform to deliver the highest protocol agnostic switching capacity on the market, ensuring a path for growth without adding operational complexity or service disruption,” stated
Francois Locoh-Donou, Senior Vice President, Global Products Group, Ciena

http://www.ciena.com

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IBM Brigs Blue Box OpenStack to Global Data Centers

Blue Box, an IBM company that delivers OpenStack-based, Private Cloud as a Service (PCaaS), is now available in any of IBM’s globally integrated cloud data centers running SoftLayer infrastructure.

The announcement comes less than 90 days after IBM's acquisition of Blue Box.

“Implementing Cloudsoft AMP on Blue Box Cloud across IBM Cloud data centers will allow us to meet the increased demand from customers for hybrid cloud solutions built on OpenStack," says Duncan Johnston-Watt, CEO, Cloudsoft Corporation. "The combination of Blue Box's best-in-class OpenStack service and IBM Cloud's global footprint and legendary private network will enable us to model, deploy and manage our customers' business critical applications and services worldwide."

“I’ve been impressed by the way the IBM and Blue Box engineering teams have collaborated to quickly bring Blue Box Cloud to a worldwide infrastructure platform,” said Jesse Proudman, CTO at Blue Box, an IBM Company. “Today, we’ve taken a big step toward our goal of delivering private clouds to customers anywhere in the world—and we’re offering deployment timelines that are unheard of within traditional private cloud.”

http://www.ibm.com

IBM Acquires Blue Box for OpenStack Cloud Migration

Wednesday, June 03, 2015  #cloud, IBM, Mergers and Acquisitions, OpenStack, Start-ups  No comments

IBM has acquired Blue Box Group, a managed private cloud provider built on OpenStack. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Blue Box, which is based in Seattle, provides a private cloud as a service platform designed to enable easier deployment of workloads across hybrid cloud environments.

IBM said the acquisition reinforces its commitment to deliver flexible cloud computing models that make it easier for customers to move to data and applications across clouds and meets their needs across public, private and hybrid cloud environments. Blue Box also strengthens IBM Cloud’s existing OpenStack portfolio, with the introduction of a remotely managed OpenStack offering to provide clients with a local cloud and increased visibility, control and security.

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Nutanix Intros FlexPrice Program

Nutanix introduced FlexPrice, a new purchasing program that addresses the business and financial challenges faced by many service providers, including high upfront investment costs to build and expand services, datacenter inefficiency resulting from IT overprovisioning, and lengthy procurement cycles that degrade the speed of service delivery.

With FlexPrice, service providers can now procure Nutanix-qualified hardware and enable Nutanix web-scale software on a flexible subscription basis. Nutanix customers can deploy and expand their infrastructure one node at a time with 3, 6, 12 and 36 month term-based pricing, and lower upfront capital costs for storage, servers and virtualization. Subscription pricing also aligns datacenter investments more tightly with IT consumption.

“In order to win against the legion of low-cost cloud providers, we need to deliver greater customer value via differentiated services. This requires infrastructure that is simple to deploy, easy to manage and efficient to scale,” said Kevin Meany, CTO and Co-Founder, Versatile. “With Nutanix FlexPrice, we can now focus on our service definition and delivery, and stand apart from cloud providers who sell strictly on price.”

http://www.nutanix.com/2015/08/07/its-time-to-elevate-it-at-vmworld-2015/

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ZeroStack Targets All-in-One Scale-Out Private Cloud

ZeroStack, a start-up based in Mountain View, California, emerged from stealth and introduced a private cloud solution that combines on-premises deployment and a SaaS platform -- allowing customers to consume a self-service cloud without significant in-house expertise or time.

The company said its design offers a complete, scale-out private cloud that converges compute, storage, networking and management software with self-healing capabilities. The SaaS platform provides monitoring, troubleshooting, capacity planning and chargeback using a powerful analytics engine. The analytics engine enables predictive failure detection with proactive resolution.

ZeroStack co-founder and CEO Ajay Gulati was senior architect and R&D lead at VMware, where he designed products including Storage I/O control and Storage DRS. Co-founder and CTO Kiran Bondalapati was founding engineer at Bromium, where he architected the company's security solution based on new techniques with hardware virtualization, and was a technical leader at AMD, where he developed the underpinnings of several virtualization technologies.

"Private clouds are an essential element of many organizations' IT strategies, but they have been frustrated by the complexity, slow time to value and cost of deploying and running them," said Ajay Gulati, co-founder and CEO of ZeroStack. "ZeroStack was founded on the belief that every enterprise should be able to stand up a private cloud without having to stitch together complex software and hardware or rely on expensive technical teams to run it. A private cloud should be as easy to consume as a public cloud."

ZeroStack also disclosed $5.6 million in Series A funding led by Foundation Capital in 2014, with Ashu Garg, general partner, leading the investment from Foundation Capital and joining as the first board member. Mark Leslie, founder and CEO and Veritas, has also been appointed to the board.

http://www.zerostack.com

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GigOptix Raises $15 Million for Potential Acquisitions

GigOptix closed on its previously announced public offering of 9,218,000 newly issued shares of common stock at a price to the public of $1.70 per share. The net proceeds to the company from the offering were approximately $14.73 million after underwriting discounts and commissions. In addition, certain officers and directors as selling stockholders sold 282,000 shares of previously issued shares of common stock in the underwritten public offering under an effective equity incentive plan registration statement on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company is receiving none of the proceeds from the sale of shares by the selling stockholders.

Net proceeds will be used for potential acquisitions for strategic growth, including the acquisition of critical technologies and scalable businesses.

http://www.gigoptix.com

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GSMA: Mobile Broadband Growth is Key for the Americas

Mobile data traffic is predicted to rise more than sixfold in North America and tenfold in Latin America between 2014 and 2019, according to figures cited by the GSMA. As of September 2014, there were 216 million individuals using mobile devices to access the internet in Latin America, an overall penetration rate of approximately 35 per cent. By 2020, the GSMA forecasts that penetration will come close to 50 per cent of the population, which means an additional 105 million people will gain access to the mobile Internet.

The recent Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL) in Ottawa, which was held in preparation for this November’s World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-15),  agreed to support the entire L-band (1427-1518MHz) for mobile broadband. Early indications suggest that this band will have widespread support as a globally harmonised band at WRC-15, driving economies of scale that will benefit consumers around the world.

“Mobile data traffic is predicted to rise more than sixfold in North America and tenfold in Latin America between 2014 and 20192. We urge all the governments of the Americas to make a clear call for the mobile spectrum needed to support future data demand and the region’s digital economy,” stated John Giusti, Deputy Chief Regulatory Officer, GSMA.

“The GSMA welcomes the strong leadership shown by the governments of North and Latin America and the Caribbean last week in supporting the growth of mobile broadband, a critical enabler to social and economic opportunity in the region. Many countries require connectivity across large rural areas and mobile broadband is often the only way – or at least the most cost-effective way – to ensure people have access to the Internet."

“We are also pleased with the progress made on the sub-700MHz UHF band (470-698MHz), critical for expanding affordable rural connectivity. Although there is no CITEL common proposal in support of this band for mobile, a growing number of countries want to ensure they have flexibility to deploy mobile broadband networks in this band. The GSMA will continue to work in concert with administrations in the Americas and other regions to advance a global multi-country proposal to the WRC-15 in November. Given the shared challenges of expanding rural connectivity in countries around the world, the GSMA urges governments from all regions to join this multi-country proposal in support of the sub-700MHz band."

http://www.gsma.com

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Skyport Ships SkySecure with Secure Hosting for VMware vCenter

Skyport Systems announced the general availability of SkySecure -- a cloud-managed, on-premises, secure server.

When VMware vCenter is hosted on a SkySecure Server, an application-specific firewall for VMware vCenter secures the computing foundation and all communications channels. Essentially,, the SkySecure Server creates a customized firewall protecting VMware vCenter. This application-specific firewall implementation hardens each protocol and communication channel for:

• Administrative access to vCenter Server
• DNS access to/from vCenter Server
• Microsoft Active Directory for user and admin identity management
• Partner API usage such as Software Defined Networking controllers or VM backup systems
• Network Attached Storage entitlements for image management
• ESX Server to vCenter administrative control channel

http://www.skyportsystems.com

See 1 minute video:  https://youtu.be/tp_cye0AARc

Skyport Unveils its Hyper-Secured Servers

Tuesday, May 19, 2015  Cyber Security, Servers, Silicon Valley, Skyport, Start-ups  No comments

Skyport Systems, a start-up based in Mountain View, California unveiled its "hyper-secured" server architecture for delivering trusted computing and policy enforcement at the application edge.

The SkySecure System enforces policy on hosted workloads without software agents or network changes. The architecture tightly integrates the components of multiple security appliances that were not designed to work together, reduces the threat surface by removing physical attack vectors and implements Intel's Trusted Execution Technology. SkySecure is designed for deployment at the most critical points of infrastructure, including exposed DMZs, branch and remote environments, high-value business applications and foundational IT control systems such as Microsoft Active Directory, DNS servers and virtualization/cloud/big data/SDN controllers. No changes are required to networks, applications, or operating systems. The company says its server is designed to catch and contain malware and rootkits.

Hardware, firmware and software components are validated at the point of manufacture and continuously monitored once deployed. After properly attesting, the system boots a fully
whitelisted Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) implementation. SkySecure Compartments enable a dynamic whitelist and application-layer protections around each workload deployed on a SkySecure Server, houses them in a synthetic operating environment and assumes a zero-trust posture regarding all network access.

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Nexenta Extends Its Software-Defined Storage Platform

Nexenta announced a number of enhancements for it Open Source-driven Software-Defined Storage (OpenSDS) for VMware environments and the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC).

NexentaStor 5.0 connects NexentaFusion and VMware vCenter Server to deliver simplified deployment, configuration and on-going management of Software-Defined Storage infrastructures.

 Features of NexentaStor include:

• Unified File (NFS and SMB) and Block (FC and iSCSI) services
• Built on ZFS for enterprise grade data integrity, scale and performance
• Scales from 10’s of terabytes to petabytes
• Unlimited file system sizes
• Inline data reduction for additional storage cost savings
• Unlimited space optimized snapshots and clones
• Periodic asynchronous long distance replication
• Interoperability with VMware environments (VAAI support, vCenter plugin, etc.)

“VMware and Nexenta share a vision of enabling IT to break down physical barriers that currently binds data to specific hardware in order to drive greater operational efficiency and availability at lower costs,” said Skip Bacon, vice president of Products, Storage and Availability, VMware. “VMware and its partners continue to work closely to enable customers to realize the benefits of software-defined storage.”

http://www.nexenta.com

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Scality Raises $45 Million for Software-Based Storage

Scality, a start-up based in San Francisco, completed a $45 million Series D funding round for its software-based storage solution.

Scality’s RING platform runs on standard x86 servers powered by Linux, such as the ones of HP, Dell, Cisco, SuperMicro, or Seagate. It uses an object storage architecture to create an unlimited storage pool for file, object and OpenStack applications.

The latest funding round includes new entrant and strategic partner BroadBand Tower, Inc. (BBTower), all existing investors, led by Menlo Ventures, and 65% of the Scality staff, bringing the total investment in Scality to $80 million.

Since its last round of funding in July 2013, Scality has increased its revenue by 400%, grew its staff from 42 to 160, announced major customers, including most recently Deluxe, RTL II, and Phoenix, and signed major distribution agreements. This includes a global resale agreement with HP signed in October 2014 and a recent deal with Dell,  as well as other relationships with server manufacturers.  The company claims more than 50% of the server market is reselling Scality RING software.

“Over the course of the last year-and-a-half, we’ve seen an unprecedented amount of funding given to software storage startups. At the same time, we’ve seen the traditional storage vendors lose market share, change leadership and shift their business model to mimic the software-defined strategy. This latest funding round comes at a time when Scality and the software-defined storage industry are poised to attract billions of dollars from customers that are rethinking their storage strategies. Within our Series D, we are happy to welcome BroadBand Tower, and can report that all of our existing investors have contributed, as well as 65% of Scality employees,” said Jerome Lecat, CEO at Scality. “Our employees and partners believe in us, and the fact that this last funding round was done at 2x valuation speaks volumes about the overall confidence in the future of Scality. This new capital investment will allow us to massively boost our go-to-market, attract strategic new hires, continue to expand globally, and be primed for a successful IPO by 2017.”

http://www.scality.com

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Symantec Secures More Than 1 Billion IoT Devices

Symantec said it is now securing more than one billion Internet of Things (IoT) devices, including everything from televisions and cars to smart meters and critical infrastructure.

Symantec's IoT security portfolio includes:

• Device Security with Symantec’s Embedded Critical Systems Protection: Symantec’s newest offering protects IoT devices by locking down the software embedded in the device to protect against zero-day attacks and prevent compromise. Symantec has signed Wincor, the world’s leading providers of IT solutions and services to retail banks and the retail industry, along with other leading manufacturers in the industrial and automotive ecosystems.
• IoT Roots of Trust and Device Certificates: Symantec is working with the world’s largest chip providers and cryptographic library partners, including Texas Instruments and wolfSSL, to embed security at the hardware level. These partnerships combine Symantec’s leading Certificate Authority with the partner’s embeddable engines to create new “Roots of Trust,” the cornerstones for devices to safely encrypt and authenticate information.
• Code Signing Certificates and Secure App Services: To ensure that code running on IoT devices is authorized, Symantec provides code signing certificates and a cloud based signing-as-a-service for a number of code formats relevant to IoT.

http://www.symantec.com

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ONUG to Host NSF-Supported Workshop on SDN

The Open Networking User Group (ONUG) will host a National Science Foundation-supported workshop on “SDN in Large Enterprise Networks” in conjunction with the upcoming ONUG Fall 2015. The workshop will take place November 3-4 at New York University’s Kimmel Center.

“The goal of ONUG has always been to advance SDN and open cloud infrastructure by facilitating a higher level of engagement between IT business leaders, standards organizations, and members of the academic, research, and vendor communities,” said Nick Lippis, ONUG co-founder and co-chairman. “Hosting the NSF-supported workshop at ONUG Fall takes this one step further, providing an invaluable opportunity to strengthen the relationship with researchers and incorporate their expertise as the industry forges ahead with SDN deployments.”

http://www.OpenNetworkingUserGroup.com

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Windstream Carrier Deploys in Zayo’s NY Data Centers

Windstream will deploy its core network infrastructure within Zayo’s colocation facilities in the New York metro market.

The deployment was driven by Windstream’s 100G long haul express network expansion that upgraded and modernized its Northeast regional and metro DWDM network.

Specifically, Zayo will deploy colocation infrastructure for Windstream at zColo facilities located at 60 Hudson Street in New York City, and 165 Halsey Street in Newark. Combined, the two carrier-neutral colocation facilities provide connectivity to more than 300 customers and key carriers, enabling Windstream Carrier Solutions to offer its metro and long haul wave services to an extended customer base in the Northeast.

http://zayo.com/services/colocation

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IEEE Forms NG-EON and Ethernet-over-Backplanes Study Groups

IEEE announced the formation of two new study groups: IEEE 802.3™ Next Generation Ethernet Passive Optical Network (NG-EPON) study group and IEEE 802.3 2.5 Gb/s and 5 Gb/s Ethernet over Backplane and Copper Cable study group.

“The telecommunications industry is faced with three main components that drive increasing access network speeds: number of subscribers, number of connected devices (and applications) per subscriber, and bit rate required by those devices and applications. All are increasing simultaneously, and these three growth areas combined lead to an exponential increase in bit rates over the fiber access network,” said Dr. Curtis Knittle, chairperson of the IEEE 802.3 NG-EPON study group and director of Network Technologies at CableLabs, Inc. “The NG-EPON Study Group will explore market drivers, existing and projected technologies, and consolidate the industry around the objectives for the next generation Ethernet Passive Optical Network architecture to address the future needs of network operators.”

“IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standards are evolving to address broader markets, such as supporting automotive and industrial networks,” said Yong Kim, chairperson of the IEEE 802.3 2.5 Gb/s and 5 Gb/s Ethernet over Backplane and Copper Cable Study Group and senior director, CTO Office, Networking Broadcom Corporation. “We are now seeing the evolution of the mainstream object storage market as it transitions to take advantage of the benefits from the use of Ethernet. This study group will explore the objectives and criteria to serve the 2.5 Gb/s and 5 Gb/s Backplane and short reach copper cable applications.”

http://ieee802.org/3/NGEPONSG/index.html
http://ieee802.org/3/CU4HDDSG/index.html
http://www.ieee.org

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Mellanox Supplies End-to-End EDR 100Gb/s InfiniBand to KTH Royal Institute

Sweden's KTH Royal Institute of Technology has selected Mellanox Technologies to supply its end-to-end, EDR 100Gb/s InfiniBand solutions for use in their PDC Center for High Performance Computing (PDC Center), whose scientific research work includes advanced modeling for climate changes, brain functions and protein-drug interactions.

The PDC Center is the latest deployment of Mellanox EDR InfiniBand technology to validate the expanding global adoption of this high-performance interconnect solution. Mellanox’s EDR InfiniBand solution offers higher interconnect speed, lower latency and smart accelerations.

The PDC Center for High Performance Computing at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology provides HPC services to Swedish academia as part of the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC), as well as internationally via the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) infrastructure. Those services include supercomputing and storage resources plus assistance from a range of application experts.

http://www.mellanox.com

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Compass Networks Joins the Consortium of On-Board Optics

Compass Networks, which offers a high-performance routing platform based on its icPhotonics chipsets, has joined the Consortium of On-Board Optics (COBO), which is developing interoperable specifications to lower power consumption and increase bandwidth for optics within enterprises and data centers.

“We are pleased to have chip companies that provide solutions for 100G and 400G join the consortium,” said Brad Booth, chair of COBO. “CMOS semiconductors will continue to play a major role as the COBO ecosystem develops for cloud and enterprise datacenters.”

Compass Networks will work with other industry leaders in defining standards that will reduce power consumption and faceplate area in data center networking equipment.

http://www.compassnetworks.com/

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Intel Leads Another $100 Million Investment Round in Mirantis

Intel led a $100 million funding round and spending in Mirantis, which specializes in OpenStack solutions.  The funding round included new investor Goldman Sachs and existing investors August Capital, Insight Venture Partners, Ericsson, Sapphire Ventures (formerly SAP Ventures) and WestSummit Capital.

The funding round builds on the $100 million in Series B funding that Mirantis raised in 2014.  Last year, Mirantis also announced the largest public sale of OpenStack software ever ($30 million with Ericsson). The start-up says its top line revenue grew 150 percent year-over-year and the company added more than 70 new enterprise customers. Mirantis is based in Mountain View, California and has also opened new offices in Amsterdam, Austin, Grenoble, Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Mirantis is undertaking technical collaboration with Intel as part of Intel’s recent announcement focused on creating tens of thousands of new clouds, the Cloud for All initiative. Specifically the two companies will address: performance at scale, storage, network integration and support for big data.  Addressing these technology challenges will expand the use of OpenStack and ease adoption for Mirantis and Intel customers.

“With Intel as our partner, we’ll show the world that open design, open development and open licensing is the future of cloud infrastructure software. Mirantis’ goal is to make OpenStack the best way to deliver cloud software, surpassing any proprietary solutions,” said Alex Freedland, co-founder and president of Mirantis. “Every industry is being disrupted by software. Smart enterprises are embracing the cloud to grow top line revenues and get new services to market faster. Mirantis is the only vendor 100 percent committed to only OpenStack.”

“Our investment in Mirantis is the next step in bringing open cloud infrastructure to the entire industry as part of Intel’s ‘Cloud for All’ initiative,” said Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager, Data Center Group, Intel. “As enterprises embrace public, private and hybrid cloud strategies, they need choices in their infrastructure software. OpenStack is an ideal open solution for cloud-native applications and services, and our collaboration with Mirantis is well placed to ensure the delivery of critical new enterprise features helping to create of tens of thousands of clouds.”

http://www.mirantis.com

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Latest Windows Server Preview Adds Container Capabilities

Microsoft released  a new preview of Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016 includes the first public preview of Windows Server Containers, new Nano Server functionality, and software-defined data center enhancements.

Microsoft says Windows Server Containers create a highly agile Windows Server environment, enabling developers to work with the languages of their choice – whether.NET, ASP.NET, and PowerShell or Python, Ruby on Rails, Java, etc..

The release builds on a partnership with Docker to offer container and DevOps benefits to Linux and Windows Server users alike. Windows Server Containers are now part of the Docker open source project. These containers can be deployed and managed either using PowerShell or the Docker client.

In addition to working with Docker to deliver Windows Server Containers, Microsoft plans to support choice and flexibility around containers through:

• Ensuring a first-rate experience for containers on Azure. Microsoft recently released Docker VM Extensions for Linux on Azure, Docker CLI support on Windows, and Visual Studio Tools for Docker. Contributing to the open source development of the Docker Engine for Windows Server with a goal to enable the Docker client to manage multi-container applications using both Linux and Windows containers, regardless of the hosting environment or cloud provider.
• Joining the Open Container Initiative to deliver an open, universal container image format and runtime under the Linux Foundation.
• Expanding the ecosystem, through work with Canonical around the LXD REST API, a cross-platform container management layer that will bring new container innovation to Windows and Ubuntu developers.
• Updates to Visual Studio and Visual Studio Online for Windows Server Container.
• A future preview of Windows Server 2016, will include Hyper-V Containers, a second container deployment option that will provide higher isolation using an optimized virtualization and Windows Server operating system that separates containers from each other and from the host operating system. 

The latest preview of Windows Server 2016 also includes new Azure-inspired software-defined datacenter features, extending the functionality of our leading operating system and application platform:

• Enhanced Nano Server functionality: adds a  new Emergency Management Console.
• Simplified software-defined networking: we are delivering a scalable network controller, for centralized network configuration as well as a software load balancer for high availability and performance.
• Extended security: Shielded VMs, which enable isolation between the underlying host and virtual machines, help protect resources in shared environments. 
• Management: System Center feature enhancements make it easier to manage virtualized environments including support for rolling upgrades, shielded VM’s and guarded host support, and automated maintenance windows.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-technical-preview

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