Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Ericsson Achieves 450 Mbps with LTE-U

Ericsson now has License Assisted Access (LAA), sometimes referred to as LTE-U, running live its labs.  The tests support the aggregation of licensed and unlicensed spectrum for peak rates up to 450 Mbps and enabling fair sharing of spectrum between mobile and Wi-Fi devices. The lab trials of both LAA fair sharing and licensed-unlicensed aggregation - 20 MHz on licensed band and 40 MHz on unlicensed 5 GHz band - were demonstrated from the Ericsson radio development units in Ottawa, Canada and Stockholm, Sweden.

LAA, or LTE-U, extends the benefits of LTE to unlicensed spectrum, providing reliable and predictable performance. The licensed band provides an anchor to ensure a seamless user experience with full mobility while the unlicensed band provides incremental capacity and enables faster data speeds.

The technology milestone has been achieved in cooperation with Qualcomm Technologies.  The companies also confirmed that Verizon, SK Telecom and T-Mobile US are already investigating the performance benefits that LAA can offer to mobile customers on their networks.

Starting in the fourth quarter 2015, Ericsson is adding LAA to its indoor small cell portfolio, including the Ericsson RBS 6402 Indoor Picocell (targeted at smaller buildings under 50,000 square feet) followed by the Ericsson Radio Dot System (for medium and large buildings).

Ed Chan, Senior Vice President, Network Planning, Verizon, says: "Verizon is committed to researching and adopting new technologies that will consistently improve the performance of our network and ultimately the experience we deliver to our customers. We are encouraged by the headway that Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies have made in demonstrating the benefits LAA can provide."

Park Jin-hyo, Senior Vice President and Head of Network Technology R&D Center, SK Telecom, says: "SK Telecom is very active in the development of 5G technologies, which will be an extension and evolution of our LTE network. We are delighted to achieve the successful trial of the 450Mbps LAA and fair-sharing technology with Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies and will continue to work closely with them to secure advanced network technologies."

Neville Ray, Chief Technical Officer, T-Mobile , says: "It is very encouraging to see License Assisted Access live in the Ericsson labs already delivering on the promises of both a better mobile broadband customer experience and the fair sharing and co-existence within the 5 GHz band among wireless and Wi-Fi devices. With over 500 MHz of underutilized spectrum in the 5 GHz Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (UNII) band, LAA can provide our customers with superior network performance while effectively co-existing with other Wi-Fi devices to ensure a better experience for all wireless users."

Thomas Nor�n, Vice President and Head of Radio Product Management, Ericsson, says: "Carrier Aggregation was an important technology trend for mobile networks in 2014 and LAA is already set to be a key focus for mobile operators in 2015. Innovations like LAA that improve the user experience while increasing spectrum efficiency will be significant milestones that mobile industry leaders must both drive and support."

http://www.ericsson.com/news/1893104

HP to Acquire Voltage Security for Cloud Data Encryption

HP agreed to acquire Voltage Security, a provider of data-centric encryption, tokenization and key management solutions.  Financial terms were not disclosed.

Voltage Security holds core patents for Identity-Based Encryption (IBE) and Format-Preserving Encryption (FPE). Voltage uses these to enable end-to-end protection of payments systems, from card swipe to back-end tokenization, serving six of the largest payment processors in the U.S. today. Voltage’s solutions allow enterprises to use protected data in applications without having to re-architect their applications or adopt fragmented frameworks. This capability extends from the data center to cloud and Hadoop environments, all under a single framework. Voltage Security is based in Cupertino, California.

HP said Voltage’s proven data-centric encryption and tokenization technology will complement its own HP Atalla information security and encryption business. The company notes that the HP Atalla business currently protects 70% of U.S. payment card transactions.

http://www8.hp.com/hpnext/posts/hp-acquire-voltage-security-expand-data-encryption-security-solutions-cloud-and-big-data#.VNrmGvm-2-0
http://www.voltage.com/company/

  • Voltage Security was co-founded by Matt Pauker, Guido Appenzeller, and Rishi Kacker in 2002 out of a Stanford University dorm room. Co-founders also included Dr. Dan Boneh, a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford. Sathvik Krishnamurthy has served as the company's CEO since 2003.

Apple Signs $848 million Power Purchase Deal with First Solar

Apple has committed $848 million to purchase clean energy from First Solar's California Flats Solar Project in Monterey County, California.

Under the largest power purchase agreement (PPA) to date for the high-tech industry, Apple will receive 130 megawatts (MW) AC from the new facility over a 25-year commitment. Pacific Gas & Electric will acquire the remaining production capacity of the solar farm. Construction is expected to start this year with completion slated for next year.

"Apple is leading the way in addressing climate change by showing how large companies can serve their operations with 100 percent clean, renewable energy," said Joe Kishkill, Chief Commercial Officer for First Solar.

http://www.firstsolar.com

Hitachi Data Systems to Acquire Pentaho for Big Data Analytics

Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS) agreed to acquire Pentaho Corporation, a provider of big data integration and business analytics with an open source-based platform.  Financial terms were not disclosed but the companies described the deal as the largest private big data acquisition transaction to date. Industry insiders estimate the purchase price in the half-billion dollar range.

The Pentaho platform simplifies preparing and blending any data and includes a spectrum of tools that enable users to easily analyze, visualize, explore, report insights and predict outcomes. Pentaho offers a platform that is open, embeddable and extensible, which allows it to deliver data and analytics as a service to customers and partners. The company’s partner ecosystem includes Amazon Web Services, Cisco, Cloudera, DataStax, Dell, EMC Greenplum, Hortonworks, HP Vertica, MapR, MongoDB and Teradata. Hitachi is an OEM partner. Pentaho is based in Orlando, Florida.

Hitachi said the acquisition advances its goal of providing business solutions that integrate machine data, information technology, and analytics to distill value from big data and the Internet of Things.

"Data remains an untapped resource for many organizations and businesses – with the realization of the value of that data remaining a challenge," said Kevin Eggleston, senior vice president, Social Innovation and Global Industries, Hitachi Data Systems. "The combination of Hitachi's broad industry expertise, advanced information technologies, and now Pentaho software and the talented team of experts, will enable us to give customers a more complete solution to manage their data – allowing them to leverage the power of big data and Internet of Things in a quicker and simpler way."

"We are pleased to join the Hitachi Data Systems family and truly believe our complementary set of solutions will accelerate the adoption of big data deployments and Internet of Things applications," said Quentin Gallivan, chairman and chief executive officer, Pentaho. "The broad resources, expertise and global presence of Hitachi Data Systems, as well as Hitachi, Ltd., help ensure a strong foundation for Pentaho to continue to accelerate our big data analytics and data orchestration capabilities, bring new innovations to market, and expand support for current and future customers."

http://www.pentaho.com/
http://www.hds.com/

Alcatel-Lucent Intros Compact Metro Cell Outdoor Family

Alcatel-Lucent introduced a new Compact Metro Cell Outdoor family that is 50 percent smaller than existing metro cells.

The Compact Metro Cell Outdoor family, which is currently being trialled with a number of operators around the globe, integrates the baseband, an LTE radio, higher power output and modular design options, including external antennas. The compact size also allows them to be wall-mounted and hidden from view, with just the antenna visible, and optimally placed to offer customers the highest service quality.

Alcatel-Lucent said operators can connect these CMCO devices via backhaul into their wider network. In addition, the ability to bypass the embedded baseband unit (BBU) means they will also be able to connect via a Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI) to a centralized BBU, managing multiple radios. This will allow them to smoothly evolve networks and leverage the efficiencies offered by a virtualized RAN architecture.

Key features of the 9764 Compact Metro Cell Outdoor Family:

  • Small form factor (approximately 6K cubic centimeters for a 2x2W).
  • Support for LTE mobile ultra-broadband connectivity, with Wi-Fi as an option.
  • Increased capacity, supporting up to 200 users
  • Later versions using system-on-a-chip (SoC) technology will support 60 MHz within one box, as well as the ability to daisy chain to aggregate multiple small cell sectors.
  • Radio-on-chip (RoC) technology which enables 43% greater power efficiency compared to small cells solutions without this technology. 
  • Coverage and capacity support for different scenarios, made possible by various output power: 2x1W for dense urban locations (to complement the existing Metro Cell family), 2x2W for optimal coverage and capacity, 2x 5W for the highest coverage
  • Use of a variety of external antennas (directional or omni directional). 
  • The ability to allow operators to smoothly evolve towards a vRAN architecture, leveraging a centralized BBU.
  • The Compact Metro Cell Outdoor family is commercially available now within the 1800 MHz frequency, B7 operating band and 2600 MHz frequency, B3 operating band, with a full complement of frequencies for FDD and TDD available throughout 2015.

“The goal of this product was to enable operators to seamlessly and simply integrate the product inside of existing street furniture and simplify municipality zoning approvals. Our existing Metro Cells continues to help them with pole-mounting and wall-mounting applications, while we are expanding their deployment options with the Compact Metro Cell Outdoor,” stated Mike Schabel, Vice President of Small Cells in Alcatel-Lucent.

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

Xirrus Launches Cloud-Managed Wall-Mounted Wi-Fi Access Point

Xirrus introduced a cloud-managed, wall-mounted 802.11ac Wi-Fi access point (AP) with integrated Gigabit Ethernet switch and designed for hospitality, education, healthcare, and any business requiring high speed Wi-Fi coupled with ease of deployment and management.

Xirrus said this product represents the lowest-cost enterprise-class 802.11ac AP available on the market.

“In hotels, a positive Wi-Fi experience weighs heavily on guest satisfaction scores,” said Bruce Miller, vice president of product marketing, Xirrus. “Providing high-quality Wi-Fi to hundreds of hotel rooms was once a time-intensive and expensive endeavor. Our new wall-mounted access point provides high-speed Wi-Fi and wired access at the lowest price point on the market today.”

http://www.xirrus.com

Wandera Raises $15 Million for Cloud-based Mobile Data Gateway

Wandera, a start-up based in San Francisco and London, raised $15 million in new funding for its work in mobile data security and optimization.

Wandera’s Mobile Data Gateway is a scalable cloud offering that sits in the path of mobile data in between employee devices and the Internet. This helps enterprises to secure the mobile data usage of employees. Wandera also adds mobile data optimization and real-time intelligence capabilities. The company said its Wandera cloud currently processes more than 350 million content requests daily for customers with users in 60 countries. Wandera's partner ecosystem includes AT&T, BT and Samsung as well as integrations with MobileIron, AirWatch and Citrix.

The latest funding round was led by 83North, with participation from existing investor Bessemer Venture Partners. This brings Wandera's total funding to $23 million.

"Following the recent Sony Pictures and celebrity iOS hacks, companies are demanding the next generation of mobile security. We have reached a tipping point where businesses must tackle mobile data security threats head-on or face serious repercussions," said Roy Tuvey, President of Wandera. "We're thrilled to add 83North as an investor and this capital will help us grow and scale at a time when mobile attacks are growing exponentially across all smart devices."

https://www.wandera.com

Wandera was founded by brothers Eldar and Roy Tuvey, who previously founded cloud-based web security market leader ScanSafe, which scaled rapidly to thousands of enterprise customers before being acquired by networking leader Cisco in 2010.

Akamai Posts Q4 Revenue of $536 Million up 23% YoY

Akamai Technologies reported Q4 2014 revenue of 2014 was $536 million, a 23% increase over fourth quarter 2013 revenue of $436 million, and a 25% increase when adjusted for foreign exchange. Total revenue for 2014 was $1,964 million, a 24% increase over 2013 revenue of $1,578 million, and a 25% increase when adjusted for foreign exchange.  GAAP net income for the fourth quarter of 2014 was $97 million, or $0.54 per diluted share, an increase from prior quarter's GAAP net income of $91 million, and a 21% increase over fourth quarter 2013 GAAP net income of $80 million, or $0.44 per diluted share.

"Akamai's strong fourth quarter performance capped off a record year on both the top and bottom line," said Dr. Tom Leighton, CEO of Akamai.  "Our strong revenue results continued to be driven by solid performance across all our geographies and all of our major product lines, with very strong growth coming from our Security and Media products. As we look forward to 2015, we expect to continue investing in the business with the goals of building out our network, expanding sales capacity, deepening channel relationships and accelerating innovation to help our customers secure and grow their on-line businesses."

http://www.akamai.com

Ruckus Wireless Posts Q4 Revenue of $86 Million

Ruckus Wireless posted revenue for the fourth quarter of 2014 of $85.9 million, an increase of 17.6% from the fourth quarter of 2013. GAAP net income was $2.9 million for the fourth quarter of 2014, compared with $0.7 million for the fourth quarter of 2013. GAAP operating income was $3.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2014, compared with an operating loss of $0.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2013.

Ruckus said its revenue for the quarter was impacted by delays in North America education spending as a result of anticipated E-Rate funding in 2015. During the quarter, Ruckus added 14 new service provider end-customers and approximately 60 in 2014, bringing the total service provider end-customer base to over 200. The company also added approximately 4,000 enterprise end-customers in the fourth quarter and 15,000 in 2014, bringing the total enterprise end-customer base to over 48,000.

"Looking back on 2014, we made great progress in growing sales, expanding both gross margin and operating margin, as well as increasing the cadence of new product introductions and innovations. For the year, we reported 24% revenue growth and almost doubled our non-GAAP operating income. We introduced a number of new and innovative products, expanding our solutions portfolio to include software and cloud service offerings," said Selina Lo, president and chief executive officer, Ruckus Wireless.

http://www.ruckuswireless.com

VMware Appoints Shekar Ayyar to Head NFV

VMware announced the appointments of Shekar Ayyar lead the development of a Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) vertical market team within VMware. Ayyar also leads the company's strategic and corporate development efforts, where he is responsible for aligning strategy and long-term planning across VMware businesses as well as managing the company's mergers and acquisitions, and strategic investments. He joined VMware in June 2007.

VMware also announced the appointment of Sanjay Mirchandani to serve as corporate senior vice president. He leads the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region. Prior to joining VMware, he spent seven years at EMC, where he was most recently EVP of Global Enterprise Services. Also at EMC, he was CIO of the company and COO of their Global Centers of Excellence. He has also held senior roles at Microsoft.

http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-newsfeed/VMware-Appoints-Shekar-Ayyar-and-Sanjay-Mirchandani-to-Corporate-Senior-Vice-President/1922580

A10 Networks Reports Q4 Revenue of $45 Million

A10 Networks reported Q4 2014 revenue of $45.2 million, compared with $42.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2013. Total revenue for the year 2014 was $179.5 million, an increase of 27 percent, compared with $141.7 million reported for the year 2013. GAAP net loss was $16.0 million, compared with a GAAP net loss of $5.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2013. The company reported GAAP net loss of $34.7 million for the year 2014, compared with a GAAP net loss of $27.1 million for the year 2013.

“Overall, the team executed well in the fourth quarter, delivering strong sequential bookings growth and adding over 280 new customers - a new record for A10,” said Lee Chen, president and chief executive officer of A10 Networks. “We launched several new products in the quarter, including the ACOS 4.0 platform that has leading programmability, enhanced application support and manageability that enables important advanced features such as SSL Insight. We remain confident in our ability to grow our business by capitalizing on our unique competitive advantages, expanding our strategic partnerships and continuing to further strengthen our technology leadership.”

http://www.a10networks.com/