Sunday, April 26, 2015

CloudBridge Debuts Virtual WAN Link Aggregation

Citrix announced its "CloudBridge Virtual WAN Edition", which allows enterprises to create a virtualized WAN by bonding multiple network services such as MPLS, broadband, mobile and satellite Internet links together to maximize WAN capacity and reliability. The Citrix CloudBridge Virtual WAN constantly assesses the performance of paths within the virtualized WAN to instantaneously and automatically adapt to changing network conditions.

The solution extends the company's existing CloudBridge appliances and integrates with the company’s HDX and application acceleration technologies.

The CloudBridge Virtual WAN will be generally available as a new software edition on select CloudBridge appliances in Q2 2015. Additionally, virtual appliances and versions for third party cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, will be available in Q3 2015.

http://www.citrix.com/products/cloudbridge/overview.html

Thoma Bravo Completes Acquisition of Riverbed

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

  • On Friday, April 24, various sources reported a significant layoff of employees at Riverbed's HQ in San Francisco. 
  • Previous networking investments by Thoma Bravo have included: Blue Coat Systems, Empirix, InfoVista, Keynote Systems, Sailpoint Technologies, and others.

Freescale Intros White Box SDN with Advantech

Freescale Semiconductor introduced its new SDN switching platform powered by its QorIQ multicore processors and designed to bring intelligence, agility and security to the network’s edge for the secure Internet of Tomorrow.

The white box solution, which was developed in conjunction with Advantech, leverages Freescale’s 24-core, server-class QorIQ T4240 processor and VortiQa Open Network software. The platform couples the QorIQ processors with standard switch ASIC devices. The platform utilizes standards-based protocols such as OpenFlow, and supports manageability through open technologies such as OpenStack and OpenDaylight. It includes VNF support, commercial grade VortiQa SDN software supporting OpenFlow version 1.3 with extensions for Layer 4 and above protocols, and Layer 2/3 forwarding.

Freescale said its new platform enables exceptional network security for virtualized environments by supporting the integration of high performance packet processing functions such as firewalling, intrusion detection and IPSEC over VxLAN.

“In recent years, the world’s networks have undergone a dramatic transformation. Enterprises, network carriers and their equipment suppliers need a new generation of switching technology for this new era,” said Sam Fuller, head of Strategy and Solutions for Freescale’s Digital Networking group. “Freescale’s intelligent switching platform helps OEMs and their customers unleash the full value of SDN, while saving power and cost by eliminating the need for additional appliances commonly required in traditional switching implementations.”

“The Freescale network services switching platform further expands Advantech’s switching product portfolio for equipment manufacturers, integrators and service providers.” said John Muller, vice president of Sales and Marketing, Advantech Networks and Communications group. “When combined with VortiQa Open Network switch software, Enterprise IT and cloud service providers will be able to drive greater flexibility and efficiency into their software defined infrastructure to support the increasing demand for new and innovative services.”

The Freescale platform will be available from Advantech as a commercial grade product that can be customized to meet specific customer requirements in various deployment scenarios. Advantech will be offering first line hardware and software support and services on the platform to facilitate customer designs, reduce development cycles and accelerate time-to-market. The platform will be shipping to lead customers in 2H15 with initial support for IPSec VPN, Policy Based Routing and L2/L3 Ethernet Switching.

http://www.freescale.com

Apigee Completes IPO - NASDAQ: APIC

On Friday, Apigee, a start-up based in San Jose, California, completed its initial public offering (IPO) of 5,115,000 shares of its common stock at a price to the public of $17.00 per share. Apigee is now traded on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol "APIC."

The company's Apigee Edge API platform helps enterprises to build mobile and digital initiatives using APIs, apps and data. Apigee Insights delivers big data predictive analytics. Apigee says that when used together, its APIs and predictive analytics can create an adaptive cycle of continuous improvement – and the faster an enterprise goes through this cycle, the faster it can innovate, adapt and accelerate its digital business.

http://apigee.com/
  • In April 2014, Apigee announced $60 million in new venture financing for its API platform for enabling predictive analytics in digital interactions. Pine River Capital Management and Wellington Management Company participated as new investors in this round, along with current Apigee investors Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), Bay Partners, Third Point LLC, SAP Ventures, funds managed by BlackRock, Focus Ventures, and Accenture. This brought Apigee's total funding to $171 as of April 2014. 

ZTE Reports Rise in Q1 Profits

ZTE reported first-quarter 2015 net profit RMB 883 million (US$142 million), up 41.9% year over year. Basic earnings per share climbed to RMB 0.24, while revenue rose 10.2% to RMB 21 billion.

Operating revenue from telecommunications software systems, services and other products increased by 23.4% in the first quarter, as ZTE recorded strong growth from video and network terminal products, in addition to services.

Revenue from Carriers’ Networks increased by 8.9%, as compared to the same period last year, driven by growth in sales of products such as wireless communication systems, wireline switch and access systems, routers and router switches. Operating revenue from handset terminals increased by 7%, as compared to the same period last year, reflecting mainly higher sales of 4G

ZTE said its strategy is capture the growth in demand for solutions in cloud computing, big Data, Smart City and high-performance routers.

Looking ahead, ZTE will continue to focus on its three main operations of Carrier Networks, Enterprise Business and Mobile Devices. In Carriers’ Networks, ZTE will be committed to developing solutions for smarter networks to support carriers in their transformation into information-based operations. In Enterprise Business, ZTE will actively drive the transformation of various industries towards “Industry 4.0” or “Industrial Internet” with enhancement of corporate customers’ operational efficiency.

http://www.zte.com.cn