Wednesday, August 26, 2015

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

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

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

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

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.

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/

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

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