Wednesday, September 30, 2015

AT&T Rolls out NFV-based Network On Demand Service

AT&T launched a Network on Demand service that lets businesses add or change functionality in near-real time. The service uses Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technologies to create dynamic, on-demand services.


“Businesses need agility to compete and win in their industries. They need to sense and rapidly adapt to changing market dynamics,” said Steve McGaw, chief marketing officer, AT&T Business Solutions. “We’re the largest global integrated carrier for business, and Network on Demand makes our network dynamic and adaptive to meet our customers’ needs.”

AT&T cited three vendors: Brocade, Cisco and Juniper.

"Brocade is proud to work with AT&T on their industry-leading innovations bringing agile, new IP network services to customers," said Kelly Herrell, senior vice president and general manager of Software Networking, Brocade. "The cloud model taught the world that virtualizing the IT infrastructure speeds service delivery and provides greater flexibility. With Network on Demand, AT&T has proven this also holds true for enterprise network services."

“AT&T and Cisco are longstanding technology and business collaborators with a proven track record of success,” said Pankaj Patel, executive vice president and chief development officer, Cisco. “By combining Cisco’s industry-leading portfolio of over 100 virtualized network functions with AT&T’s vision and industry leadership, together we are working to capture new business opportunities that deliver on the promise of virtualization.”

“As a leader in network innovation, Juniper understands the benefits of automation and virtualization to deliver the agility that global communications providers like AT&T need in order to bring new, value-added services to their customers,” said Rami Rahim, chief executive officer, Juniper Networks. “We believe that Juniper’s long-standing collaboration with AT&T will continue to yield new and exciting offerings that utilize the power and intelligence of a software-centric network.”

http://about.att.com/story/expands_network_demand_platform.html

AT&T Sees Cloud Adoption Driving Net Bond Direct Connects

AT&T reports significant growth with NetBond cloud connectivity service during the course of 2015.

AT&T NetBond now provides direct connections to an ecosystem of 13 leading cloud providers. In the last year, AT&T has launched 9 new leading cloud services: Salesforce, Box, HP, VMware, Amazon Web Services, SoftLayer, Blue Jeans Network, Sungard Availability Services and Equinix. The carrier has just announced 3 new members being announced today: Microsoft GovCloud, Amazon Web Services GovCloud and Cisco.

“Businesses are embracing the economics and flexibility of cloud solutions,” said Jon Summers, senior vice president, AT&T Mobile & Business Solutions. “NetBond is a large part of our strategy to deliver highly-secure cloud connections to leading providers. We provide our customers access from anywhere, at any time and on any device.”

http://about.att.com/story/cloud_adoption_advancing_netbond.html

Google Acquires Jibe to Bring Rich Communications Service to Android

Google has acquired Jibe, a start-up based in Mountain View, California, that offers a Communications Cloud for carrier interoperability that uses WebRTC, RCS, joyn.

Jibe enables carriers to deliver rich IP-based communications services — high quality video calling, group chat and large media-file sharing.  Its customers include U.S.-based Sprint and leading European carriers Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, KPN, and SFR. The company was founded in 2006.

Google said the acquisition will help it bring RCS to a global audience with a better messaging experience on Android.

http://officialandroid.blogspot.com/2015/09/committing-to-rcs-latest-standard-in.html
http://www.jibemobile.com/

Mellanox to Acquire EZchip

Mellanox Technologies agreed to acquire EZchip, a supplier of network processors and embedded CPUs for carrier and data center networks, for a cash purchase price of $25.5 per share, implying a transaction value of approximately $811 million (approximately $620 million net of cash).

EZchip’s silicon portfolio of solutions includes network processors, multi-core processors, intelligent network adapters, and high-performance appliances with a comprehensive software ecosystem, that scale to terabit performance levels. The company has expertise in security, deep packet inspection, video, and storage processing. EZChip is based in Yokneam, Israel. Eli Fruchter has served as CEO since the company's inception in May 1999

Mellanox said the EZchip acquisition is a step in its strategy to become the leading broad-line supplier of intelligent interconnect solutions for the software-defined data centers.

“The synergies between EZchip and Mellanox create attractive opportunities. We expect our combined technologies, and product portfolios to deliver leading end-to-end intelligent interconnect and processing solutions to data centers and wide area networks,” said Eyal Waldman, president and CEO of Mellanox Technologies.

“Joining forces with Mellanox represents numerous synergies that create a true powerhouse for connectivity and processing. With Mellanox's leading layer 1 - 3 connectivity solutions for data centers and EZchip's leading layer 3 – 7 processing solutions for carrier networks, the two companies complement each other in technology, products, markets served and customers. Together, we enable a multitude of layer 1 through 7 solutions for data centers and carriers,” said Eli Fruchter, CEO of EZchip.

The combined businesses currently have approximately 2,400 employees, and have generated combined revenues of $668 million for the twelve months ended June 30, 2015.

http://ir.mellanox.com
http://www.ezchip.com


EZchip to Acquire Tilera for its Multi-Core Processors


EZchip Semiconductor will Tilera Corporation, a developer of high-performance multi-core processors, up to $130 million in cash.  The deal includes $50 million at closing and up to an additional $80 million is payable subject to the attainment of certain future performance milestones. Tilera, which is based in San Jose, California, offers a line of multi-core processors, network interface cards and white-box appliances for data center networking...


Teridion Launches Next Gen Content Delivery Network

Teridion, a start-up based in San Francisco,announced the launch of its Global Cloud Network, boasting up to 20x performance improvement for end-user generated bi-directional Internet content.

Teridion is using IBM's SoftLayer infrastructure to optimize bi-directional, user-generated Internet content, Teridion features:

  • The Teridion Global Cloud Network - Bringing intelligent routing to the cloud. Proprietary algorithms and the Teridion Management System, in conjunction with Teridion Measurement Agents, provide a real-time congestion map of the Internet to find the best possible path, taking into account bandwidth, latency and geography.
  • High performance, low latency - Up to 20x Internet performance improvements, enabling users to rethink what's possible online.
  • Flexibility - Teridion Cloud Routers are created on demand, providing scalability and enabling users to only pay for the resources consumed. The solution works with the largest cloud providers in the world to ensure the speed and reliability of traffic, without requiring customers to leave their cloud provider.
  • Bolstered security - Teridion does not cache users' data, and end-to-end SSL encryption with no termination secures data across the network.
  • Simple onboarding - With no hardware or software to install, and quick and easy provisioning, a typical cloud customer can be connected to the network in under an hour.

The company said its solution is currently being used by more than 15 companies spanning some of the most bandwidth-demanding applications and services, such as hosting and file sharing, rich media and advertising.

Teridion also announced a total of $20 million in funding, having closed a $15 million Series B round of financing led by Singtel Innov8. Existing investors JVP and Magma also participated in the round.

"The Internet is an incredibly powerful tool, but until now, we have struggled to take full advantage of its capabilities. It's still common for us to fall victim to slow response times and volatile connections," said Elad Rave, founder and CEO of Teridion. "We are breaking down these boundaries and providing users with a seamless Internet experience -- no matter their location, device or application. It's our goal for our SaaS customers to be able to generate additional customer loyalty, and the funding and general availability of our product are major steps in this direction."

http://www.teridion.com

Google Cloud Extends its Load Balancing to 32 Cities

Google has extended its cloud load balancing locations to 20 additional cities, reaching a total of 32 distinct points globally. Additional locations bring better performance for Google Cloud Platform.

Here's the list of cities with local Google Cloud load balancing: Berlin, Budapest, Chennai, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Dublin, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, Kuala Lumpur, Lisbon, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Marseille, Miami, Milan, Mumbai, Munich, New York City, Osaka, Paris, São Paulo, San Francisco, Seattle, Singapore, Sofia, Stockholm, Sydney, Tokyo, Warsaw, and Washington D.C..

Google also announced the addition of Orange Business Services to its Carrier Interconnect service provider ecosystem.

http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2015/09/Announcing-new-global-load-balancing-locations-and-new-Carrier-Interconnect-partner-Orange-Business-Services.html

Mirantis OpenStack 7.0 Focuses on Scalability and Resilience

A newly released Mirantis OpenStack 7.0 distribution focuses on enhanced scalability, resilience, and support in mission-critical enterprise environments.

“Early OpenStack releases were all about more features fast, as it was important to gain minimum feature parity to VMware, Microsoft and other cloud solution providers,” said Boris Renski, Mirantis CMO and co-founder. “Today the feature parity gap is largely closed with enterprises such as  AT&T, Symantec, Walmart and many other Global 2000 enterprises running OpenStack at massive scale. The development priorities for OpenStack in both the community and at Mirantis have shifted from feature racing to stability at scale and day two operations.”

Mirantis OpenStack 7.0, which is  based on OpenStack Kilo,  enables richer OpenStack environments through a number of new features for Cinder, Glance, Horizon, Keystone, Neutron and Sahara. It features out-of-the box integration with VMware vCenter while offering choice in networking, including, but not limited to, Cisco ACI, Juniper Contrail and VMware NSX fabrics.

The company said this release is able to specify flexible underlay network topology in a simple manner using network templates;

·         Tune control-plane architecture by moving services onto separate controller nodes;

·         Deploy controllers on virtual machines for small footprint deployment;

·         Build hybrid clouds with hierarchical multi-tenancy;

·         Secure integration of control-plane various IT systems with SSL endpoint encryption;

·         Scale North-South traffic with Distributed Virtual Router (DVR);

·         Integrate with container platforms, including Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes;

·         Simplify bringing VMware environments to the cloud with new functions such as NSX-v  and vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS);

·         Deploy multiple Hadoop or Spark big data clusters in parallel through new Sahara features and gain additional flexibility via an updated plug-in for HDP v2.2.

In addition, Mirantis is extending the support period of the distribution from two years to three.

http://www.mirantis.com

Etisalat UAE Tests Virtual CPE with NEC/NetCracker

Etisalat UAE completed a series of virtual customer-premises equipment (vCPE) trials in partnership with NEC and NetCracker.

The proof of concept (PoC) validated the NEC/NetCracker vCPE solution’s ability to move highly complex IP and connectivity functionality from end-user gateways to Etisalat’s data center, which will reduce complexity for residential customers and provide them with more control over services. Etisalat’s deployment of the vCPE solution will enable it to experience a number of critical advantages, including the ability to provide next-generation connectivity without deploying highly complicated equipment at customer locations, resulting in reduced costs and fewer truck rolls.

NEC and NetCracker demonstrated several highly sophisticated use cases for Etisalat, including the ability to let customers personalize device- and subscriber-specific usage controls through an easy-to-use self-service portal. NEC and NetCracker also showed how customers can extend their LAN to enable cloud-based L2 services and content, as well as the vCPE solution’s ability to deploy virtual firewalls.

“By implementing the NEC/NetCracker vCPE solution, Etisalat can provide customers with access to a diverse set of services and capabilities through a self-care portal. The vCPE solution will also help Etisalat enable IPv6-based Internet connectivity without the need for any complex on-site processes,” said Noboru Takahashi, President & CEO at NEC in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

http://www.nec.com/en/global/about/solutionsforsociety/message.html
http://www.netcracker.com/

euNetworks adds Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute

euNetworks will begin offering direct access to Microsoft Azure for clients via Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute via its owned and operated fiber network across Europe.

“We are a bandwidth infrastructure company, owning and operating our own fibre networks that connect more than 260 data centres and 1,000 buildings across Europe as well as offering direct access to cloud platforms,” said Kevin Dean, Chief Marketing Officer of euNetworks. “Our relationship with Microsoft Azure means we offer unmatched direct access to this platform across our pan European footprint, offering significant benefit to companies as they move more of their IT infrastructure into the cloud.”

http://www.eunetworks.com/