Ericsson Demos 5G Network Core Slicing with SK Telecom

Ericsson demoed 5G network slicing at an event held by SK Telecom in Korea.  The demo showed a single physical network being partitioned into multiple virtual networks to offer optimal support for different types of services for different types of customer segments. The instantiation of the network slicing used the NFV-based Ericsson Virtual Evolved Packet Core (EPC).

By using logical instead of physical resources, Ericsson says operators could provide networks on an as-a-service basis, which enhances operational efficiency while reducing time-to-market for new services.

Ericsson and SK Telecom also plan to build the world’s first hyperscale datacenter for 5G based on Ericsson’s pioneering HDS 8000

Ulf Ewaldsson, Chief Technology Officer, Ericsson, says: “As Ericsson’s demonstration with SK Telecom shows, the development of 5G has reached a very exciting phase. Success with network slicing technology is critical to enable networks to become innovation platforms for new types of applications and thereby meet the future expectations of people, business and society.”

http://www.ericsson.com/news/151029-ericsson-and-sk-telecom_244069644_c

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Microsemi Sweetens Offer to Acquire PMC-Sierra

Microsemi increased its offer to acquire PMC-Sierra.  Under the new proposal, PMC shareholders would receive $9.04 in cash and 0.0771x of a Microsemi common share for each PMC common share held at the close of the transaction. The implied enterprise value is $2.3 billion, net of PMC's net cash balance as of Sept. 27, 2015. Based on the closing stock price of Microsemi on Oct. 29, 2015, the transaction is valued at $11.88 per PMC share.

"Our revised proposal offers superior value to PMC's shareholders, and Microsemi is uniquely positioned to realize significant synergies," said James J. Peterson, Microsemi's chairman and CEO. "Our offer is more strategic, offers more certainty in terms of closing approval process and timing, and at a higher price than the Skyworks proposal. Shareholders receive cash now as well as the opportunity to participate in the significant upside potential of a global analog and mixed-signal leader with a highly diversified platform for growth and profitability."

http://www.microsemi.com

Microsemi Announces Bid to Acquire PMC-Sierra

Monday, October 19, 2015  Mergers and Acquisitions, PMC  No comments

Microsemi announced an offer to acquire PMC-Sierra for $11.50 per PMC share, representing a premium of approximately 50 percent to the closing price on Oct. 5, 2015, the last trading day prior to the announcement of PMC's proposed acquisition with Skyworks Solutions.  The offer price is based on the closing stock price of Microsemi on Oct. 16, 2015. Microsemi said its offer is better than that of Skyworks because its cash and stock proposal...

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Skyworks to Acquire PMC-Sierra for $2 Billion

Monday, October 05, 2015  Canada, Mergers and Acquisitions, PMC, Silicon, Skyworks  No comments

Skyworks Solutions has agreed to acquire PMC-Sierra for $10.50 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $2 billion. Skyworks, which is based in  Woburn, Massachusetts, supplies high performance analog semiconductors for automotive, broadband, wireless infrastructure, energy management, GPS, industrial, medical, military, wireless networking, smartphone, and tablet applications. The company’s portfolio includes amplifiers,...

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SAP and Google Enter Patent Cross-Licensing Deal

Google and SAP have entered into a long-term patent cross licensing agreement that covers a broad range of products and technologies.

Both companies joined the LOT Network in 2014, a community-based patent-licensing agreement designed to reduce for its members patent troll litigation and the growing practice of patent privateering.

“We are pleased to enter into this agreement with a leading global technology company like SAP and welcome discussions with any company interested in similar arrangements,” said Kirk Dailey, Head of Patent Transactions at Google. “Cross-license agreements like this enable companies to focus on bringing great products and services to consumers around the world.”

http://www.sap.com

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Chunghwa Telecom Launches SaaS Cloud Service with SAP

Chunghwa Telecom is working with SAP to bring enterprise clients an even more comprehensive Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud service.

The SAP Business One solution on Chunghwa Telecom's SaaS cloud service platform will significantly reduce the amount enterprises have to spend on hardware, help SMEs quickly integrate operations information, and enable them to manage ever-changing operations demands in a highly efficient way. The service is scheduled to go online at the end of the year.

“Chunghwa Telecom is transforming itself from a telecom service provider into an ICT service provider that you can rely on,” said Chunghwa Telecom’s Senior Executive Vice President Chi-Mau Sheih. “We have long been serving the enterprise solution market, meeting the needs of our enterprise clients across Taiwan, supplying everything from broadband internet, information security, and cloud services to mobile value-added services, Internet of Things, and Big Data. We have a world-class internet data center that enables us to provide a comprehensive range of cloud services.”

http://news.sap.com/press-room/

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CenturyLink Connects to 12 CyrusOne Data Centers

CenturyLink has extended fiber connectivity at five additional CyrusOne data centers, bringing the total number of CyrusOne data centers on-net to 12.

CenturyLink operates a 250,000-route-mile U.S. fiber network and a 300,000-route-mile international transport network. CyrusOne is a global colocation solutions provider that specializes in highly reliable enterprise-class, carrier-neutral data center properties that house IT infrastructure for nearly 900 customers worldwide.

“We’re proud and excited to welcome CenturyLink’s fiber infrastructure in a total of 12 out of the 29 CyrusOne data centers in the U.S.,” said Josh Snowhorn, vice president and general manager, interconnection, CyrusOne. “CenturyLink’s increased connectivity with our data center facilities means that CyrusOne’s enterprise customers have another top-tier network to choose as their primary or backup data transport solution.”

http://www.centurylink.com/business/enterprise/data-network

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A Busy Week for Cisco Acquisitions: 1Mainstream, Lancope, Parstream

Cisco to Acquire 1 Mainstream for Cloud Video

Wednesday, October 28, 2015  Cisco, Mergers and Acquisitions, Silicon Valley, Start-ups  No comments

Cisco announced plans to acquire 1 Mainstream, a start-up offering a cloud-based video platform designed to quickly launch live and on-demand OTT video services to a variety of connected devices. Financial terms were not disclosed. 1 Mainstream, which is based in San Jose, California, helps service providers, broadcasters, media companies and emerging digital content companies deliver their media content to almost any connected media device, from...

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Cisco to Acquire Lancope for Traffic Behavior Analytics

Tuesday, October 27, 2015  Analytics, Cisco, Lancope  No comments

Cisco agreed to acquire Lancope, a privately held network security company for $452.5 million in cash and assumed equity awards, plus additional retention based incentives for Lancope employees who join Cisco. The companies have been commercial partners for some time. Lancope, which is based in Alpharetta, Georgia, provides network behavior analytics, threat visibility and security intelligence to help protect companies against top cyber security...

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Cisco to Acquire ParStream for Database Analytics

Monday, October 26, 2015  #IoT, Analytics, Cisco, Germany, Mergers and Acquisitions, Start-ups  No comments

Cisco has agreed to acquire ParStream, a privately-held company based in Cologne, Germany that provides an analytics database that allows companies to analyze large amounts of data and store it in near real time anywhere in the network. Financial terms were not disclosed. Cisco said ParStream's highly specialized database is especially useful for IoT applications that generate large amounts of data at the edge that needs to be processed in real...

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Cisco Builds its Silicon Valley Start-up Incubator

Monday, October 26, 2015  Cisco, Start-ups  No comments

Five new Silicon Valley start-ups have joined the roster at the Cisco Entrepreneurs in Residence incubation program. These are: C3DNA (http://c3dna.com) delivers self-reliance and portability of any application on any cloud infrastructure at the app layer. LISNR (http://lisnr.com) provides a new communication protocol that uses SmartTones, an inaudible technology that has the ability to connect mobile applications and devices. Simularity (http://www.simularity.com)...

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Oracle's Chris King on the Open Networking Transformation

The first impact of open networking in the telecom industry is a tear-down of the traditional purpose-built network appliances, says Chris King, Senior Director - Product Marketing for Oracle. As we think about where this is headed, the hope is that many of the techniques of the IT industry will be adopted to really deliver interoperable software.

https://youtu.be/xZdu23yM-iA

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AT&T Adds Nokia to Domain 2.0 Program

AT&T has added Nokia to its Domain 2.0 supplier program .

AT&T said it has made progress toward its 2015 goal of virtualizing and controlling 5% of its target network – a first step towards virtualizing 75% in 2020.

“As a global player, Nokia will help us toward our software-centric network goals,” said Susan A. Johnson, senior vice president, AT&T Global Supply Chain. “We’re constantly looking for agile and innovative companies to join our Domain 2.0 supplier program. And Nokia is one of them.”

"Nokia is proud to support AT&T's mission to connect its customers with a best-in-class, software-centric network," said Rajeev Suri, president and CEO of Nokia. "Our innovative companies share a vision of leveraging cloud technologies to transform the network, providing simplicity, speed and scalability today while laying the foundation for the connected world of tomorrow."

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

AT&T has previously announced a number of Domain 2.0 suppliers, including: Brocade, Ciena, Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, Amdocs, Juniper Networks, Fujitsu Network Communications, Ericsson, Affirmed Networks, Tail-F Systems (acquired by Cisco, and Metaswitch Networks

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Midokura Integrates with Ubuntu OpenStack

Midokura has integrated its flagship, enterprise network virtualization platform technology with Ubuntu OpenStack.

Juju is an open source service modeling and deployment tool, led by Canonical. Via Charms, Juju lets you design, deploy, connect and scale services for solutions of any size. The Midokura Juju Charm is immediately available in the Charm Store -- a collection of Charms that have been tested and approved by Canonical.

"Canonical continues to expand our SDN ecosystem to ease the deployment of OpenStack with an SDN. Midokura is an Ubuntu Cloud partner, and today Midokura Enterprise MidoNet is available to our customers through the MidoNet Juju Charm. The simplicity and agility inherent in MEM's distributed architecture is now easier to deploy with OpenStack," said John Zannos, Canonical VP of WW Alliances and Ecosystem. "With this seamless integration in place, Ubuntu OpenStack and MEM will be deployable in minutes using Juju and the MidoNet Juju Charm."

Separately,Midokura released Neutron plug-ins supporting OpenStack Liberty. The new release is also designed to advance container networking with the new Kuryr project, which integrates directly with native container networking components, such as libnetwork. Kuryr is the gateway between the container networking APIs and use cases, and the Neutron APIs and services. It bridges the gaps between Docker and Neutron and will drive the changes necessary to fill in the missing pieces in Neutron.

http://www.midokura.com/midonet-enterprise

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China Mobile and Nokia Sign Supply Contract

Nokia Networks and China Mobile signed a comprehensive framework agreement for mobile communications equipment and services valued at more than US$1 billion (EUR 930 million). Deliveries under the agreement commenced in Q1 2015 and will continue in 2016.

Under the agreement, Nokia Networks provides its TD-LTE-Advanced technology and 2G/3G/4G core network solutions including Voice over LTE (VoLTE). Software and professional services, including network planning, implementation and care, will support China Mobile's 4G network rollout during 2015 and beyond. The operator plans to deploy one million TD-LTE base stations by the end of the year to build the world's largest TD-LTE network.

The agreement was signed on October 29 by Li Huidi, Executive Vice President at China Mobile, and Hans-Juergen Bill, Executive Vice President at Nokia and also Chairman of the Board of Directors of Nokia Networks GmbH & Co KG in Germany, in the presence of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

http://company.nokia.com/en/news/press-releases/2015/10/30/nokia-networks-china-mobile-sign-one-billion-usd-agreement-covering-2015-contracts

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CommScope's Multi-Operator Digital DAS Covers Citi Field Ballpark

The Citi Field ballpark in New York is using a multi-operator digital distributed antenna system (DAS) supplied by CommScope.

The CommScope FlexWave Prism and InterReach Fusion system deployed at Citi Field provides 850 MHz, 1900 MHz, AWS, and 700 MHz frequencies to deliver 3G and 4G mobile services for fans at the 41,000-seat stadium. The deployment covers the stadium seating areas, luxury boxes, walkways and parking areas at the ballpark in Queens.

FlexWave Prism features modular, high-power remote units to deliver the performance and frequency bands needed in each location. The InterReach Fusion system is a low-power solution that delivers strategic and pin-point services to interior portions of the stadium.

http://www.commscope.com

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