AT&T Transfers Managed App and Hosting Business to IBM

AT&T agreed to transition its managed application and managed hosting services unit to IBM. IBM will then align these managed service capabilities with the IBM Cloud portfolio. IBM will also acquire equipment and access to floor space in AT&T data centers currently supporting the applications and managed hosting operations.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

AT&T will continue to provide other managed networking services, including security, cloud networking and mobility offerings.

The companies said the deal builds on their long-term partnership.

“Today’s announcement represents an expansion of our strategic relationship with AT&T and continuing collaboration to deliver new innovative solutions,” said Philip Guido, IBM General Manager of Global Technology Services for North America. “Working with AT&T, we will deliver a robust set of IBM Cloud and managed services that can continuously evolve to meet clients’ business objectives.”

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/48500.wss
http://about.att.com/story/att_and_ibm_expand_strategic_relationship.html

AT&T and IBM Team Up on Mobile Cloud Security

Tuesday, October 06, 2015  ATT, IBM  No comments

AT&T and IBM announced a partnership focused on delivering a scalable mobile cloud solution to help protect corporate data and apps. 

The reference architecture includes:

• IBM MobileFirst Protect: helps organizations manage and control mobile devices, apps and documents.
• AT&T NetBond: provides a highly secure, scalable network connection to IBM's Cloud infrastructure services, SoftLayer.
• IBM Cloud: the SoftLayer infrastructure secures public and private clouds for applications and data storage.
• AT&T Work Platform: enables separate billing of business and personal charges for voice, messaging and data use on an employee's personal handset.

"Balancing employees' need for convenience with security has become a challenge for CISOs and CIOs across the world," said Caleb Barlow, vice president, IBM Security. "To help protect organizations, employees and data, IBM Security and AT&T are delivering a tested and easy to deploy set of complementary tools. We're giving enterprise mobile device users stable, private access to data and apps in the cloud."

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Juniper Discloses Unauthorized Code in ScreenOS

Juniper Networks disclosed the discovery of unauthorized code in its ScreenOS that could allow a knowledgeable attacker to gain administrative access to NetScreen devices and to decrypt VPN connections.

It is not known who inserted the code into the OS nor how long it has been there.

All NetScreen devices using ScreenOS 6.2.0r15 through 6.2.0r18 and 6.3.0r12 through 6.3.0r20 are affected by these issues and require patching.

The urgent security bulletin urges customers to update their systems and apply the patched releases with the highest priority.

http://forums.juniper.net/t5/Security-Incident-Response/Important-Announcement-about-ScreenOS/ba-p/285554

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Box Extends its Strategic Sales Partnership with IBM

Box announced a new agreement to expand its strategic partnership with IBM.

The companies will undertake stronger go-to-market and sales commitments. With a new term that has the potential to last for a decade or more, the partnership underscores the companies’ long-term commitment to delivering modern enterprise content management and collaboration solutions.

“IBM and Box are committed to delivering world-class solutions that transform how businesses work,” said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box. “We are thrilled to extend our partnership with IBM, further expanding our product capabilities and creating new go-to-market channels.”

Additionally, the companies announced today the general availability of two new product integrations for IBM Case Manager and IBM Datacap. The availability of these new solutions complements the previously announced product integrations with IBM Content Navigator and IBM StoredIQ.

http://www.box.com

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Linux Foundation Backs Blockchain for Transaction Verification

The Linux Foundation announced a new collaborative effort to advance blockchain technology.

Blockchain is a digital technology for recording and verifying transactions. The distributed ledger is a permanent, secure tool that makes it easier to create cost-efficient business networks without requiring a centralized point of control. With distributed ledgers, virtually anything of value can be tracked and traded. The application of this emerging technology is showing great promise in the enterprise. For example, it allows securities to be settled in minutes instead of days. It can be used to help companies manage the flow of goods and related payments or enable manufacturers to share production logs with OEMs and regulators to reduce product recalls.

The project will develop an enterprise grade, open source distributed ledger framework and free developers to focus on building robust, industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support business transactions.

Early commitments to this work come from Accenture, ANZ Bank, Cisco, CLS, Credits, Deutsche Börse, Digital Asset Holdings, DTCC, Fujitsu Limited, IC3, IBM, Intel, J.P. Morgan, London Stock Exchange Group, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), R3, State Street, SWIFT, VMware and Wells Fargo.

“Distributed ledgers are poised to transform a wide range of industries from banking and shipping to the Internet of Things, among others,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “As with any early-stage, highly-complex technology that demonstrates the ability to change the way we live our lives and conduct business, blockchain demands a cross-industry, open source collaboration to advance the technology for all.”

https://blockchain.linuxfoundation.org/

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Spirent Debuts First 50Gb Ethernet Test System

Spirent unveiled the world's first 50 Gbps Higher Speed Ethernet test solution.

Spirent's 50GbE Boost system tests layer 1 to layer 3 quality and highlights error-free performance with different combinations of streams, frame lengths and rates by delivering per-port and per-stream statistics such as latency, frames out of sequence, frame counts and rates, L1 PRBS capability and layer 1 statistics to help debug physical link problems.

"According to Dell'Oro Group 2015 data, 50Gbps servers will represent more than 30 percent of server shipments in 2019, up from essentially zero percent today," says Abhitesh Kastuar, General Manager of Spirent's Cloud and IP business. "With virtualized applications driving server performance it makes sense that access speeds are increasing from 10 to 25 and further to 50Gbps.  I believe the rapid adoption of 25G and 50G server links will drive the move to 100GbE and beyond for the uplinks from the leaf nodes to the spine nodes."

http://www.spirent.com

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