Thursday, December 29, 2016

Huawei Forecasts 2017 Sales will Continue to Rise Dramatically

Huawei expects its 2017 sales revenue to reach 520 billion yuan (US$74.8 billion), up 32% year-on-year. In a New Year's message, Huawei Rotating CEO Eric Xu said the company made significant progress in 2016 in improving its efficiency and quality. "Fear not the drifting clouds that block your eyes: beneath shifting sands bright gold still lies. The year 2016 has seen a flock of black swans – both political and economic – sweep across the globe....

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Ford Cites Progress in Autonomous Vehicles, to Double Silicon Valley Team

The Ford Motor Company is on track to build a high-volume, fully autonomous SAE level 4-capable vehicle by 2021. At CES and the North American International Auto Show in January, Ford is expected to show its next-generation Fusion Hybrid autonomous development vehicle featuring new new computer hardware, electrical controls and LiDAR sensors. In a blog posting, Chris Brewer, chief program engineer, Ford Autonomous Vehicle Development, writes...

Sprint Commits to Create or Bring Back to America 5,000 Jobs

Sprint announced a commitment to create or bring back to America 5,000 jobs by the end of its fiscal year 2017. “We are excited to work with President-Elect Trump and his Administration to do our part to drive economic growth and create jobs in the U.S.,” said Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure. “We believe it is critical for business and government to partner together to create more job opportunities in the U.S. and ensure prosperity for all Americans.” Sprint...

Friday, December 23, 2016

Video - The Story of Facebook's Infrastructure

The Facebook Engineering team talks about building the company's leading-edge data center infrastructure. In a few years, Facebook has gone from rented space in colocation facilities to a network of hyperscale data centers with global connections. ...

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Predictions 2017: IaaS Becomes the Next Launching Pad for Cyber Threats

by Corey Nachreiner, Chief Technology Officer, WatchGuard Technologies Cloud technology has had an incredible impact on the business landscape over the last five years. Public infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platforms like Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft Azure, in particular, are growing at incredible rates – even among small businesses. According to RightScale’s 2016 State of the Cloud report, 71 percent of small and medium businesses (SMBs) are...

Qualcomm, Ericsson, SK Telecom Set 5G NR Trials

Ericsson, Qualcomm, and SK Telecom will conduct interoperability testing and over-the-air field trials in the second half of 2017 based on 3GPP's 5G New Radio (NR) standards, which utilize wide bandwidths available at higher frequency bands to increase network capacity and achieve multi-gigabit per second data rates. The first 3GPP 5G NR specification that will be part of Release 15 - the global 5G standard that will make use of both sub-6 GHz and...

Vendors Back New NFV Interoperability Testing Initiative

Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia signed Memorandum of Understanding to create the NFV Interoperability Testing Initiative (NFV-ITI) whose main objective is to promote competition and create industry alignment on generic principles for NFV interoperability testing and support for specific customer situations. NFV-ITI members agreed to cooperatively support the interoperability of NFV elements in specific customer situations to accelerate the commercial...

Enea Completes Acquisition of Qosmos

Enea completed its acquisition of Qosmos, a privately held company with leading positions in IP traffic classification and network intelligence, for approximately EUR 52.7 million. Qosmos is estimated to generate sales of approximately EUR 14.2 million in 2016. Qosmos is a supplier of Network Intelligence software based on Deep Packet Inspection. Its software provides detailed real-time traffic visibility for applications such as mobile traffic...

Zayo Supplies Metro Fiber and Wavelengths to Genomics Firm

Zayo was selected to deliver dark fiber and wavelength connectivity in a major West Coast metro market to a leading genomics firm.  The connectivity, which will use Zayo's existing fiber network, includes a dark fiber connection between the client’s headquarters and data center, along with secure, high-bandwidth wavelength connectivity among satellite offices, headquarters and the data center. “Our dark fiber provided a significant competitive...

Telia Carrier Expands in Germany

Telia Carrier is expanding the availability of its IP, Wavelength and Ethernet services in Germany through new partnership with Savecall, Germany's top consultant and broker of ICT services with offices in Munich, Wiesbaden and Berlin. In addition to Savecall's consulting and brokering services, this partnership allows the company to act as a reseller of Telia Carrier's complete suite of IP, Wavelength and Ethernet services. Savecall mediates...

SK Telecom Selects Coriant 100G for New Undersea Link

SK Telecom has selected a Coriant submarine solution to extend 100G connectivity to Ulleungdo Island, which lies off the east coast of Korea. The deployment will use the Coriant hiT 7300 Multi-Haul Transport Platform and Coriant Transport Network Management System (TNMS). "Uncompromising quality is critical in today’s transport networks as they scale to support ever-increasing amounts of customer traffic," said Petri Markkanen, General Manager...

Monday, December 19, 2016

Predictions 2017: The Age of Collaboration and Interoperability

by Daniel Kurgan, CEO, BICS 2016 proved to be a remarkable year for the telecoms industry. In its crudest form, mobile was previously synonymous with the core voice services provided by operators. And while voice remains one of the biggest revenue streams for MNOs, the digital revolution has sparked a new age for communication. New, branded digital experiences – messaging apps, chat bots and even the Internet of Things – have pervaded mobile devices...

Fujitsu Demos Open ROADM Interoperability in AT&T Field Trial

Fujitsu completed an Open ROADM interoperability field trial on AT&T’s network using the Virtuora multivendor software-defined networking solution and 1FINITY open hardware platform. The trial was an extension of the Open ROADM Multi-Source Agreement (MSA), which defines interoperability specifications for Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexers (ROADMs), including the ROADM switches, transponders and pluggable optics. The goal of the MSA...

VMware Acquires Plumgrid

PLUMgrid, a start-up offering an Open Networking Suite (ONS) for clouds based on OpenStack, confirmed that its technology, intellectual property, and many of its employees have been acquired. Media sources cited VMware as the buyer.  Neither company commented on financial terms or other highlights of the deal. PLUMgrid,which was founded in 2011 and is based in Santa Clara, California, pioneered the concept of providing programmability and...

IEEE Kicks of 5G Initiative

IEEE is kicking off a 5G Initiative with the purpose of engaging professionals worldwide from industry, government, and academia to work to solve the challenges associated with 5G and lay the foundation to realize its many opportunities. The IEEE 5G Initiative, which includes contributions from many IEEE societies, has several working groups for which it seeks volunteers from both industry and academia to participate. IEEE 5G Initiative working...

Ixia Ships First 400 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) Test Solution to Carrier

Ixia announced the first shipment of a 400 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) test solution to a major, worldwide carrier. “Ixia continues to lead the market in developing validation solutions and our list of firsts continues to grow,” said Dennis Cox, Chief Product Officer at Ixia. “Over the past 15 years, Ixia has been first to develop test systems supporting 10GbE, 100GbE, 40GbE, 25GbE, and 50 GbE, and now 400 GbE.” Ixia noted that it was the first vendor...

NeoPhotonics to Sell Low Speed Transceiver Business to APAT Optoelectronics

NeoPhotonics will sell its Access and Low Speed transceiver product lines to APAT Optoelectronics Components Co., of Shenzhen, China. The transaction is valued at approximately $26.4 million, inclusive of post-closing payments under a Transition Services Agreement. In 2015, and for the first 9 months of 2016, the Low Speed Business generated $92.8 million and $50.7 million in revenue, respectively, and gross profit of $16.7 million and $9.7 million,...

Sunday, December 18, 2016

Perspectives 2017: Financial Agility for Digital Transformation

by Andrew Blacklock, Senior Director, Strategy and Products, Cisco Capital Ten years ago, companies like Uber and Airbnb were ideas waiting for technology to catch up. Now, these two brands represent a shift in the global economy in what’s known as digital transformation. This evolution towards digital-everything is constantly accelerating, leaving non-digital companies scrambling for a means to kickstart their digitization projects. According...

SUPERNAP Opens in Milano

SUPERNAP International officially opened "the largest, most advanced data center in Southern Europe." The new facility is built to the specifications of the company's flagship, Tier IV Gold-rated Switch LAS VEGAS multi-tenant/colocation data center. The SUPERNAP ITALIA data center in Milano will include: 42,000 square meters of data center space with four data halls 40 mega volt amps of power distributed through two 132 kilovolt transmission paths Proprietary...

Google Joins Cloud Foundry

The Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is now part of Cloud Foundry. Google noted that it has been very active this year with the Cloud Foundry community, including the delivery of the BOSH Google CPI release, enabling the deployment of Cloud Foundry on GCP, and the recent release of the Open Service Broker API. The efforts have led to custom service brokers for eight of GCP services: Google BigQuery Google Cloud Storage Google Cloud SQL Google Cloud...

DOCOMO Partners with China's CAICT on 5G

NTT DOCOMO and the China Academy of Information and Communication Technology (CAICT) agreed to jointly investigate the standardization of 5G technologies and available frequency bands. CAICT, a national research organization directly under the Provincial Government of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, is in charge of policies and standardization strategies on information and communication in China. Under the MOU, DOCOMO will...

Violin Memory Enters Chapter 11, Seeks Auction in January

Violin Memory, which offers flash memory arrays, filed for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. bankruptcy code.  The company said its will streamline its operations and balance sheet, while simultaneously pursuing a sale of its business. The company is seeking to hold an auction in early January for the business. Violin Memory, founded in 2005, said its assets include annual recurring service revenue, a portfolio of 58 US Patents/24...

Rob Sherwood leaves Big Switch for Facebook

Rob Sherwood is leaving Big Switch Networks to take up a research role at Facebook. Sherwood currently serves as Chief Technology Officer of Big Switch. http://www.bigswitch.com/blog/2016/12/16/and-now-for-something-completely-differ...

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Perspectives 2017: Today’s Internet of Things Reality

And an analysis of the why and how of developing an IoT strategy by Patrick Hubbard, Head Geek, SolarWinds The Internet of Things (IoT) has been a buzzword for quite a while now. For many, it conjures up images of smart thermostats, home security systems, app-powered office coffeemakers, and even internet-connected crockpots. Consumer IoT devices such as these, often referred to as internet-connected appliances, are certainly experiencing exponential...

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to Step Down

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will step down on January 20, 2017. “Serving as F.C.C. Chairman during this period of historic technological change has been the greatest honor of my professional life. I am deeply grateful to the President for giving me this opportunity. I am especially thankful to the talented Commission staff for their service and sacrifice during my tenure. Their achievements have contributed to a thriving communications sector, where...