Zayo Launches Flex Ethernet Service

Zayo launched a usage-based Ethernet service for flexible cloud and data center connectivity. Zayo FlexConnect provides dedicated Layer 2 Ethernet connecting to more than 200 data centers, cloud, software-as-a-service (SaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, VMWare and Cisco Intercloud.  Customers pay only for the data they transport. The service is available from 500 Mbps to 100 Gbps.  Zayo’s...

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Intel Rolls Out 14nm Xeon E5-2600 v4 Processors

Intel is rolling out its new Xeon processor E5-2600 v4 product family and aimed at software-defined clouds. The launch is accompanied by new Intel SSDs, including the first 3D NAND drives optimized for cloud and enterprise workloads, The Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v4 product family is built on 14nm process technology and features Intel Resource Director Technology, which enables customers to move to fully automated SDI-based clouds with greater...

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HPE Pushes Ahead with Persistent Memory

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) introduced new compute platforms with built-in support for Persistent Memory, a technology that combines the performance of high-speed memory and the persistence of storage to deliver new levels of application performance. The technology will be available for new HPE ProLiant Gen9 servers. Some highlights: HPE Persistent Memory. The first product in the HPE Persistent Memory portfolio is a an 8GB NVDIMM that is...

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Dell Releases 13th Gen PowerEdge Servers

Dell launched its 13th generation of PowerEdge 13th generation rack, tower, blade and converged infrastructure architecture servers. The major improvements include over 20 percent improved performance with differentiated air-cooled support and over 12 percent enhanced memory bandwidth aligned to Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v4 updates. “Customers are driving the rise of the software defined data center, using workload-oriented solutions that are...

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DOCOMO Invests in Expway for Wireless Multicasting

NTT DOCOMO Ventures has made a strategic investment of EUR 1.5 million in Expway for its wireless multicast solutions. Expway’s current investors, Innovation Capital, I-Source, TechFund and Isatis Capital also invested EUR 1.5 million in this round. Expway’s newly announced Ultimate Mobile CDN solution optimizes data traffic between the telecom cells and the terminals using LTE Broadcast. In addition, Expway’s solution will also be made available...

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MEF Publishes Lifecycle Service Orchestration Reference Architecture

Following approval by its members, the MEF published its Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) Reference Architecture & Framework (MEF 55) for Service Providers. LSO, which aims to automate the entire network service lifecycle in a sustainable fashion, encompasses all network domains that require end-to-end management and control to deliver on-demand connectivity services (Carrier Ethernet 2.0, IP VPNs, MPLS, SDN/NFV, etc.) and to assure their...

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Level 3 Adds Microsoft Office 365 to its Cloud Connect

Level 3 Communications and Microsoft are enabling direct connectivity to Office 365 via the ExpressRoute service on the Level 3 network.  Enterprises can access everything in their Office 365 service, including Exchange Online, Office web applications, Skype for Business Online, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online across Level 3's global network. Level 3 offers both point-to-point Ethernet and any-to-any IP-VPN connectivity to Azure...

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Vertical Systems: 2015 Global Provider Ethernet LEADERBOARD

Orange Business Services (France) topped Vertical Systems Group’s year-end 2015 Global Provider Ethernet LEADERBOARD.  Other top entries in rank order included Colt (U.K.), BT Global Services (U.K.), AT&T (U.S.), Verizon (U.S.), Level 3 (U.S.) and NTT (Japan). The Global Provider LEADERBOARD, the industry’s benchmark for multinational Ethernet network market presence, ranks companies that hold a 4% or higher share of billable retail ports...

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CenturyLink Acquires netAura for IT Security Services

CenturyLink has acquired netAura, a security service s firm that specializes in engineering, developing and consulting on managed security technologies. Financial terms were not disclosed. netAura has deep expertise, having worked extensively with U.S. government agencies and corporations on cybersecurity, security information and event management (SIEM), analytics and vulnerability management since it was founded in 2011. The company is based in...

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Telefónica Germany Delivers Enterprise Services with Netcracker BSS

Telefónica Germany has upgraded and extended its use of Netcracker’s Revenue Management solution to simplify and accelerate its rating and billing processes for its B2B operations. The upgraded solution, which contains additional functionality and enhances performance, runs efficiently across all of Telefónica Germany’s hardware and databases. Telefónica Germany serves more than 48 million customer accesses. “We are excited to leverage our instance...

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Beamr Acquires Vanguard Video and Raises Funding for Encoding

Beamr, a start-up specializing in video optimization technology, announced its acquisition of Vanguard Video, a leading provider of HEVC and H.264 codec technologies.  The company said the deal positions it as a global leader in H.264 and HEVC video encoding and optimization solutions, with over 80 employees and offices in Palo Alto, Tel Aviv and St. Petersburg, Russia. “Today’s announcement is exciting on many levels,” said Sharon Carmel,...

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Red Hat $2.05 billion in Annual Revenue

Red Hat reported Q4 revenue of $544 million, up 17% in U.S. dollars year-over-year, or 21% measured in constant currency.  GAAP net income for the quarter was $53 million, or $0.29 per diluted share, compared with $48 million, or $0.26 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Full fiscal year 2016 total revenue was $2.05 billion, up 15% in U.S. dollars year-over-year, or 21% measured in constant currency. Subscription revenue for the full...

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Telecom Italia Appoints New CEO

Telecom Italia announced the appointment of Flavio Cattaneo as CEO, following the departure of Marco Patuano as CEO and Director. Cattaneo currently heads the rail network NTV SpA-Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori. News reports cited a management conflict between Patuano and the Telecom Italia Board. As severance, Patuano was paid an additional amount of 1,235,000 euros gross with respect to termination of the directorship and 4,765,000 euros gross with...

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Arista Unveils 100+ Terabit Switching/Routing Platform

Arista Networks introduced a 100+ Terabit switching and routing platform for cloud service provider and next generation enterprise data centers. The new Arista 7500R is being positioned as the industry's highest performance universal spine switch for data centers. Arista believes that shifting traffic patterns inside the data center are best served with scalable two-tier active Leaf-Spine and single tier Spline architecture. The traditional core...

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AT&T to Bring its Fiber GigaPower Network to LA

AT&T is launching its fiber-based, residential and SMB Internet service in the Los Angeles metro area. This brings speeds up to 1 gigabit per second to more homes, apartments and small businesses over AT&T GigaPower Internet Premier offers Internet speeds up to 1Gbps for $110 a month or speeds up to 300Mbps for $80 a month. The AT&T GigaPower network is now available to tens of thousands of locations, including single family homes,...

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Rancher Ships its Container Management Platform

Rancher Labs, a start-up based in Cupertino, California, released its open-source container management software. The Rancher software is designed to simplify the deployment and management of containers in production enterprise applications. The software lets users select from multiple container orchestration frameworks such as Kubernetes and Docker Swarm, while maintaining a single management experience.  Rancher implements a cloud-agnostic...

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PLUMgrid Brings OpenStack SDN for Containers

PLUMgrid announced a major software update including SDN support for Docker containers, expanded gateway integration with Cisco Nexus 9000, IPv6, PLUMgrid SmartLogs and many other enhancements. PLUMgrid's Open Networking Suite (ONS) 5.0, which supports OpenStack Kilo and Liberty release, enables data centers with virtual machines, containers, and bare metal architectures to leverage SDN overlays to provide secure micro-segmentation for multi-tenancy,...

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CloudRouter Project Clears Release 3.0 Hurdle

The CloudRouter Project, which is a Linux-based open source routing and software-defined networking (SDN) initiative, released its CloudRouter 3.0 and new performance numbers showing throughput in excess of 650 Gbps on commodity hardware. The CloudRouter 3.0 release ships with new versions of ONOS Drake 1.4, CentOS 7.2, and Fedora 23. Four new open source projects have been added including iSDX, an open source SDN exchange point, two new network...

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Brocade Acquires StackStorm for DevOps Automation

Brocade has acquired StackStorm, a start-up based in Palo Alto, California, that offers an event-driven automation platform. Financial terms were not disclosed. Stack Storms ties together components across the IT infrastructure. It’s commonly used for auto-remediation—including response to security events—and other cases such as complex deployments. https://stackstorm.com http://www.brocade....

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César Alierta to Step Down as Executive Chairman of Telefónica

César Alierta announced his intention to step down as Executive Chairman of Telefónica.  He will remain on the company's Board. Alierta is recommending that Telefónica’s Board of Directors consider the appointment of José María Álvarez-Pallete as its new Executive Chairman. Álvarez-Pallete has serves as Chief Operating Officer for the past 3 years. Previously, he was Telefónica’s CFO and has served as Executive Chairman of Telefónica Internacional...

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Global Capacity Appoints Tony Thakur as CTO

Global Capacity named Tony Thakur as its new CTO, responsible for all aspects of its One Marketplace network strategy, architecture, engineering and planning. Most recently, Thakur served as Vice President of Engineering & Technology for TelePacific Communications, where he provided strategic direction, technology selection and product development support for next-generation services including IP Virtual Private Network (VPN) and Virtual Private...

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Video: TeliaSonera IC on Making Networks More Predictable

Over the past year, TeliaSonera International Carrier invested in expanding its network geographically. This year, the carrier is focused predictability by thickening the network, says Mattias Fridström Vice President, Technology. YouTube link: https://youtu.be/UTDXTEJ7n...

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NTT DATA to Acquire Dell Services for $3 Billion

NTT DATA agreed to acquire Dell Services, an IT services provider recognized for its depth in vertical industries and for its offerings around infrastructure services, cloud services, application services, and business process outsourcing. The purchase price was reported at $3.05 billion.  NTT Data said the agreement will expand its brand and leadership position globally. John McCain, CEO of NTT DATA, led this transaction and will have overall...

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NTT Researchers Manipulate the Color of Single Photons

Researchers at NTT demonstrated the wavelength conversion of a single-photon wave packet required for quantum information-communication technologies. The company said the technique enables it deterministically change the color and shape of a single-photon wave packet in a lossless manner. NTT lossless scheme utilized an all-optical effect called cross-phase modulation (XPM) to control the phase of light (signal pulses) via a change in the refractive...

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Sumitomo Electric Announces New Multi-Core Optical Fiber

Sumitomo Electric Industries announced a new-type coupled multi-core optical fiber suitable for ultra-long-haul transmission/ The coupled-core MCF (CC-MCF) features 4 pure-silica cores in the standard 125-µm cladding. The developed fiber has achieved the attenuation of 0.158 dB/km at the wavelength of 1550 nm and the spatial mode dispersion (SMD) of 6.1 ps/√km*4 in the wavelength from 1520 to 1580 nm, both of which are the lowest ever reported in...

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Mesosphere Raises $73M for its Containerized Data Center OS

Mesosphere raised $73.5 million in a Series C round of financing backed by strategic partners, including Microsoft and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). Also participating in this round are previous Mesosphere investors Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures and Fuel Capital, as well as new investors A Capital and Triangle Peak Partners. This brings Mesosphere’s total funding to nearly $126 million. Mesosphere's data center operating system (DCOS)...

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Cloudera Acquires Data Analytics Start-up

Cloudera has acquired Sense, a start-up based in San Francisco that is developing a cloud-based platform from data analytics.  Financial terms were not disclosed. The Sense platform enables users to collaborate and share data and analyses on a secure platform. https://sense.io/ http://www.cloudera....

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#OFC2016: AT&T Pushes for Open ROADM MSA

An Open ROADM project is underway with the backing of AT&T and a goal of driving faster innovation and open software control for the Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexers (ROADMs) used in optical transport networks. The Open ROADM Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) defines interoperability specifications for Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexers (ROADM). Included are the ROADM switch as well as transponders and pluggable optics. Specifications...

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#OFC2016: Inphi Targets DCI with QSFP28 Design

Inphi unveiled a QSFP28 reference design that uses advanced Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM4) signaling to deliver up to 4 Tbps of bandwidth over a single fiber at distances up to 80km.  The target application is metro Data Center Interconnect (DCI). Commercial launch date was not specified. Key features of Inphi's "ColorZ": QSFP28 form factor supporting 100G Ethernet Extended reach up to 80km Enables 4Tb/s capacity over a single fiber 4.5W...

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#OFC2016: Inphi Develops Silicon Photonics for Data Centers

Inphi announced a highly integrated Silicon Photonics (SiPho) chip that includes multi-channel modulators, photodetectors, multiplexers, demultiplexers, optical power monitors and fiber coupling structures on the same integrated circuit (IC).  The chip is targeted at 100G intra and inter data center optical interconnects. The company said it expects a 100G upgrade cycle in data centers to begin this year with the introduction of a new generation...

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#OFC2016: Lumentum Targets Optical Whiteboxes for SDN

Lumentum (formerly JDSU) unveiled an "optical whitebox" platform for data center & metro/edge DWDM transport. Lumentum said its SDN optical whitebox platform will consist of family of configurable building blocks with open interfaces for integration into SDN controller/orchestrator layers, enabling system integrators and network operators to deploy and turn-up services. The initial products based on this SDN whitebox platform target simple...

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Cisco Brings High-Density TDM to Optical Transport

Cisco rolled out a number of enhancements to its optical transport portfolio including high-density time-division multiplexing (TDM) to IP/MPLS capabilities. Some highlights: Cisco Network Convergence System (NCS) 4200 Series: Part of the Cisco Evolved Programmable Network (EPN), this transport system addresses network inefficiencies with high-density circuit emulation technology located at the network edge. It converts TDM services into pseudowires...

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Stratoscale Secures $27M for Hyperconverged Software

Stratoscale, a start-up based in Herzeliya, Israel, secured $27 million in Series C financing for its distributed data center operating system. Stratoscale's hardware-agnostic Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) solution that offers a holistic data center experience. Its rack-scale architecture aims to transform standard x86 servers into a hyper-converged infrastructure for cloud services while supporting both containers and virtualization on...

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Mellanox Announces 200 Gbps Silicon Photonics Devices

At this week's OFC, Mellanox demonstrated 50 Gbps silicon photonics optical modulators and detectors -- the key component for 200 Gbps and 400 Gbps LinkX cables and transceivers. The demonstration is an important milestone toward providing end-to-end solutions for HDR 200G InfiniBand and Ethernet interconnect infrastructure. “Silicon photonics is the enabling technology for 200Gb/s InfiniBand and Ethernet networks,” said Amir Prescher, executive...

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Semtech Releases Quad 25Gbps Chipset for 100G SR4

Semtech released a new chipset for quad channel 100G-SR4 optical interconnects operating at 25.78 Gbps. The GN2108 is a quad channel CDR with integrated vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) drivers, and the GN2109 is a quad channel CDR with integrated transimpedance amplifiers (TIAs). A full suite of on-chip features minimizes external components and helps customers speed up their hardware and firmware development. Semtech said its GN2108...

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Coriant Showcases Light IP

At this week's OFC, Coriant showcased its Light IP Solution, a network architecture "that integrates IP capabilities with the optical layer together with optimal control systems to maximize overall network efficiency while minimizing traffic latency." The Coriant Light IP Solution leverages technological advances in photonics, silicon, and SDN/NFV. “The explosion of Internet video and cloud services is driving a fundamental transformation of...

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Video - Source Photonics Shows 2x50G-PAM4 QSFP28

Manish Mehta highlights Source Photonics' demos at this year's #OFC16, including a 2x50G-PAM4 QSFP28. YouTube: https://youtu.be/Epbryi8pLhU   ...

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Fujitsu Announces Modular Blade Families in 1FINITY Platform

Fujitsu unveiled its 1FINITY packet optical platform consisting of Transport, Lambda, Switch, and Access blades. Fujitsu cited several advantages for its disaggregated solution, including more agile development, continuous performance improvement, and technology innovation. Modular 1FINITY blades operate independently or, for broader network solutions, in combination with other optical platforms from Fujitsu and third parties. These are the 1FINITY...

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Juniper Rolls out Optical Upgrades

Juniper Networks announced a number of enhancements to its optical portfolio, including: Photonic and Coherent DWDM Interface Cards for the Juniper Networks PTX and MX series routers; specifically, new line cards for the PTX3000 that fully collapse the optical layer with the IP/MPLS layer, the industry’s first 1-TB coherent DWDM line card for the PTX5000 and a coherent 100GbE DWDM interface card with a highly programmable and service rich programmable...

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Molex and Cisco Target Double-Density QSFP Interfaces

Molex and Cisco announced their participation in a multi-supplier agreement (MSA) to create high-speed, double-density quad small form factor pluggable (QSFP-DD), a new high-speed interface. Thirteen industry leaders have joined the MSA to collaborate in developing this new high-speed interface. The new QSFP-DD interface expands on widely adopted QSFP enabling systems to support backwards compatibility to existing 40 GbE and 100 GbE QSFP interfaces...

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MACOM Showcases PAM-4 for 200G and 400G Systems

M/A-COM Technology Solutions is demonstrating a complete electronics chip-set utilizing PAM-4 technology and enabling a 56Gbps per lane data rate. This featured IP demonstrates another facet of MACOM’s advanced chipset solution for 200G and 400G optical connectivity in both parallel single mode fiber (PSM) and wave division multiplexing (WDM) applications. MACOM said its technology demonstration at this week's #OFC16 achieves industry leading...

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NEL Ships First 16nm 100G/200G Coherent DSP

NTT Electronics (NEL) announced industry-first 16nm ultra-low power DSP for both 100G QPSK long-haul and 200G 16QAM Metro optical links. The new 16nm DSP “ExaSPEED 200” consumes under 10W per 100Gbps in its 200G operation mode, doubling the power efficiency compared to the previous generation 20nm 100G Low Power DSP. It leverages 200G DSP core and 16nm CMOS fin-FET mixed-signal technologies that were developed in collaboration with Broadcom . The...

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Red Hat Posts Revenue of $544 Million, up 17%

Red Hat reported fourth quarter revenue of $544 million, up 17% year-over-year or 21% in constant currency; full fiscal year revenue of $2.05 billion, up 15% year-over-year or 21% in constant currency. GAAP operating income for the quarter was $72 million, up 6% year-over-year. “Enterprises increasingly adopting hybrid cloud infrastructures and open source technologies drove our strong results. The fourth quarter marked our 56th consecutive quarter...

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Infinera's Infinite Capacity Engine Revs to 2.4 Tbps Capacity

Infinera unveiled its Infinite Capacity Engine, a multi-terabit optical subsystem combining the company's next generation FlexCoherent Processor and the photonics of its fourth generation photonic integrated circuit (PIC). The Infinite Capacity Engine, which will be integrated into the Infinera portfolio of long-haul terrestrial, subsea, metro and data center interconnect platforms, breaks new ground for optical transport by being the first in the...

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