Microsoft Announces Project Olympus - OCP Hardware Designs

Microsoft, in collaboration with the Open Compute Project (OCP), announced Project Olympus – a next generation hyperscale cloud hardware design and a new model for open source hardware development with the OCP community.

With Project Olympus, Microsoft said it hopes to foster a model of open source collaboration that has been embraced for software but has historically been at odds with the physical demands of developing hardware. Rather than contributing a fully-completed design to OCP, with this new approach, Microsoft will contribute its next generation cloud hardware designs when they are approximately 50% complete.  This is intended to encourage community involvement in the iterative design process.

“Microsoft is opening the door to a new era of open source hardware development. Project Olympus, the re-imagined collaboration model and the way they’re bringing it to market, is unprecedented in the history of OCP and open source datacenter hardware,” said Bill Carter, Chief Technology Officer, Open Compute Project Foundation.

The building blocks that Project Olympus will contribute consist of a new universal motherboard, high-availability power supply with included batteries, 1U/2U server chassis, high-density storage expansion, a new universal rack power distribution unit (PDU) for global datacenter interoperability, and a standards compliant rack management card.

Microsoft noted that over 90% of the servers it currently purchases are based on OCP contributed specifications.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-reimagines-open-source-cloud-hardware/

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CenturyLink to Acquire Level 3 for $34 Billion

CenturyLink agreed to acquire Level 3 Communications in a cash and stock transaction valued at approximately $34 billion, including the assumption of debt.

The deal combines CenturyLink's larger enterprise customer base with Level 3's global network footprint. The companies said this scale will enable further investment in the reach and speeds of its broadband infrastructure for small businesses and consumers. After close, CenturyLink's Glen Post will continue to serve as Chief Executive Officer and President of the combined company.  Sunit Patel, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Level 3, will serve as Chief Financial Officer of the combined company. The combined company will be headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana and will maintain a significant presence in Colorado and the Denver metropolitan area.

Under terms of the agreement, Level 3 shareholders will receive $26.50 per share in cash and a fixed exchange ratio of 1.4286 shares of CenturyLink stock for each Level 3 share they own, which implies a purchase price of $66.50 per Level 3 share (based on a CenturyLink $28.00 per share reference price) and a premium of approximately 42 percent based on Level 3's unaffected closing share price of $46.92 on October 26, 2016. Upon the closing  CenturyLink shareholders will own approximately 51 percent and Level 3 shareholders will own approximately 49 percent of the combined company.

"The digital economy relies on broadband connectivity, and together with Level 3 we will have one of the most robust fiber network and high-speed data services companies in the world," said Glen Post, CenturyLink Chief Executive Officer and President. "This transaction furthers our commitment to providing our customers with the network to improve their lives and strengthen their businesses. It is this focus on providing fiber connectivity that will continue to distinguish CenturyLink from our competitors. CenturyLink shareholders will benefit from the significant synergies and financial flexibility provided by the combined company's revenue growth and strong cash flow. For employees, this combination will bring together two highly customer-focused organizations and provide employees growth and advancement opportunities the companies could not offer separately."

"This is a compelling transaction for our customers, shareholders and employees," said Jeff Storey, President and Chief Executive Officer of Level 3. "In addition to the substantial value delivered to shareholders, the combined company will be uniquely positioned to meet the evolving and global needs of enterprise customers."

Some highlights:

• Fiber Network - the Level 3 infrastructure increases CenturyLink's network by 200,000 route miles of fiber, which includes 64,000 route miles in 350 metropolitan areas and 33,000 subsea route miles connecting multiple continents. 
• On-net buildings - are expected to increase by nearly 75 percent to approximately 75,000, including 10,000 buildings in EMEA and Latin America. 
• Cost Efficiencies - complementary domestic and international networks will provide cost efficiencies by focusing capital investment on increasing capacity and extending the reach of the combined company's high-bandwidth fiber network.
• Scale - the deal  creates a world-class enterprise player with approximately $19 billion in pro forma business revenue and $13 billion in business strategic revenue, for the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2016. Together, CenturyLink's and Level 3's revenue will be 76 percent derived from business customers, and 65 percent of the combined company's core revenue will be from strategic services. 
• Enhanced Broadband Infrastructure - This transaction will provide the combined company with increased opportunity to invest in its broadband infrastructure and enhance broadband speed for small businesses and consumers.
• Financial Profile - the combined company is expected to have improved adjusted EBITDA margins, revenue growth and pro forma net leverage of less than 3.7x at close, including run-rate synergies. The combined company will benefit from Level 3's nearly $10 billion of net operating losses ("NOLs"). These NOLs will substantially reduce the combined company's net cash tax expense over the next several years, positioning it to generate substantial free cash flow.
• Additional debt - CenturyLink intends to finance the cash portion of the transaction and pay related fees and expenses through a combination of cash on hand at CenturyLink and Level 3, and approximately $7 billion of additional indebtedness. In connection therewith, CenturyLink has received financing commitments from BofA Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC totaling approximately $10.2 billion for new secured debt facilities.

http://ir.centurylink.com/CorporateProfile.aspx?iid=4057179

http://www.level3.com

• Over the past few years, CenturyLink has acquired Qwest Communications, Savvis and Embarq (formerly Sprint's Local Telecommunications Division).
• The deal to acquire Qwest was valued at $22 billion when it was first announced in 2010. At the time, CenturyLink and Qwest served local markets in 37 states with approximately 5 million broadband customers, 17 million access lines, 1,415,000 video subscribers and 850,000 wireless consumers.  
• In 2014, Level 3 acquired tw telecom in a $5.7 billion deal that combined its global fiber network and international data centers with tw telecom's extensive metro footprint in major U.S. Time Warner Communications was founded in 1993 as a joint venture between US West and Time Warner Communications. The company completed an IPO in 1999. It acquired Xspedius in 2006. 
• Level 3's prior acquisitions include WilTel (2005), Progress Telecom (2006), ICG(2006), Telcove (2006), Looking Glass Networks (2006), Broadwing (2007), SAVVIS' content delivery network (2007), Servecast (2007), and Global Crossing (2011).

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OpenSwitch Adds Contributions from Dell EMC and SnapRoute

The OpenSwitch Project, which is developing an open source, Linux-based Network Operating System, announced contributions from SnapRoute and Dell EMC.

The enhanced contributions include:

• SnapRoute’s open source network stack and management services, which enable a fully modular, hardware independent NOS, accessible through a complete set of APIs.
• Dell EMC’s OS10 Open Edition, which represents a fully open, fully disaggregated base subsystem incorporating hardware and platform abstraction layers for networking switching applications.

Other OpenSwitch project supporting members and participating organizations include Barefoot Networks, Broadcom, Cavium, Inc., Centec Networks, Edgecore Networks, Extreme Networks, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, LinkedIn, Marvell, Mellanox Technologies, Nephos Inc., P4.org, Quattro Networks and Terralogic.

"The OpenSwitch community continues to demonstrate its enthusiastic commitment to the creation of an open source network operating system," said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. "It's exciting to see a rapid influx of contributions to OpenSwitch, which are priming the project to support next-generation requirements and features."

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/announcements/snaproute-and-dell-emc-to-help-advance-linux-foundation%E2%80%99s-openswitch-project

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Bloomberg: Brocade Contemplates a Sale

Shares in Brocade surged 22% following a report published by Bloomberg that the company is in advanced stages of selling itself.  Broadcom may be interested in acquiring the company, according to Bloomberg, but company commented for the report.

Broadcom, which recently completed its merger with Avago Technologies, sells merchant silicon to many of network equipment vendors, including Brocade and its competitors.


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-31/brocade-communications-said-in-advanced-talks-to-sell-itself

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Asia Pacific Gateway Cable Enters Service

NTT Communications announced the launch of service on the consortium-backed Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) optical submarine cable network.

APG, which spans a total length of 10,400 km, leverages 100 Gbps optical transmission and digital coherent technology to deliver a capacity of more than 54 Tbps, the highest of any network in Asia.

NTT said the cable routing avoids areas prone to earthquakes and typhoons, and has connectivity points in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

NTT Com has established two diverse landing points, one in the East and the other in the West of Japan for the APG and Pacific Crossing-1 (PC-1) submarine cable which connects between Japan and the U.S. having diverse route such as north and south routes. The company has also implemented diverse landing points in Hong Kong and Singapore for the APG and for the Asia Submarine-Cable Express (ASE), which was launched in August 2012.

http://www.ntt.com/en/about-us/press-releases/news/article/2016/20161031_2.html

• The Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) project was first proposed in 2009.

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Ciena Unveils WaveLogic Ai Programmable Modem

Ciena unveiled its WaveLogic Ai, a programmable coherent modem that is positioned as a foundational technology for future "self-driving" networks.

Ciena said its WaveLogic Ai coherent modem can drive 400G single carrier transmission in metro and DCI applications, while establishing 200G and 300G as the new reference line rates for backbone transmission in regional and long-haul networks. In submarine networks, it provides maximum capacity with ultimate reach at distances up to 14,000 kilometers.

The WaveLogic Ai modem is designed to gather critical networking data, including embedded real-time link measurements, to make intelligent capacity decisions in real time. For instance, WaveLogic Ai helps determine the optimal capacity for any path across the network and can tune to different capacity levels from 100G to 400G in 50G increments. Ciena said its technology will make available massive amounts of optical networking performance data through open interfaces that can be mined to build on-demand, programmable networks. WaveLogic Ai also provides extensive tunability via open software interfaces. Commercial launch is expected in Q2 2017.

http://www.ciena.com/insights/articles/Ciena-unveils-WaveLogic-Ai.html

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Kingston Adds 256 GB microSDHC Card

Kingston Digital introduced a 256GB Class 10 UHS-I microSDHC / microSDXC card.

The large capacity and Class 10 UHS-I speed allows users to capture more photos (up to 64,000 12MP images) and HD videos (up to 976 minutes at 1080p 30 frames per second).

The microSDHC / microSDXC Class 10 UHS-I is the smallest form factor SD card available and is the standard expandable storage option for many tablets, smartphones and action cameras.

“We are excited to ship our new higher capacity 256GB microSDXC card for consumers who need more storage for photos, videos and other data,” said Annette Chan, Flash memory business manager, Kingston. “As image quality and 4K content continues to rise, we strive to push storage densities higher to match our customers’ needs for larger capacity and stable products.”

http://www.kingston.com

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ADVA Posts Revenue of EUR 159.5 Million

ADVA Optical Networking reported record quarterly revenues of EUR 159.5 million -- at the upper end of the guidance forecast on July 21. Quarterly revenues climbed to a record high of EUR 159.5 million. The figure marks an increase of 30.4% year-on-year (YoY) (Q3 2015: EUR 122.3 million) and is at the upper end of the guidance forecast on July 21.

“Our markets continue to have multiple growth drivers,” said Brian Protiva, CEO, ADVA Optical Networking. “Cloud and mobility are fueling the demand for more bandwidth and reshaping our industry around the data center paradigm. Our focus on open connectivity solutions for data center interconnect (DCI) applications is delivering results. ”

http://www.advaoptical.com/en/newsroom/press-releases-english/20161027-adva-optical-networking-posts-record-q3-revenues-of-eur-159-5-million

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AT&T to Launch 400GbE Business Service

AT&T is planning to launch 400 Gigabit Ethernet business services.  A trial is planned for early 2017 across the company's production network.

The 400 Gigabit Ethernet testing will be performed in 3 phases:

• Phase 1: Will use optical gear from Coriant to carry a true 400GbE service across a long-distance span of AT&T global backbone from New York to Washington, demonstrating that AT&T’s nationwide software-centric network is 400G-ready.
• Phase 2: Will trial a 400GbE on a single 400G wavelength across AT&T’s OpenROADM metro network. We’ll use optical gear from Ciena, a developer of next-generation coherent optical solutions, to show the network is ready to transport 400GbE to serve our customers in a metro area.
• Phase 3: Will test the first instance of a 400GbE open router platform. The “disaggregated router” platform uses merchant silicon and open source software – another industry first.

“Although there have been efforts focused on 400 Gigabit Ethernet viability and industry standards over the past couple of years, we are excited to be the first to implement a pilot,” said Rick Hubbard, senior vice president, AT&T Network Product Management. “400GbE has the potential to transform how our largest retail and wholesale customers manage their networks today.”

AT&T noted that data traffic on the its network grew more than 150,000% between 2007 and 2015.

http://www.att.com

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ARM Intros Mali Multi-standard Video Processor for Mobiles

ARM has launched two new products:

• Mali-V61 -  a video processing unit (VPU) for 4K120 video performance in real-time video applications such as Facebook Live and Periscope.
  
• Mali-G51 graphics processing unit (GPU) - ARM’s most area-efficient and energy-efficient GPU to date. Based on ARM’s new Bifrost architecture which has been updated to include a redesigned texturing unit with double the throughput, the Mali-G51 GPU enables these use cases, bringing premium graphics to mainstream mobile devices.

“The cost and visual experience a device delivers are key purchasing factors for Generation Z and mainstream mobile users,” said James McNiven, general manager for CPU and media processing groups, ARM. “Our latest Mali video and graphics IP suite meets this demand by offering immersive VR, gaming and compliance with real-time video standards. This is a system-level media solution that enables developers to balance performance, efficiency and cost control.”

Mali-V61 and Mali-G51 are available to license now and both processors support ARM initiatives such as the new version, v1.2, of ARM Frame Buffer Compression (AFBC), to deliver increased bandwidth savings, and ARM TrustZone technology.

http://www.arm.com

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Cloudian Raises $41M for Cloud Object Storage Platform

Cloudian, a start-up based in San Mateo, California, announced $41 million in new venture funding for its hybrid cloud object storage system.

Cloudian's modular, scale-out platform allows a single storage manager to effectively manage hundreds of petabytes of capacity, a level that would require a dozen or more storage managers with conventional systems.

In August, Cloudian announced the availability of Cloudian HyperStore on AWS Marketplace. This enables customers to purchase their on-premises storage on a metered-by-use basis, manage it alongside Amazon S3 storage as a single pool, and then receive a single invoice for both.

In June of this year, Cloudian and Lenovo announced an OEM agreement that enables Lenovo’s worldwide salesforce to offer a Cloudian-based object storage appliance.

“Data center managers need new solutions to help them contend with today’s explosive growth in unstructured data. Across all industries – from media, to medical, to industrial – new applications and technologies are driving 50 percent growth of unstructured data per year, creating a crisis of cost and complexity for storage managers,” said Michael Tso, CEO and co-founder, Cloudian. “Cloudian object storage redefines the enterprise data center with hybrid cloud solutions that bring the flexibility and simplicity of public cloud storage into our customer’s data centers, simplifying management and reducing TCO by 70 percent versus conventional storage systems.”

The funding round includes new investors Lenovo, City National Bank, Epsilon Venture Partners, and DVP Investment. Also participating were all existing investors, including Intel Capital, INCJ, Eight Roads (the proprietary investment arm of FIL, Fidelity International Limited), and Goldman Sachs. The funding brings Cloudian’s total capital raised to date to $79 million.

http://www.cloudian.com

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Fortinet Extends Presence in Azure Government Cloud

Fortinet and Microsoft announced an extension of their partnership to protect the cloud environments of their joint government customers.

Specifically, Fortinet’s Security Fabric solutions for the cloud have been released on the Azure Government Cloud platform to provide comprehensive security, threat intelligence, and the visibility to detect, isolate, and respond to threats in real time for workloads running in the Government Cloud.

This includes virtual security products, such as Fortinet’s enterprise firewall (FortiGate), web application firewall (FortiWeb), mail security (FortiMail), as well as its integrated security management (FortiManager) and analytics (FortiAnalyzer) solutions are now available. Fortinet is also a go-to-market partner with Microsoft’s Azure Security Center.

https://blog.fortinet.com/

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Fortinet Posts Q3 Sales of $316.6 million, up 22%, but Missing Target

Fortinet reported Q3 revenue of 316.6 million, an increase of 22% compared to $260.1 million in the same quarter of 2015. GAAP net income was $6.3 million for the third quarter of 2016, compared to GAAP net income of $8.2 million for the same quarter of 2015. GAAP diluted net income per share was $0.04 for the third quarter of 2016. GAAP diluted net income per share was $0.05 in the third quarter of 2015.

"While our third quarter results were impacted by a moderated spending environment, extended sales cycles and sales execution challenges, we continued to outgrow the market, as well as add 9,000 new customers," stated Ken Xie, founder, chairman and chief executive officer. "Fortinet remains in a position to benefit from key secular trends such as security vendor consolidation and next generation cloud architectures. We have a strong technology advantage and visionary roadmap in place to help us continue to grow our market position, address our large opportunity, and make progress towards achieving our long term margin targets."

Total billings were $347.5 million for the third quarter of 2016, an increase of 16% compared to $299.6 million in the same quarter of 2015.
Deferred Revenue: Total deferred revenue was $934.8 million as of September 30, 2016, an increase of 32% compared to $706.9 million in the same quarter of 2015. Total deferred revenue increased by $30.8 million compared to $904.0 million as of June 30, 2016.

http://investor.fortinet.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=996021

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Vodafone Announces a Deal in Iran

Vodafone announced a deal with HiWEB, a leading Iranian ISP, to assist in rolling out and modernizing network infrastructure in Iran. Fixed and mobile Internet services will be offered under the HiWEB brand/In addition, HiWEB will be able to provide Vodafone’s multinational corporate customers with fixed and mobile services in Iran.

Vodafone will also support HiWEB in marketing, distribution and sales, including the provision of Internet of Things (IoT) services to HiWEB’s customers.

The deal is a new non-equity Partner Market agreement.

Vodafone Partner Markets Chief Executive Diego Massidda said: “I am delighted to reach agreement with HiWEB on a partnership that will benefit both parties in Iran. Vodafone’s corporate customers will get the benefit of quality network services in the country – including in rural areas – and HiWEB will be able to access Vodafone’s global expertise to support the roll out of products, infrastructure and the launch of IoT services in Iran.”

http://www.vodafone.com/content/index/media/vodafone-group-releases/2016/hiweb-iran.html

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ZTE Posts Q3 Revenue of US$10.54 Billion, up 4.4% YoY

ZTE reported operating revenue of RMB71,564 million (US$10.54 billion) for Q3 2016, representing a year-on-year growth of 4.44 percent. ZTE’s net profit, attributable to holders of ordinary shares of the listed company, amounted to RMB2,859 million, representing a year-on-year growth of 9.78 percent. Basic earnings per share amounted to RMB0.69.

ZTE attributed the growth primarily to 4G system products and optical transmission products in the domestic and international markets, as well as handset products and family terminal products in the domestic market.

Some highlights:

• The company’s chip shipments doubled compared with the same period last year, achieving a record high. 
• Shipments of mobile terminal chips accounted for 80 percent in overseas markets. There has been a rapid development in IoT chips and ZTE was the first company to support all bands of prototype chips in China and to conduct an IoT test at China Mobile, which has helped to gradually establish a strong industry ecosystem.
• In regards to its wired network business as of the end of the third quarter, ZTE's next-generation passive optical networks (PON) market share, the overall growth of fixed-line market access and digital subscriber line (DSL) market share growth all ranked first in the world and ranked second in optical network market share globally.

http://www.zte.com.cn/global/about/press-center/news/201610ma/1027ma

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Colt Builds its Second Tokyo Data Center

Colt initiated construction of its second data center in Inzai, located just east of Tokyo.

The building will offer 15MW of critical IT load across 5,000 square meters of server room space and feature state of the art energy efficiency.

This development follows the recently announced additions to Colt’s data centres in London, Berlin and Hamburg.

http://www.colt.net/news/new-tokyo-data-centre/

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AWS Revenue Soars 55% YoY in Q3 to Reach

Revenues for Amazon Web Services reached $3.231 billion in Q3 2016, up 55% year over year. Operating income at AWS reached $861 million, up 101% year over year. Trailing Twelve Months (TTM) sales reached $11.1 billion. North America represented 58% of the sales mix. The operating margin for the quarter was 31.6%.

Some AWS highlights for the quarter from the Amazon.com quarterly financial report:

• 
  
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the availability of the U.S. East (Ohio) Region. AWS now operates 38 Availability Zones across 14 technology infrastructure Regions globally, and plans to open an additional nine Availability Zones in four regions (Canada, the U.K., France, and a second region in China) in the coming months.
• VMware and AWS announced a new hybrid cloud service, “VMware Cloud on AWS,” that enables customers to use their existing VMware software and tools to leverage AWS’s global footprint and breadth of services, including storage, databases, analytics, and more. This offering will be the primary public cloud service sold and supported by VMware, and AWS will be VMware’s primary public cloud partner.
• AWS announced the availability of P2 instances, a new GPU instance type for Amazon EC2. The most powerful GPU virtual machine in the cloud with up to 16 NVIDIA Tesla® K80 GPUs, P2 instances are designed for compute-intensive applications such as artificial intelligence, deep learning, computational fluid dynamics, computational finance, seismic analysis, molecular modeling, genomics, and rendering workloads.
• AWS announced the option for customers to bring their own encryption keys with AWS Key Management Service. This new feature allows customers to import keys from any key management and Hardware Security Module solution and use them with AWS services and their own applications.
• AWS launched new capabilities for AWS Educate, a global program that provides students and educators with resources to accelerate cloud-related learning. The program now includes access to courses designed to teach cloud skills, paired with the AWS Educate Job Board, featuring cloud-related internships and jobs from top employers around the world.
• AWS announced a new Application Load Balancer option for content-based routing that enables customers to route a request to an AWS service based on the content of the request and supports applications that run in containers. Web sites and mobile applications, running in containers or on Amazon EC2 instances, will benefit from the use of Application Load Balancers.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2216758

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Qualcomm to Acquire NXP -- Engines for the Connected World

Qualcomm agreed to acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of NXP for $110.00 per share in cash, representing a total enterprise value of approximately $47 billion. The deal will be financed through cash on hand and $11 billion in new debt. The companies expect total annualized synergies of $500 million within two years of close.

NXP Semiconductors N.V., which headquartered in Eindhoven, Netherlands, employs approximately 45,000 people in more than 35 countries and is known for its mixed-signal semiconductor electronics. The company was known as Philips Semiconductor prior to 2006.

Key markets include automotive, broad-based microcontrollers, secure identification, network processing and RF power. NXP has a broad customer base, serving more than 25,000 customers through its direct sales channel and global network of distribution channel partners.

For Q3 2016, NXP reported revenue of $2.469 billion, up 4.4% over a year ago, and GAAP gross profit of $1.184 billion, up 7.7% over a year ago.

The combined company is expected to have annual revenues of more than $30 billion, serviceable addressable markets of $138 billion in 2020 and leadership positions across mobile, automotive, IoT, security, RF and networking.

"With innovation and invention at our core, Qualcomm has played a critical role in driving the evolution of the mobile industry. The NXP acquisition accelerates our strategy to extend our leading mobile technology into robust new opportunities, where we will be well positioned to lead by delivering integrated semiconductor solutions at scale," said Steve Mollenkopf, CEO of Qualcomm Incorporated. "By joining Qualcomm's leading SoC capabilities and technology roadmap with NXP's leading industry sales channels and positions in automotive, security and IoT, we will be even better positioned to empower customers and consumers to realize all the benefits of the intelligently connected world."

Qualcomm also noted that the acquisition is a tax efficient use of its offshore cash.

http://investors.nxp.com/
http://www.qualcomm

NXP to Acquire Freescale for $11.8 Billion

Monday, March 02, 2015  Freescale, Mergers And Acquisitions, NXP  No Comments

NXP Semiconductor agreed to acquire Freescale for $6.25 per share in cash and 0.3521 of an NXP ordinary share for each Freescale common share, implying a total equity value for Freescale of approximately $11.8 billion (based on NXP's closing stock price as of February 27, 2015) and a total enterprise value of approximately $16.7 billion including Freescale's net debt.

The deal creates the largest supplier of semiconductors for the automotive industry and the No.1 supplier of general microcontrollers (MCUs).

The combined company will capitalize on the growing opportunities created by the accelerating demand for security, connectivity and processing. NXP estimates annual cost synergies of $500 million.

"Today's announcement is a transformative step in our objective to become the industry leader in high performance mixed signal solutions. The combination of NXP and Freescale creates an industry powerhouse focused on the high growth opportunities in the Smarter World. We fully expect to continue to significantly out-grow the overall market, drive world-class profitability and generate even more cash, which taken together will maximize value for both Freescale and NXP shareholders," said Richard Clemmer, NXP Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Clemmer will continue to be the President and Chief Executive Officer of the merged company.

http://ir.freescale.com/investor-relations.aspx
http://www.nxp.com

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CoreSite's Revenue Grows 17% YoY to $101 Million

CoreSite Realty Corporation reported third-quarter total operating revenues of $101.3 million, representing a 17.2% increase year over year. Reported third-quarter net income per diluted share were $0.36, representing 38.5% growth year over year.

"We delivered another quarter of solid financial and operational performance in the third quarter, highlighted by strong earnings growth and leasing momentum. Our third quarter volume of new and expansion leasing for deployments of 5,000 net rentable square feet or less set a company record, as the demand for performance-sensitive retail colocation solutions remains robust," stated Paul Szurek, CoreSite’s Chief Executive Officer.

“Subsequent to the end of the third quarter, we opened SV7, our 230,000 net rentable square foot turn-key data center building in Santa Clara, which was 62% leased upon opening of the facility, another record for CoreSite. ”

Some highlights for the quarter on CoreSite's data center business:

• CoreSite executed 162 new and expansion data center leases representing $11.2 million of annualized GAAP rent during the third quarter, comprised of 59,991 NRSF at a weighted-average GAAP rental rate of $187 per NRSF.
• CoreSite’s third-quarter data center lease commencements totaled 50,455 NRSF at a weighted average GAAP rental rate of $148 per NRSF, which represents $7.5 million of annualized GAAP rent.
• CoreSite’s renewal leases signed in the third quarter totaled $10.9 million in annualized GAAP rent, comprised of 76,735 NRSF at a weighted-average GAAP rental rate of $142 per NRSF, reflecting a 4.0% increase in rent on a cash basis and a 6.8% increase on a GAAP basis. The third-quarter rental churn rate was 2.2%, which included 160 basis points of churn related to a customer move-out at CoreSite’s VA1 data center.

http://www.coresite.com

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Nokia Sees Softening Market Conditions, Especially Mobile Infrastructure

Nokia posted net sales (non-IFRS) in Q3 2016 of EUR 6.0 billion, down from EUR 6.4 billion on a comparable combined company basis for the same period a year ago.

"Nokia delivered solid third quarter results. Nokia Technologies led the way, with a sharp year-on-year increase in net sales, largely driven by revenues related to the Samsung licensing agreement that was announced in Q3. The results also reflect another excellent quarter from Fixed Networks, which improved both net sales and profitability from one year ago," stated Rajeev Suri, Nokia's President and CEO. "We were able to deliver these solid results despite market conditions that are softer than expected, particularly in mobile infrastructure. As we look forward, we expect those conditions to stabilize somewhat in 2017, with the primary addressable market in which Nokia competes likely to decline in the low single digits for that year."

Some highlights:

• 
  
• Nokia's Networks reported a 12% year-on-year net sales decrease. Net sales were weak in Mobile Networks within Ultra Broadband Networks, and accounted for approximately 80% of the overall decrease in Nokia's Networks business. IP Networks and Applications also contributed to the decrease, partially offset by growth in Fixed Networks within Ultra Broadband Networks.
• Nokia Technologies reported a 109% year-on-year net sales increase and 168% operating profit increase in Q3 2016. Excluding the impact of non-recurring licensing income, Nokia Technologies net sales and operating profit both would have grown by approximately 50% year-on-year, primarily due to higher intellectual property licensing income and, to a lesser extent, increased net sales resulting from the acquisition of Withings.
• Nokia and China Huaxin are continuing their discussions under the memorandum of understanding, as originally announced on August 28, 2015, to combine Nokia's telecommunications infrastructure businesses in China and Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell into a new joint venture. A deal has not yet been reached.

http://www.nokia.com

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A10 Networks' Q3 Sales Hit $55 Million, up 8% but Missing Guidance

A10 Networks' Q3 2016 revenue grew to $55.1 million, up 8 percent when compared with $50.8 million in the third quarter of 2015. On a GAAP basis, A10 Networks reported a net loss for the third quarter 2016 of $4.7 million, or $0.07 per share, compared with a net loss of $9.0 million, or $0.14 per share, in the third quarter of 2015.

“We reported third quarter revenue of $55.1 million, which was below our guidance and reflects a shortfall in North America where we received a couple orders too late in the quarter to ship and some deals slipped into future quarters,” said Lee Chen, president and chief executive officer of A10 Networks. “While we are disappointed with our topline performance, we continued to drive leverage in our operating model, significantly improve our bottom-line results and invest in key areas of our business to foster long-term growth. The share repurchase authorization announced today reflects our confidence in our market opportunities and ability to meet our financial objectives.”

http://www.a10networks.com

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American Tower Looks to Europe for Opportunities

American Tower, a leading independent owner, operator and developer of multitenant communications real estate with a portfolio of over 144,000 tower sites, will form a joint venture with Dutch pension fund manager PGGM to develop telecommunications real estate investment opportunities in select European countries. The new company will be called ATC Europe.  American Tower will contribute its German assets into ATC Europe and PGGM will acquire a 49% interest in ATC Europe. American Tower will retain operational control and day-to-day oversight of ATC Europe.

"We are pleased to be able to enter into this partnership with PGGM,” said James D. Taiclet, Jr., American Tower’s Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. “We believe that the combination of PGGM’s long-term investment philosophy and extensive knowledge of the European landscape with American Tower’s proven track record of investing in and operating telecommunications real estate assets will establish a compelling platform for future investment opportunities."

http://www.americantower.com/

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Mellanox Posts Sales of $224 Million, up 4.4%

Mellanox Technologies reported Q3 2016 revenues of $224.2 million, up 4.4 percent compared to $214.8 million in the second quarter of 2016. GAAP net income was $12.0 million, compared to $4.7 million in the second quarter of 2016.

“We are pleased to report the sixth consecutive quarter of record revenue. We see strong customer adoption of our 25/50/100 Gigabit Ethernet solutions. We believe the transition to 25/50/100 Gigabit Ethernet provides Mellanox significant growth opportunities due to our first mover advantage. We saw strong sequential growth in our InfiniBand business, driven by continued adoption of our 100 Gigabit EDR solutions,” said Eyal Waldman, president and CEO of Mellanox Technologies. “Our third quarter results show continued leadership in both Ethernet and InfiniBand, and we expect growth to continue, driven by our interconnect and processor technologies.”

http://ir.mellanox.com

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GSMA Elects Sunil Bharti Mittal as Chair

The GSMA elected new members of the GSMA Board for the two-year period from January 2017 through December 2018. The GSMA Board has also elected Sunil Bharti Mittal, Founder and Chairman, Bharti Enterprises as Chair, and re-elected Mari-Noëlle Jego-Laveissiere, Executive Vice President, Innovation, Orange Group as Deputy Chair.

“I am delighted to be elected as Chairman of the GSMA, and look forward to working closely with the rest of the Board, the GSMA leadership team and our entire membership to address the critical issues facing our industry and our customers,” said Mittal. “In a relatively brief period of time, mobile has had a transformational impact on individuals, businesses, industries and societies, contributing significantly to local economies and improving the lives of billions around the world.”

The GSMA’s Director General Mats Granryd also serves on the GSMA Board. The GSMA Board for the 2017-2018 term comprises:

• Juan Carlos Archila, Executive Vice President, International Relationships, América Móvil
• Bill Hague, Executive Vice President-Global Connection Management, AT&T Mobility
• Sunil Bharti Mittal, Founder and Chairman, Bharti Enterprises
• Sha Yuejia, Executive Director and Vice President, China Mobile
• Sun Kangmin, Executive Director and Executive Vice President, China Telecom
• Lu Yimin, President and Vice Chairman, China Unicom
• Wolfgang Kopf, Senior Vice President, Public and Regulatory Affairs, Deutsche Telekom
• Hatem Dowidar, CEO International, Etisalat
• Mats Granryd, Director General, GSMA
• Christian Salbaing, Deputy Chairman, Europe, Hutchison
• Takashi Tanaka, President, KDDI
• Eelco Blok, CEO, KPN
• Chang-Gyu Hwang, Chairman and CEO, KT Corporation
• Mauricio Ramos, CEO, Millicom
• Phuthuma Nhleko, Chairman and Acting CEO, MTN Group
• Andrei Dubovskov, President, MTS
• Kazuhiro Yoshizawa, President and CEO, NTT DOCOMO
• Mari-Noëlle Jego-Laveissiere, Executive Vice President, Innovation, Orange Group
• Dong-Hyun Jang, President and CEO, SK Telecom
• Julio Linares López, Vice President of the Board, Telefoìnica
• Sigve Brekke, President and CEO, Telenor Group
• Johan Dennelind, President and CEO, Telia Company
• Kaan Terzioğlu, CEO, Turkcell
• Roy Chestnutt, Chief Strategy Officer, Verizon
• Serpil Timuray, Group Chief Commercial Operations and Strategy Officer, Vodafone
• Scott Gegenheimer, CEO, Zain Group

GSMA Chair Jon Fredrik Baksaas will step down from the Board at the end of 2016, after holding this position for the past three years. Baksaas was elected as a member of the GSMA Board in 2008.

http://www.gsma.com

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WSJ: CenturyLink and Level3 in Merger Talks

The Wall Street Journal reported that CenturyLink and Level 3 Communications are in advanced talks to merge.  Neither company confirmed the report.

Both companies operate very significant fiber backbone networks.

Over the past few years, CenturyLink has acquired Qwest Communications, Savvis and Embarq (formerly Sprint's Local Telecommunications Division).

In 2014, Level 3 acquired TW Telecom. In 2011, it acquired Global Crossing.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/centurylink-in-advanced-talks-to-merge-with-level-3-communications-1477589011

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AT&T Activates First LTE-M Commercial Site

AT&T switched on North America’s first LTE-M enabled commercial site in San Ramon, California.

Key features and benefits expected from LTE-M are:

• Lower costs for modules that connect IoT devices to the LTE network.
• Longer battery life; up to 10 years for certain enabled IoT devices.
• Better coverage for IoT devices underground and deep inside buildings.

The site activation supports the pilot of AT&T’s LTE-M Low-Power Wide-Area network at the AT&T Labs in San Ramon. AT&T said it plans to make the technology widely available across its commercial network throughout 2017.

It will connect a wide variety of IoT solutions challenged by existing network technology. These include smart utility meters, asset monitoring, vending machines, alarm systems, fleet, heavy equipment, mHealth and wearables.

The pilot will also include solutions from a robust contingent of technology providers:  Altair, Ericsson, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., Sierra Wireless, Telit, u-blox, Wistron NeWeb Corp. (WNC), and Xirgo Technologies.  The technology is expected to be available to customers outside of the pilot starting in 2017.

“We’ve joined with Altair, Ericsson and technology leaders from across the ecosystem to launch the first LTE-M enabled commercial site in North America,” said Chris Penrose, president, Internet of Things Solutions, AT&T. “Innovations like LTE-M will bring IoT to more end points than ever before. It’s part of our strategy to offer the widest range of IoT network options to our customers.”

Participants in the pilot will include:

• Badger Meter – analyze how the LTE-M network, which is dedicated to supporting the IoT, may be used to enhance communications for smart water devices.
• CalAmp – explore how the LTE-M network can help companies more efficiently manage their connected vehicles and assets.
• Capstone Metering – demonstrate how LTE-M can improve Smart Cities sensor technologies. It will look to increase battery life and improve connectivity and sensor monitoring for underground smart water meters.
• PepsiCo -- examine and test ways that sensors can improve the in-store experience with smart vending solutions for the thousands of PepsiCo products consumers love and enjoy.
• Samsung – evaluate an LTE-M-based solution to enhance performance for consumer solutions. This may include wearables or other consumer devices.

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

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Vendors Showcase Application Portability with OpenStack

Vendors at this week's OpenStack Summit in Barcelona showcased application portability across a diversity of OpenStack public and private clouds.

The Community Interop Challenge took a holistic approach to prove interoperability, asking all participants to successfully run the same workload and automated deployment tools across their OpenStack distributions and public clouds. The challengers ran a 3-tiered LAMPStack enterprise application using Ansible and OpenStack Shade live on stage, and also executed a second workload using Docker Swarm scripts and Terraform as part of the collaborative effort.

Participating OpenStack vendors included AT&T, Canonical, Cisco, DreamHost, Deutsche Telekom, Fujitsu, HPE, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Linaro, Mirantis, OSIC, OVH, Rackspace, Red Hat, SUSE and VMware.

The Foundation also announced continued progress and adoption of the “OpenStack Powered” program, which requires OpenStack products and services to run interoperability tests in order to carry the OpenStack brand. There are now 46 products and services meeting interoperability standards, including 11 public cloud providers which alone have a footprint of 34 datacenters globally.

In addition, the European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC) also demonstrated a different type of interoperability and performance of OpenStack within complex Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) systems.

https://www.openstack.org/

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Ericsson Brings on Investor AB's Börje Ekholm to Head Turnaround

Ericsson's Board of Directors has appointed Börje Ekholm President and CEO, effective January 16, 2017.

Ekholm currently serves as CEO of Patricia Industries, a division within Investor. Prior to assuming this position in 2015, Börje Ekholm held the position as President and CEO of Investor AB between 2005 and 2015. Previous positions also include President of Investor Growth Capital Inc., as well as positions with Novare Kapital AB and McKinsey & Co Inc.

Ekholm is a member of the Board of Directors for Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, Alibaba Inc., NASDAQ OMX Group Inc. and Trimble Navigation Ltd. He is also a member of the University Board of KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

Chairman of the Board Leif Johansson says: "I am very pleased to announce the appointment of Börje Ekholm. He has a solid understanding of both the technology and business implications of the ongoing convergence of telecoms, IT and media. Having served on Ericsson's Board of Directors for the past ten years, Börje Ekholm has full understanding of the challenges and the opportunities Ericsson currently faces."

https://www.ericsson.com/news/2051527

Hans Vestberg is Out as CEO of Ericsson

Monday, July 25, 2016    No Comments

Hans Vestberg has stepped down as President and CEO and member of Ericsson's Board of Directors.

Jan Frykhammar, Executive Vice President and CFO, will assume the CEO position until a new CEO is in office.

The resignation comes under pressure from the company's Board of Directors, which issued a statement saying that new leadership is required to address changing market conditions and "drive the next phase of Ericsson's development."  As stated during the disappointing financial report last week, the company must further cut expenses.

In a press statement, Chairman of the Board Leif Johansson says: "Hans Vestberg has led the company for seven years through significant industry and company transformation. Hans has been instrumental in building strong relationships with key customers around the world and his leadership and energy have been an inspiration to employees and leaders across Ericsson. However, in the current environment and as the company accelerates its strategy execution, the Board of Directors has decided that the time is right for a new leader to drive the next phase in Ericsson's development."

https://www.ericsson.com/news/2030327

• In June 2009, Hans Vestberg took over as CEO of Ericsson, replacing Carl-Henric Svanberg who had taken over as CEO of BP.

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IBM's Watson to Analyze Video Content

IBM introduced new Watson-powered cognitive services for unlocking data-rich insights for video content and audiences.

The idea is to apply cognitive technology for mining and analyzing the complex data in video.

“Companies are creating video with vast amounts of valuable data, but they don’t have a way to easily identify that information or audience reaction to it,” said Braxton Jarratt, general manager, IBM Cloud Video. “Today’s new services are a major step forward in using IBM’s cognitive and cloud capabilities to help companies unlock meaningful information about their videos and viewers so they can create and curate more personalized content that matters to specific audiences.”

Accessible through the IBM Cloud, these new services analyze video data that can otherwise be difficult and time-consuming to manually process. They include:            

• Live Event Analysis: Combines Watson APIs with IBM Cloud Video streaming video solutions to track near real-time audience reaction of live events by analyzing social media feeds.
• Video Scene Detection: Automatically segments videos into meaningful scenes to make it more efficient to find and deliver targeted content.
• Audience Insights: Integrates IBM Cloud Video solutions with the IBM Media Insights Platform, a cognitive solution that uses Watson APIs to help identify audience preferences, including what they are watching and saying, through social media.   

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/50889.wss

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F5 Posts Strong Quarter, Sales Rise to $525.3 million, up 6% YoY

F5 Networks posted revenue of $525.3 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2016, up 6 percent from $496.5 million in the prior quarter and 5 percent from $501.3 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2015. For fiscal year 2016, revenue was $2.0 billion, up 4 percent from $1.92 billion last year.

GAAP net income for the fourth quarter was $108.9 million ($1.64 per diluted share) compared to $91.8 million ($1.37 per diluted share) in the third quarter of 2016 and $97.0 million ($1.36 per diluted share) in the fourth quarter a year ago. GAAP net income for the year was $365.9 million ($5.38 per diluted share) versus $365.0 million ($5.03 per diluted share) in fiscal year 2015.

"Strengthening product sales in the second half of fiscal 2016 culminated in strong fourth quarter results and record annual revenue and earnings,” said John McAdam, F5 president and chief executive officer. “On a regional basis, Americas, APAC and Japan all delivered solid sequential and year over year sales growth, while sales in EMEA were down significantly from the fourth quarter a year ago.

“We believe there are several emerging market conditions that are driving an increased appeal of our products with our customers. These include the ability to orchestrate SSL traffic flows, provision our proxy based security solutions to deploy a consistent security stack across on-premise, off-premise and public cloud infrastructures, and customers moving workloads to public and private cloud architectures. We believe these trends, combined with our new product offerings will drive our business forward in fiscal 2017 and beyond.

http://www.f5.com

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Infinera Reports Revenue of $186 Million

Infinera reported GAAP revenue of $185.5 million for its third quarter of 2016 compared to $258.8 million in the second quarter of 2016 and $232.5 million in the third quarter of 2015. GAAP gross margin for the quarter was 45.6% compared to 47.8% in the second quarter of 2016 and 44.2% in the third quarter of 2015. GAAP operating margin for the quarter was (5.9)% compared to 6.2% in the second quarter of 2016 and 6.1% in the third quarter of 2015. GAAP net loss for the quarter was $(11.2) million, or $(0.08) per share, compared to net income of $11.5 million, or $0.08 per diluted share, in the second quarter of 2016, and net income of $8.5 million, or $0.06 per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2015.

“As expected, weak demand across much of our business in the third quarter led to financial results that were below our standards,” said Tom Fallon, Infinera’s Chief Executive Officer. “While the revenue environment is likely to remain challenging in the near term, we are making continued progress towards delivering our next generation of products and increasing the cadence in which we will introduce step function technology improvements. I firmly believe that we have the team and the core technologies that will enable us to recover from our current challenges and ultimately return to delivering differentiated financial results.”

http://www.infinera.com

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Aqua Comms Appoints Nigel Bayliff as CEO

Aqua Comms , the operator of Ireland’s first dedicated subsea fibre-optic network interconnecting New York, Dublin and London, has appointed Nigel Bayliff as its new Chief Executive Officer, replacing interim CEO Greg Varisco, who remains a senior executive with the company.

“We are excited for Nigel to join the team as our new CEO,” remarks Mr. Varisco. “Nigel’s strategic vision, technological expertise and proven leadership experience with some of the most successful global telecom and subsea cable companies in the world will prove invaluable as Aqua Comms embarks on the next leg of its journey and expands its customer base and networks.”

Prior to joining Aqua Comms, Bayliff was advisor and consultant to cable development, private equity and government clients in the industry, and Vice-Chairman of the United Nations joint task force that examined the gathering of disaster mitigation and climate information from the global web of undersea cable systems.  Mr. Bayliff also served as CEO and a board member of Huawei Marine Networks, which he led from a start-up to initial success in the subsea cable construction industry while introducing several major, technological advances into the marketplace.  Prior to this, he was a member of the executive team of FLAG Telecom where he served as an officer and deputy chairman for a number of group companies.  At FLAG, Mr. Bayliff was responsible for the construction and operation of the FLAG Global Network, which encompasses 65,000 km of submarine cable systems and provides carrier-grade connectivity services to 40 countries.

http://www.AquaComms.com


https://youtu.be/SVjGxgPe8uY

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ARM Extends its IoT Strategy with Secure Cortex Processors

ARM unveiled new processors for delivering security, efficiency, low-power connectivity and device life cycle management for the Internet of Things (IoT).  The rolluot includes the new processors, radio technology, subsystems, end-to-end security and a cloud-based services platform, ARM is aiming to increase the rate at which IoT scales globally.

Some highlights:

• Cortex-M33 features configuration options including a coprocessor interface, DSP and floating point computation, with increased performance and efficiency relative to Cortex-M3 and Cortex-M4.
• Cortex-M23 takes security to the most constrained devices, building on the standard set by Cortex-M0+ as an ultra-low power microprocessor in a tiny footprint.
• TrustZone CryptoCell-312 fortifies the SoC with a rich set of security features protecting the authenticity, integrity and confidentiality of code and data.
• Next-generation ARM Cordio radio IP with Bluetooth 5 and 802.15.4-based standards ZigBee and Thread. Next-generation Bluetooth 5 enables faster data rates and extends ranges within existing ultra-low-power envelopes. 802.15.4 helps to ensure compatibility within the expanding ZigBee and Thread device market.
• New mbed Cloud, a new standards and cloud-based SaaS solution for secure IoT device management. mbed Cloud helps OEMs to simplify connection, provisioning, updating and securing of devices across complex networks.

“As IoT technologies become more pervasive, it is time for a complete solution that secures data from the sensor to the service,” said Pete Hutton, executive vice president and president of product groups, ARM. “ARM partners shipped a record 15 billion chips last year, many destined for smart embedded applications. The IoT already runs on ARM but the goal now is scale, which we are enabling today through a uniquely comprehensive set of technologies and services built to work together seamlessly.”

http://www.arm.com

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Netronome Brings Express Virtio for OpenStack

Netronome announced the addition of Express Virtio (XVIO) technology to its Agilio Server Networking Platform.

The XVIO technology brings to the standard Virtio drivers available in many Guest OS’s the level of performance of SR-IOV solutions but maintains full VM mobility.

The advanced XVIO technology is based on and builds upon industry standard and open source technologies such as SR-IOV, Virtio and DPDK supported by OpenStack. The XVIO technology and software components are transparent and integrate easily with open source and commercial server networking software such Open vSwitch (OVS), Linux Firewall and Contrail vRouter. VMs and their applications do not require any changes and all popular guest operation systems with standard Virtio drivers are supported. Netronome has implemented solutions to seamlessly integrate XVIO technology into OpenStack and has an OpenStack request for enhancement (RFE) to Nova and Neutron components for the same.

Netronome said its solution enables virtual machines (VMs) managed using OpenStack to experience bare metal-like networking performance while at the same time supporting complete hardware independence and seamless customer VM onboarding. For the cloud service provider, the benefit utilizing OpenStack cloud orchestration is a consistent and homogenous infrastructure where VMs can be placed and moved to optimize utilization of the data center while maintaining high performance. XVIO technology enabled in Agilio server networking platforms such as Agilio OVS and Agilio vRouter are now integrated with Ericsson’s Cloud SDN product and Juniper’s Open Contrail vRouter product respectively, enabling OpenStack-based networking to deliver higher application performance while reducing TCO by up to 6 times.

“Cloud providers need to enable customers to bring their own hardware-independent VMs while providing an underlying infrastructure that transparently delivers hardware-accelerated performance, pervasive security at scale, and accurate, timely network analytics,” said Sujal Das, chief strategy and marketing officer at Netronome. “With our OEM partners, Netronome is pioneering OpenStack networking, delivering hardware accelerated and easily deployable solutions for the private and public cloud markets for the first time in the industry.”

https://www.netronome.com/press-releases/netronome-releases-express-virtio-xvio-technology-delivering-industrys-fastest-and-lowest-cost-openstack-networking/

Netronome Brings Hardware-Acceleration to OpenStack Networking

Monday, April 25, 2016  Netronome, OpenStack  No Comments

Netronome has tuned its Agilio Server Networking Platform for delivering hardware-acceleration for OpenStack networking, allowing data centers to accelerate applications such as network virtualization, security, load balancing and telemetry using different data plane options suitable for use cases spanning traditional IT to IaaS and Telco NFV workloads. Netronome's own testing has found a 5X boost in VM performance when network functions are offloaded to its Agilio interface cards.

At this week's OpenStack Summit in Austin, Netronome, in collaboration with Ericsson and Mirantis, is showcasing acceleration of open source datapath implementations, specifically, Open vSwitch (OVS), Stateful Firewall (Connection Tracking) and OpenContrail vRouter using Agilio CX intelligent server adapters. The company said this approach will be incorporated as an enhanced OpenStack networking plug-in architecture specification. As a result, critical networking functions that would otherwise hamper performance of the OpenStack implementation are offloaded to the Agilio platform, accommodating significantly more virtual machines per server leading to up to 6X lower TCO and higher services revenue per server compared to traditional NICs.

“The OpenStack platform has become the de facto cloud and SDN orchestration tool and server-based networking has become the cornerstone of pervasive SDN and cloud-based networks,” said Sujal Das, senior vice president and general manager, strategy and marketing at Netronome. “Our flagship Agilio product-based demonstrations and proposed open specification bring much needed hardware-based efficiency to that mix.”


http://www.netronome.com

Netronome's Agilio Server Networking Accelerates Cloud Data Centers

Tuesday, January 26, 2016  #Cloud, Data Centers, Netronome, Silicon  1 Comment

Netronome introduced its Agilio Server Networking Platform for transparently offloading server-based networking data paths, such as open virtual switch (OVS), Juniper Networks Contrail vRouter, and Linux firewall.

The company said its hardware and software-based Agilio platform delivers up to 5X higher throughput while reducing CPU requirements by up to 80 percent compared to traditional NICs and server-based networking implemented in software.

Server-based networking is being widely deployed in cloud data centers to handle virtualization, firewalls, load balancing, telemetry, zero-trust security using micro-segmentation, virtual network functions (VNFs) and application-based analytics. The big cloud providers (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google) are using server-based networking in their mega data centers. Netronome's Agilio solution accelerates such server-based networking functions by offloading compute-intensive flow and tunnel processing from the CPUs.

The Agilio CX intelligent server adapters (ISAs) are based on Netronome's own flow processing silicon (NFP-4000) and software architecture (Agilio Software). The Agilio ISAs use onboard memory to support up to two million security policies, and deliver 28Mpps of throughput using hardware-based acceleration.

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