AWS re:Invent 2016 Highlights - Andy Jassy

Here are some highlights of the AWS re:Invent 2016 Wednesday keynote with Andy Jassy, CEO, Amazon Web Services.

https://live.awsevents.com/en.html

Moving faster is the No.1 reason companies move to the cloud - Andy Jassy, CEO

AWS has added almost 1,000 significant services or new capabilities this year

AWS now looks to deep functionality and a spectrum of compute capabilities - many instance types

AWS introduces really BIG instances with up to 488GiB for in-memory databases

New Amazon Lightsail aims for easy Virtual Private Servers -simplified setup and management.

At the high end, AWS is previewing FPGA instances - custom logic on EC2

Lots of analytics workloads now happening on AWS.

A new Amazon Athena analytics service offers lightweight, ad-hoc queries on S3 storage.

New Amazon AI services include image recognition including facial matching

New AWS AI services puts deep learning into text-to-speech and same capabilities as in Amazon Alexa

The partnership with VMware means customers no longer have a binary choice - working together

New AWS Greengrass puts code in IoT devices to keep some functions local deal with latency yet leverage cloud when needed. Smarthome hubs are one example where some functions are best processed in the device and not the cloud.

Next gen AWS Snowball Edge data migration appliance are bigger w 100 TB storage, on-board compute.

Many companies have exabytes of data so Amazon builds Snowmobile container/truck for moving to AWS S3 cloud storage.

https://live.awsevents.com/en.html

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Broadcom Extends its StrataDNX Switching Portfolio

Aiming for new high volume markets and appliances at the edge of the carrier network, Broadcom announced two new product families in its StrataDNX switch portfolio. The new devices range from 30Gbps to 300Gbps and offer similar capabilities and programming models as Broadcom's flagship devices.

The newly announced StrataDNX switch family includes the following device options:

• BCM88476 - A 300 Gbps packet processor and traffic manager including StrataDNX fabric interfaces compatible with BCM88750 and BCM88770 Fabric Elements, plus external packet buffer and table expansion. (“Kalia”)
• BCM88470 - A single-chip packet processor and traffic manager delivering 160 to 300 Gbps of Ethernet capacity with external packet buffer and table expansion. (“Qumran-AX”)
• BCM88270 - A small footprint single-chip packet processor and traffic manager delivering 30 to 120 Gbps of Ethernet capacity with external packet buffer expansion. (“Qumran-uX”)

Each device provides high performance carrier-grade packet processing, an integrated hierarchical traffic manager, external packet buffers with enhanced buffer management and advanced packet processing with expandable tables. Select members of the product family also provide path for expansion capabilities, with the industry leading StrataDNX switch fabric interface, and external table lookup expansion for Broadcom Knowledge Based Processors (KBP).

The Kalia, Qumran-AX & Qumran-UX families of products are complementary to Broadcom's high-capacity StrataDNX Jericho and Qumran-MX SoCs.

"With Qumran-AX & Qumran-UX we are excited to deliver StrataDNX technology to higher volume metro markets,” said Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager, Switch Products Group at Broadcom. “With these solutions vendors can leverage their investment in StrataDNX technology and software to span the whole carrier network with a single architecture."

Broadcom said its StrataDNX product family now offers full-suite service-provider solutions including:

• Customer premises router / Network Interface Device (NID)
• Passive Optical Networking (PON)
• IP DSL Access Multiplexer (IP-DSLAM)
• Broadband Aggregation
• Packet Transport Node (PTN) and IP Remote Access Node (IPRAN)
• Carrier Ethernet Switching (CES) and Switch-Routing (CESR)
• Optical Transport Node (OTN) – both centralized and distributed

http://www.broadcom.com

Broadcom's Next StrataDNX Packs 100 Tbps of Switching Capacity

Wednesday, March 18, 2015  Broadcom, Silicon, Switching  No Comments

Broadcom introduced its next generation the StrataDNX ("Dune") family of switch system-on-chip (SoC) devices for optical transport, carrier Ethernet, edge and core routers, data center cloud and enterprise campus market segments. Sampling is underway. The new switching StrataDNX  silicon, like Broadcom's StrataXGS Trident and Tomahawk switchhing families, are designed to power the next wave of network equipment with a higher port density, lower...

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Comcast Joins the ONOS and CORD Projects

Comcast Cable has joined the Open Network Operating System (ONOS) and Central Office Re-architected as a Datacenter (CORD) projects, which are both led by ON.Lab.

“Software defined networking and network functions virtualization are powerful, fast-evolving tools for network transformation,” said Dr. Nagesh Nandiraju, Director, Network Architecture at Comcast. “We look forward to bringing our perspective and experience to the fantastic community of technologists already working on these open source projects.”

“New mobile, IoT and analytics applications are pushing businesses in every industry to embrace a more flexible, open and scalable infrastructure,” said Guru Parulkar, executive director and board member of ON.Lab and ONF. “The addition of Comcast to the ON.Lab community signifies the technology’s relevance to companies beyond telecommunications.”

Other notable members of the ONOS and CORD communities include AT&T, China Unicom, Google, NTT Communications, SK Telecom, and Verizon. Vendors participating in the communities include Ciena, Cisco, Ericsson (ONOS only), Fujitsu, Huawei (ONOS only), Intel, NEC, Nokia, Radisys and Samsung.

http://onosproject.org/2016/11/30/comcast-joins-on-lab-open-source-projects/

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Zayo to Acquire Electric Lightwave for $1.42 billion

Zayo agreed to acquire Electric Lightwave, formerly known as Integra Telecom, for $1.42 billion in cash.

Electric Lightwave, which provides infrastructure and telecom services primarily in the Western United States, has 8,100 route miles of long haul fiber and 4,000 miles of dense metro fiber in Portland, Seattle, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, Salt Lake City, Spokane and Boise, with on-net connectivity to more than 3,100 enterprise buildings and 100 data centers.

Zayo said approximately 40 percent of Electric Lightwave’s existing revenue aligns with Zayo’s infrastructure-focused business segments and will be rapidly integrated into the core Zayo organization, processes and systems. The remainder, which is a valuable and viable cash-flow generating business, has a customer base that aligns well with Zayo’s Canadian SME and voice businesses.

“Electric Lightwave provides us another unique and dense regional fiber network that advances our position as the only national independent infrastructure provider remaining in the U.S.,” said Dan Caruso, chairman and CEO, Zayo. “Electric Lightwave has both strong metro fiber assets in key West Coast markets and capacity and routes that will augment Zayo’s intercity footprint.”

http://www.zayo.com
http://www.electriclightwave.com/

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A10 Debuts Application Delivery Service for Cloud

A10 Networks introduced a cloud-native software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform designed to boost the delivery and security of applications and microservices across public, private and hybrid clouds.

The new A10 Lightning Application Delivery Service (ADS) will run natively on public cloud environments such as Amazon Web Services - an A10 partner – and on Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.

Key components include:

• A10 Lightning Controller: a SaaS-based controller provides central management, policy configuration, and a big data repository and analytics engine
• Lightning ADC: Lightweight and full proxy software that executes Layer 4-7 application load balancing and security policies that are managed across diverse clouds by the Lightning Controller
• Lightning Portal: Self-service, role-based portal for managing the infrastructure and associated policies on a per-application basis
• Lightning APIs: All capabilities are available via the RESTful interface; orchestration and configuration APIs may be used to integrate with deployment automation tools like Chef, Ansible and Jenkins

“The launch of A10 Lightning represents a strategic step in the company’s vision to help customers with their requirements of secure application services for private, public and hybrid-cloud based environments,” said Kamal Anand, general manager, cloud division, A10 Networks. “Organizations now have a simple, cloud-native and cost-effective way to add traffic management and security to their modern applications, while gaining application visibility and insights.

https://www.a10networks.com

A10 Powers into Cloud ADC Market with Acquisition of Appcito

Tuesday, July 26, 2016  A10, ADC, Appcito, Mergers And Acquisitions, Start-Ups  No Comments

A10 Networks has acquired Appcito, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, that developed a SaaS-based, multi-cloud ADC (application delivery controller) solution utilizing microservice and container architectures. Financial terms were not disclosed. A10's existing Thunder ADC is an on-premise solution for load-balance and optimizing application delivery. Appcito's solution is a cloud-native application delivery system with web-scale elastic...

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Box Posts Q3 Revenue of Revenue of $102.8 Million, Up 31%

Box posted record revenue of $102.8 million for the third quarter of its fiscal 2017, an increase of 31% from the third quarter of fiscal 2016. Deferred revenue for the third quarter of fiscal 2017 ended at $192.6 million, an increase of 36% from the third quarter of fiscal 2016. GAAP operating loss in the third quarter of fiscal 2017 was $37.8 million, or 37% of revenue. This compares to GAAP operating loss of $55.0 million, or 70% of revenue, in the third quarter of fiscal 2016.

"In the third quarter, we delivered record revenue of $102.8 million, up 31% year-over-year, and continued to improve operational efficiencies throughout the business," said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box. "We reached a significant milestone with our first $100 million quarter. We also hosted our most successful BoxWorks to date and announced a new strategic partnership with Google. With our track record of product innovation and continued momentum with new and existing customers, Box is uniquely positioned to help businesses modernize how they manage information and transform how they work.”

http://www.box.com

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BT Names Former Ofcom Regulator as Chairman of Openreach

BT announced the appointment of Mike McTighe as the first Chairman of Openreach, BT’s local fixed network business.

McTighe is an experienced telecoms executive and regulator who spent eight years on the Board of Ofcom. He will oversee the new Openreach Board – which will operate from early 2017 – and be instrumental in selecting further independent members to join that Board.

“We promised in July to create an Openreach Board and we are delivering on that promise. I remain hopeful this significant move by BT can help to underpin a sustainable, proportionate and fair regulatory settlement that is in the interests of the whole country,” stated BT Chairman Sir Michael Rake.

http://www.btplc.com/

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AWS re:Invent 2016 Highlights - James Hamilton

Here are some highlights of the AWS re:Invent 2016 Tuesday Night keynote with James Hamilton, VP & Distinguished Engineer, AWS.

https://live.awsevents.com/en.html

AWS continues to build at a crazy pace.. adding the data center capacity of a Fortune 500 every day.

 

AWS plans to add 4 more data center availability regions in '17

AWS now operates a 100GbE global network and has a growing interest in transoceanic cables.

Several AWS Availability Zones now exceed 300,000 servers but the benefits of building even larger is not always better.

AWS says its custom routers are "way more reliable" and flexible than commercial equivalents.

AWS' custom routers run Broadcom's Tomahawk ASICs.

AWS has pushed SDN down to the network interface card (NIC) to offload networking functions.

AWS not only builds network hardware, it's now in the silicon business too building custom chips.

AWS barebones server is optimized for power and thermal efficiency - not density inside the box.

https://live.awsevents.com/en.html

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AWS Adds Tools for its Partner Ecosystem

Amazon Web Services announced three new programs to help its partners who provide solutions and expertise for specific services, workloads, and industry verticals:

• The AWS Service Delivery Program: Identifies APN Consulting and Technology Partners that have passed technical reviews, and have a validated track record of customer success with a specific AWS service. For example, a customer planning to use Amazon Redshift can look to partners that have earned Amazon Redshift Partner status to provide tested and validated expertise or solutions. At launch, the AWS Services Delivery Program has over 150 APN Partner solutions and practices validated across 15 categories, including Amazon Alexa, Amazon API Gateway, Amazon Aurora, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon EMR, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Machine Learning, Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, Amazon Redshift, AWS CloudFront, AWS Config, AWS Database Migration Service, AWS GovCloud (US) workloads, AWS Lambda, and AWS WAF.
• The AWS Public Sector Partner Program: Designed for APN Partners with solutions and experience to help deliver government, education, and nonprofit customer missions around the world leveraging the AWS Cloud. With more than 350 partners at launch, the program helps qualified APN Partners build and accelerate their AWS Public Sector business.
• The VMware Cloud on AWS Partner Program: In October, VMware and AWS announced a strategic alliance to build and deliver a seamlessly integrated hybrid offering that will give customers the full software-defined data center (SDDC) experience from the leader in the private cloud, running on the world’s most popular, trusted, and robust public cloud. VMware Cloud on AWS will be delivered, sold, and supported by VMware as an on-demand, elastically scalable service that leverages AWS’s global footprint and breadth of services. Launching in 2017, the VMware Cloud on AWS Partner Program will focus on supporting customers as they deploy and operate VMware Cloud on AWS.

AWS also launched two new AWS Competencies to help partners in Financial Services and Internet of Things (IoT).

“There’s never been a better time to be an APN Partner. Customers are turning to the AWS Cloud to address an increasingly broad set of needs across their organizations, which translates to business opportunities for the APN partners that help them achieve their goals,” said Dorothy Copeland, General Manager, Global Partner Programs, AWS. “This is why we continue to invest in programs that help APN Partners differentiate based on the specialized value they provide to customers. AWS Competencies and other APN distinctions help customers know that an APN Partner can deliver the right expertise, solution, or technology for the job.”

https://aws.amazon.com/partners/

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Ofcom to Seek Separation of Openreach from BT

Ofcom, the official regulator for the telecom market in the UK, will seek the legal separation of Openreach from BT.  Openreach is the division of BT Group that develops and maintains the UK’s main telecoms network used by providers such as Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone and BT’s retail business.

Ofcom said the decision follows after BT failed to offer voluntary proposals that address competition concerns. Ofcom believes BT has the incentive and ability to favour its own retail business when making strategic decisions about new network investments by Openreach. This concern arises because BT runs the national network, Openreach, as well as its own retail business.

The Ofcom proposal requires Openreach to become a distinct company with its own Board, consisting of a majority of directors who would not with BT. Ofcom is now preparing to notify the European Commission of its intention to implement these plans, requiring the legal separation of Openreach to make it more independent.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/media-releases/2016/update-on-plans-to-reform-openreach

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Nutanix Hits $166.8 million in Quarterly Sales, up 90% YoY

Nutanix reported first quarter FY 17 revenue of $166.8 million, growing 90.1% year-over-year from $87.8 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2016.  Billings were $239.8 million, growing 86.9% year-over-year from $128.3 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2016. GAAP net loss of $162.2 million, compared with a net loss of $38.5 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2016.

"The time warp between an enterprise-friendly VMware and a consumer-friendly AWS is our cloud opportunity," said Dheeraj Pandey, chairman and CEO of Nutanix. "Our first quarter results are reflective of the strength of our thesis on how enterprise computing will morph in the coming three to five years."

Nutanix ended the first quarter of fiscal 2017 with a total of 4,473 end-customers, adding a total of 705 end-customers during the quarter. Cumulative end-customers with lifetime bookings over $1 million grew to 256 in the quarter.

http://www.nutanix.com

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Alibaba Invests in Israel's InfinityAR Start-up

Infinity Augmented Reality, a start-up based in Israel, announced US$18 million in Series C funding for its software-based Augmented Reality engine.

The round was led by the Alibaba Group, the largest online and mobile commerce company in the world in terms of gross merchandise volume, with participation from InfinityAR’s existing Series B investor, SUN CORPORATION, a large Japanese public company.

“This is about so much more than the funds raised - it is about the strategic partnership,” said Motti Kushnir, CEO of InfinityAR. “With Alibaba’s endorsement, InfinityAR will further cement itself as a leading developer in the augmented reality space. We are very excited to partner with one of the world’s leading companies.”

InfinityAR has pioneered its solution for augmented reality headsets by using standard, off the shelf, mobile cameras and IMU to efficiently map the environment while also enabling Inside-Out Marker-less Orientation and Positional Tracking (SLAM) for the augmented reality world.

http://www.infinityar.com/

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Riverbed Teams with Verizon on AWS Direct Connect Bundle

Riverbed Technology is joining forces with Verizon Enterprise Solutions to deliver an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Direct Connect Bundle solution to support hybrid architecture deployments.

The AWS Direct Connect Bundle combines Riverbed’s SteelHead WAN optimization solution, Verizon’s Secure Cloud Interconnect and Virtual Network Services solutions, and AWS Direct Connect solution into a single offering.

Verizon’s Virtual Network Services (VNS) and Secure Cloud Interconnect solution enable enterprise customers to leverage universal customer premises equipment (uCPE) to provide managed connectivity to their employees over a secure, efficient and high performance network.

Riverbed’s SteelHead WAN optimization is implemented as a virtual network function (VNF) within Verizon’s VNS and Secure Cloud Interconnect environments.

“Riverbed has a long history of teaming with service providers such as Verizon to provide highly-scalable networking solutions for our joint enterprise customers,” said Phil Harris, senior vice president and general manager, Service Provider Segment Vertical and Strategy at Riverbed. “Working with cloud services providers like AWS is a natural extension of these solutions and meets the needs of today’s hybrid networking environments, allowing businesses to support their digital transformation initiatives.”

“With this offering, Verizon and Riverbed are furthering their collaboration to deliver joint solutions that businesses require to realize the full potential of digital transformation through better cost economics, agility and flexibility,” said Shawn Hakl, vice president of networking and innovation, Verizon. “With our new solution set, enterprises will be able to balance agility, performance, cost and security necessitated by the growth of mobile-to-cloud applications and the Internet of Things.”

https://aws.amazon.com/directconnect/directconnectbundles/
http://www.verizon.com

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CoreSite Data Centers Achieve AWS Advanced Technology Partner Status

CoreSite Realty achieved Advanced Technology Partner status in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network (APN).

CoreSite said it is one of the first data center providers to achieve this designation from AWS.

AWS Direct Connect is now directly available in four CoreSite markets with deployments in Los Angeles, New York/New Jersey, Silicon Valley and Northern Virginia. Additionally, access to AWS Direct Connect is available in five major markets through CoreSite's Open Cloud Exchange.

AWS Direct Connect provides a dedicated network connection between an Enterprise's network and an AWS Direct Connect location.

http://www.CoreSite.com

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Trend Micro to Offer Deep Security as a Service on AWS

Trend Micro Deep Security is now available as a Service on AWS Marketplace, enabling organizations to combine the benefits of security software-as-a-service (SaaS) with the convenience of consolidated payments through their Amazon Web Services (AWS) bill.

The PCI level 1 certified Deep Security service provides per-hour pricing for added protection of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances.

http://www.trendmicro.com/aws

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Ericsson Releases Verified Network Functions Virtualization infrastructure (NFVi)

Ericsson released its verified Network Functions Virtualization infrastructure (NFVi) solution including transformation service offering and multivendor capabilities.

Ericsson's modular NFVi solution consists of pre-integrated hardware (Ericsson's Hyperscale Datacenter System 8000 (HDS 8000) and Blade Server Platform (BSP8000), Ericsson Cloud Execution Environment, Ericsson Cloud Manager, Ericsson Cloud SDN and consulting, system integration and support services.

"Ericsson's NFVi solution is an important step on our journey to building the infrastructure for 5G and the Internet of Things. By offering a flexible, pre-integrated and verified open system platform, we can provide our customers with several different deployment options ranging all the way from full decoupling of NFV components to full stack solution deployment. This provides a shorter time to market, with increased speed, agility and efficiency for our customers deploying new services," stated Susan James, Head of Product Line NFV Infrastructure.

Ericsson noted that it has already announced various NFV contracts with a host of tier 1 operators around the world, including Telstra, Swisscom, Telefonica, Digicel and SoftBank, and was the first vendor with live commercial deployments of NFV.

https://www.ericsson.com/thecompany/press/releases/2016/11/2058781
https://www.ericsson.com/networks/offerings/nfvi

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Silexica Raises $8 Million for Multicore Software Automation

Silexica, a start-up based in Köln, Germany, announced $8 million in Series A funding for its multicore software design automation addressing complex, multicore platforms.

Silexica's SLX Mapper and SLX Generator tools deliver fully automated mapping of software tasks and processes onto multicore platforms, optimized for throughput, latency, or power. They leverage native programming toolchains via a source-to-source translation approach to automatically generate architecture aware and middleware-specific C codes. The company's SLX Explorer tool guides the selection of the best target hardware by providing insights into software performance/power prediction of the target application. Its SLX Parallelizer tool helps customers migrate legacy C, C++ applications into the multicore world giving deep insights into parallelization possibilities based on the target platform. The company said companies like Huawei and Fujitsu are already using the solution.

The funding was led by Merus Capital with participation from new investor Paua Ventures as well as current investors Seed Fonds Aachen and DSA Invest.

"It's clear that as Dennard's Scaling Law breaks down, the computing industry must embrace heterogeneous and specialized multicore designs. To fully exploit this change requires a wholesale shift to concurrent software development and design automation. Silexica's unique technology enables software and hardware designers and developers to maximize utilization, optimize for various design goals and to deal with issues of 'dark silicon' and other upcoming challenges of the multicore era," said Salman Ullah, Managing Director of Merus Capital, a leading Silicon Valley venture fund focused on early stage enterprise companies. He added that, "Silexica is a perfect reflection of Merus Capital's strategy, investing in real software solving real problems."

http://www.silexica.com

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Rackspace to Open Data Center in Frankfurt

Rackspace announced plans to open a new data center in Germany to provide customers with a new option for managed IT infrastructure in the face of strict personal data protection laws across Germany, Austria and Switzerland (DACH) territory.

The facility will serve customers who seek managed private clouds and hosting environments, with a focus on fully managed VMware environments.

Rackspace said it will be working with one of its long-standing partners to build out the infrastructure of the new operation, which is expected to be fully operational in mid-2017.
With the addition of the data centre in Frankfurt, Rackspace will operate 12 data centres worldwide, including in London, Hong Kong, Sydney, Dallas, Chicago and Ashburn (near Washington, D.C.).

http://www.rackspace.com

Rackspace to go Private in $4.3 Billion Buyout

Saturday, August 27, 2016  #Cloud, Privatization, Rackspace  No Comments

Rackspace (NYSE: RAX) announced plans to go private in a buyout led by funds managed by affiliates of Apollo Global Management.

Under the deal, Rackspace will be acquired for $32.00 per share in cash, representing a premium of 38% compared to Rackspace's unaffected closing stock price on August 3, 2016, the last trading day prior to news reports speculating about a potential transaction. In connection with the transaction, funds managed by Searchlight Capital Partners will make a strategic equity investment in the acquired company. The transaction has a total value of $4.3 billion, which includes the assumption of $43 million of net cash.

Taylor Rhodes, president and CEO of Rackspace, said, "We are presented with a significant opportunity today as mainstream companies move their computing out of corporate data centers and into multi-cloud models. Apollo and its partners take a patient, value-oriented approach to their funds' investments, and value Rackspace's strategy and unique culture. This is an exciting transaction for Rackspace and we look forward to working closely together."

Goldman, Sachs & Co. is acting as financial advisor to Rackspace and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Professional Corporation is acting as its legal advisor.

http://www.rackspace.com

• Rackspace, which was founded in 1998 in San Antonio, provides businesses with expertise and exceptional customer service for the world's leading cloud platforms, including AWS, Microsoft, and OpenStack (the open-source cloud platform that Rackspace co-founded in 2010, along with NASA). Rackspace has been publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange since 2008. The company reported 2015 revenue of $2.0 billion.
• Rackspace collaborated with NASA to develop OpenStack in 2010.

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Wireless Broadband Alliance Looks at Connected Cities Initiatives

The Wireless Broadband Alliance has always been focused on the customer experience. In this 1-minute video, Chris Bruce, co-Chair of the WBA, talks about next-gen hotspots, a new Connected Cities Advisory Board to look at using WiFi, low-power radio and cellular to help collect data for public services and deliver low-cost access to citizens.

See video: https://youtu.be/YnmNG5rIBIk

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CERN Picks T-Systems and Huawei for European Science Cloud

T-Systems has been awarded a €5.3 million contract for a joint Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP), led by CERN, that covers the design, prototyping and pilot phase of the Helix Nebula Science Cloud. Huawei was named as technology partner. Three other consortia were also selected.

The contract covers the establishment of a European hybrid cloud platform that will support high-performance, data-intensive scientific use-cases sponsored by 10 of Europe’s leading public research organizations and co-funded by the European Commission.

CERN is operating one of the world's largest OpenStack private clouds with more than 7,000 servers and 190,000 cores.

T-Systems said that as more and more research organizations start to use cloud services, demand is growing for dynamic capacity that can be transparently activated in a hybrid cloud. Open Telecom Telekom Cloud, operated by T-Systems and supported by Huawei, is based on the OpenStack open source architecture and facilitates the management and migration of data and resources between private and public clouds.

As part of an earlier procurement in 2016, CERN and T-Systems evaluated the capabilities of the Open Telekom Cloud in a 3-months pilot. “Following the extensive tests, it has become apparent, that Open Telekom Cloud can support the high-performance and data-intensive workloads required”, summarizes Andreas Falkner, Vice President Open Telekom Cloud from T-Systems.

Next to CERN following research organizations plan to make use of the European Hybrid Cloud:

• Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Italy
• Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Germany
• Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, (CNRS), France
• Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT), Germany
• SURFsara, Netherlands
• Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), United Kingdom
• European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Germany
• Institut de Física d’Altes Energies (IFAE), Spain
• European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), France

https://www.telekom.com/en/media/media-information/enterprise-solutions/t-systems-select-to-establish-an-european-science-cloud-444488

http://www.hnscicloud.eu/

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Deutsche Telekom and Huawei Demo 5G Network Slicing

Deutsche Telekom and Huawei demonstrated autonomous, real-time, dynamic end-to-end slicing of a 5G Radio Access network (RAN), data center facilities and the interconnecting transmission network.

The demo, which was conducted in Deutsche Telekom’s 5G:haus lab in Bonn, Germany, showed how different network slices can be created automatically in an optimized way on a shared RAN, Core and transport network. This allows slices creation in sub-minute time while ensuring an efficient and intelligent allocation and re-allocation of resources as required for each individual slice.

DT said the bandwidth-based transport network slicing utilized TSDN controllers and the underlying DWDM nodes. The tests validated real-time dynamic adjustments of network slices on very fine spectral granularity, signal process and protocol stack.
F-OFDM air interface technology providess the spectral granularity and also permits efficient co-existence and isolation of all 5G New Radio (5G NR) slices. The end-to-end network slicing automation was based on Service Oriented Network Auto Creation (SONAC), which uses software-defined topology (SDT), software defined protocol (SDP) and software-defined resource allocation (SDRA) to ensure the automatic implementation of slice management, service deployment, resource scheduling, and fault recovery based strictly on a detailed and thorough network data analysis.

"Network Slicing is envisaged for 5G to provide differentiated connectivity quickly and efficiently for the diverse future applications that our customers will demand. With automated network slicing, the development of highly flexible end-to-end network slicing becomes more complete,” said Bruno Jacobfeuerborn, Chief Technology Officer, Deutsche Telekom.

“Huawei has made significant key 5G technologies. This additional breakthrough on E2E network slicing automation is a great contribution to the 5G industry of the future and helps to bring the vision of 5G slicing closer to reality for our customers,”said Dr. Wen Tong, Huawei Fellow, CTO, Huawei Wireless.

https://www.telekom.com/en/media/media-information/archive/5g-autonomous-network-slicing-demonstrated-444778

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Whitepaper: Network Slicing Holds Major Promise in Optimizing 5G Networks

A new 35-page whitepaper titled "Network Slicing for 5G Networks and Services" has just been published by 5G Americas, an industry trade association. Co-leaders of the white paper working group are Rao Yallapragada and Clara Li of Intel as well as Sabareesan Soundarapandian of Ericsson.

Network slicing, in its simplest description, is the ability to tailor a set of functions to optimize use of the network for each mobile device; it is considered to be key for meeting 5G's diverse use cases and requirements, including future-proof scalability and flexibility.

5G systems will be built to enable logical network slices, which will allow operators to provide networks on an as-a-service basis and meet the wide range of use cases that next generation networks in the 2020 timeframe will demand.

"As we progress towards developing 5G technology, cellular systems are expected to enable a transformation that will touch business, governments and people to enable them with new and diverse capabilities," stated Chris Pearson, President of 5G Americas.

"Network slicing makes possible the creation of virtual networks using one common network infrastructure," explained Rao Yallapragada, Director, Intel and co-leader of the white paper. "The implementation of network slicing will provide an end-to-end solution for flexible infrastructure optimized to address future use cases with diverse requirements such as speed, connection, battery life, latency and cost. Including both the core and radio access networks, each slice can be configured with its own network architecture, engineering mechanism and network provisioning."

Chris Pearson remarked, "It is not expected that 5G will arrive as a single 'Big Bang'. Significant progress is already being made on networking technology through the standards bodies and network slicing will play a big role in optimizing 5G networks."

The whitepaper is available for free download on the 5G Americas website.

http://www.5gamericas.org/files/3214/7975/0104/5G_Americas_Network_Slicing_11.21_Final.pdf

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