Monday, April 18, 2016

Telstra Launches Cloud Gateway, Global Digital Media Services

Telstra introduced its new Cloud Gateway service – a solution for businesses to securely connect to multiple cloud environments. Telstra is also extending its Cloud Services range with the addition of Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The company said its one-to-many “gateway” model connects an IP network service to the cloud with data carriage, cross connect in the hosting data centre, configuration and support. Initially, Cloud Gateway will offer customers around the world connectivity to AWS and IBM SoftLayer, while Australian customers can also connect to Microsoft Azure, Office365 and VMware vCloud Air – with more infrastructure and SaaS platforms to join over time.

“Most organisations don’t realise the full value of cloud out of a single service. Instead, our customers are investing in sophisticated hybrid cloud environments, which come with their own range of fragmented networking challenges. These include managing multiple vendors, portals and contracts, while trying to maintain a high level of security, performance and operational efficiency. We believe that just because these solutions are sophisticated, doesn’t mean that they should also be complex. Cloud Gateway is Telstra’s simple way to connect multiple clouds, and create hybrid environments. Telstra is very well positioned to help customers with hybrid and multi-cloud strategies, as we bring the cloud and the network together,” said Philip Jones, Executive Director, Global Products and Solutions at Telstra.

Telstra also announced the addition of two cloud-based online video platforms to its global media portfolio - the Video Monetization Solution (VMS) and Online Video Solution (OVS).

  • VMS is specifically designed for broadcasters, content owners and pay-TV operators, enabling them to deliver high quality video content with studio-grade protection, rights-management and flexible monetization models.
  • OVS - which was launched in Australia in 2015 and is now available to Telstra's customers globally - is a high quality end to end video publishing solution suitable for enterprises and consumer brands looking to deliver tailored video content to capture larger audiences, increase viewer engagement and drive better revenue results.

"As the world's thirst for online video content continues to grow exponentially, so too does the desire for a more personalized and higher quality viewing experience. However for many media customers - from large-scale broadcasters to smaller publishers - the complexity of delivering an on-demand service from scratch can seem daunting, due to the associated technical challenges and costs. This means an increasing number of media customers are looking to new platforms which incorporate data analytics services to deliver enhanced and more targeted video content to audiences across multiple devices, such as smartphones, tablets and gaming consoles," stated Trevor Boal, Head of Telstra Broadcast Services.

http://www.telstra.com.au

Ericsson Expands its Unified Delivery Network Ecosystem

Ericsson announced a number of high profile additions to its new Unified Delivery Network Ecosystem including China Telecom, Chunghwa Telecom, Dolby Laboratories, Far EasTone Telecommunications, Globe Telecom, Mavshack, Paramount Pictures, Singtel, SK Broadband, XL Axiata, Vubiquity and Twentieth Century Fox.

Previously announced partners include Hutchison Global Communications, Telstra, AIS, Vodafone, Brightcove, DailyMotion, EchoStar, Deluxe, LeTV and QuickPlay. Ericsson will be working with all these partners, as well as Ericsson's own platforms - Ericsson Managed Player and MediaFirst.

The aim of the ecosystem, which was launched at Mobile World Congress in February, is to advance the traditional content delivery network model.

Unified Delivery Network is a global content distribution network (G-CDN) ecosystem that enables and aggregates network capabilities into the public domain, allowing services to be optimized and scaling the delivery of over-the-top (OTT) services and high quality video content. Ericsson and its global service provider partners will work collaboratively to deliver enhanced business and customer values by harnessing the following agile services and capabilities enabled by UDN, including:

  • Last mile: With the last mile edge delivery, content providers are equipped to optimize services and scale the delivery of high quality content and advanced services including 4K, Ultra High Definition, gaming and virtual reality.
  • Global reach: With a content peering partnership, the collective members of the Unified Delivery Network have a full global reach for content delivery and value-add services to keep pace with the number of growing viewers, gamers and data surge with the rise of broadband connectivity and mobility.
  • Rich data analytics: Insights into drivers of revenue such as campaign performance and user engagement from operators enable Ericsson Unified Delivery Network to offer hyper-targeted content offerings and advertising, leading to highly personalized viewing experiences and greater business opportunities.
  • Service enablement: Content providers can add services through the service provider's networks at any given time, enabling rapid innovation, cost savings, and faster time to market for new services.


http://www.ericsson.com


Akamai Opens OTT Broadcast Operations Control Center

 Further addressing the consumer demand and business requirements for over-the-top (OTT) video quality and experiences that exceed those of traditional broadcast and cable television,

Akamai inaugurated its Broadcast Operations Control Center (BOCC), a state-of-the-art facility located at the company's headquarters in Cambridge, Mass..

The BOCC facility is designed to help ensure the reliability of OTT services through a combination of highly trained technical staff and a host of monitoring, analytics, reporting, quality and availability measurement tools that provide real-time support and operational insight for customers delivering critical live, linear and on-demand video content.

It is staffed 24x7 by a team of specialized broadcast issue resolution experts possessing hybrid skills across media and networking to address the unique needs of Akamai OTT customers. The

The BOCC was designed and is managed by Akamai Director of Media Operations Matt Azzarto, a veteran broadcast systems engineer tasked with bringing together best practices from online video streaming, network operations and television broadcasting into a central hub to monitor and support business-critical OTT video services.

"With the new BOCC, Akamai is helping to address consumer quality-of-experience expectations for OTT by raising our customer service, support and component-level access into the CDN. We're replacing help tickets and hold time with real-time communication and deep, proactive monitoring designed to alert customers to potential issues before they actually arise," explained Azzarto. "We're taking the ubiquity of Akamai's pervasive network and our Media Delivery Solutions, and empowering a specialized staff who have 'eyes-on-glass' 24x7 to support our customers with a unique set of tools that we believe deliver unprecedented visibility into hundreds of live video streams and linear channels at any given time."

http://www.akamai.com

NYU Hosts Brooklyn 5G Summit: Livestream Link

New York University's Tandon School of Engineering is hosting the third annual Brooklyn 5G Summit thi this week.  The invitation-only event, which is jointly organized by NYU WIRELESS and Nokia, brings together executives from Nokia, Verizon, DoCoMo, Intel, Qualcomm, T-Mobile, and Vodafone, as well as the Federal Communications Commission and the Scripps Clinic and Research Institute.

"The 5G era architecture will be the fabric that opens up a whole new set of human possibilities. Technology innovations have made it possible to do 5G earlier than most thought, with operators moving to pre-standard implementation to start developing and trialing 5G business models before the commercial availability of the full 5G standard," said Volker Ziegler, head of 5G leadership and chief architect for Nokia. "Early 5G services will be rolled out in 2017, with full 5G commercial services coming in 2020 that will transform and automate how we live in the digital world."

Some highlights from the organizers:

  • Technical challenges to creating efficient 5G networks and innovations in cell networks and mmWave technology will be key topics at the Brooklyn 5G Summit. 
  • For the first time, the summit includes an automotive focus featuring a keynote and panel participation by researchers at Toyota's InfoTechnology Center.
  • NYU WIRELESS will demonstrate its channel sounding system and measurements for indoor and outdoor environments that dispelled the myth that human bodies would block mmWaves; this demonstration will cover the 73 gigahertz spectrum.
  • NYU WIRELESS will demonstrate the mmWave channel simulator software that NYU WIRELESS is making open-source in order to speed 5G development.
  • NYU WIRELESS will demonstrate a biosensor system for neuroscience applications that takes precise measurements of electrochemical signals. 

To watch the live stream on April 21 and 22, register at https://register.comsoc.org/bklyn5g
http://engineering.nyu.edu

Start-up Aims for AI-based Real-time Video Identification

Valossa, a start-up based in Oulu, Finland, is working with Orange Silicon Valley and EchoStreams to demonstrate its AI-based real-time video identification technology.

Valossa’s Val.ai is based on years of research at the world-renowned computer vision and AI labs of the University of Oulu. The company says its technology analyzes streaming videos in real-time to identify thousands of concepts (e.g., places, objects and unique topics).

A system powered by EchoStreams FlacheSAN1N NVMe storage technology and GS420ND4 Exascale platform runs Valossa's software for identifying objects and people in real-time across more than 25 simultaneous HD video streams. The optimized-for-video supercomputer uses 16 state-of-the-art NVIDIA GPUs, exceeding 48,000 CUDA cores in a single 4U server.

“We are excited to collaborate with Valossa and OSV to bring High Performance Server and Storage platforms, which normally are only available in Supercomputing Data Centers, to the Media and Entertainment industry,” said Andy Lee, EchoStreams Director of Product Marketing. “By harnessing HPC computing power and Valossa AI, this demonstration is truly a breakthrough implementation of the Artificial Intelligence concept in real-world applications such as the Media and Broadcasting industry.”

http://www.valossa.com

IBM Collects $10.8 Billion in Cloud Revenue over Last 12 Months

In its newly released financial report, IBM reported that total cloud revenues (public, private and hybrid) for the quarter increased 34 percent (up 36 percent adjusting for currency).  Cloud revenue over the trailing 12 months was $10.8 billion.  The annual exit run rate for cloud delivered as a service -- a subset of the total cloud revenue -- increased to $5.4 billion from $3.8 billion in the first quarter of 2015.

"We are pleased with the progress we have made helping our clients apply new cognitive solutions and hybrid cloud platforms," said Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer.  "IBM has established itself as the industry leader in total cloud, analytics and cognitive, all of which helped drive our strategic imperatives revenue growth at a strong double-digit rate, substantially faster than the market."

IBM announced that Comic-Con HQ, Canadian Broadcasting Corp, AOL and Broadway Video are tapping its new Cloud Video unit.

IBM also release details on its new FASPstream open video transport software, which the company says is capable of high-quality, live streaming over commodity Internet WANs. The software utilizes the FASP bulk data protocol to transport live video source and provides timely arrival of the live video independent of the network round-trip delay and packet loss.

http://www.ibm.com

China Mobile Brings On Nokia Flexi Zone + AirScale Wi-Fi

China Mobile deployed Nokia's Mobile Edge Computing an ultra-dense heterogeneous network (HetNet) infrastructure to deliver ultra-low latency mobile video at a major motor race in Shanghai.

Specifically, China Mobile used Nokia’s leading Flexi Zone small cells and cloud-based AirScale Wi-Fi to deliver the speeds and latency required to meet all subscribers’ demands with superior quality at the event. Spectators were able to access a selection of live video feeds on their mobile devices with close to zero latency. This included video feeds from different angles of the race, such as from a driver’s cockpit.

Meng Xin, Deputy GM of Shanghai Mobile’s Optimization Center, said: “As a global innovation leader we always strive to deliver the highest quality services to our customers. We set high expectations with a superb mobile data experience at the event in 2015 and we are pleased to work with Nokia again this year with ultra-high capacity small cells network offering our subscribers a unique real-time video experience.”

Mark Atkinson, head of small cells and Wi-Fi business line at Nokia, said: “Today’s connected consumer expects high-quality mobile data service everywhere, not least in a very densely packed stadium. It is testament to our local services expertise and the strength of Nokia’s leading technology that we could exceed the expectations we set during last year’s event, combining an ultra-dense small cell network with Mobile Edge Computing to transform the digital experience for thousands of spectators.”

http://networks.nokia.com/

Level 3 Gains AWS Advanced Partner Status

Level 3 Communications has been named an Advanced Partner in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network (APN) delivering AWS Direct Connect, a network service providing enterprises secure access to the AWS Cloud.

Using AWS Direct Connect, Level 3 customers can access any AWS region through Level 3's high-performance network via the following AWS locations: Ashburn, Dublin, Frankfurt, Las Vegas, London, Los Angeles, New York, San Jose, Sao Paulo, Seattle, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo.

Level 3 said it is currently providing cloud connectivity to more than 20 percent of Fortune 50 companies. Last year and in 2014, Level 3 provided dedicated network connectivity to re:Invent, AWS' annual show, supporting live demos, powering AWS developer boot camps and demonstrating Direct Connect tools on-stage directly into the AWS cloud before more than 18,000 attendees.

"We are proud to have achieved this level of partnership with AWS via the APN. Global enterprises rely on Level 3's Cloud Connect service to access AWS for safe, secure and high-performance connectivity to and from the AWS Cloud. By working with Level 3, our customers benefit from the years of experience we've had developing unique networking solutions that make the cloud perform better. Level 3 is excited about our success working with AWS and promoting Direct Connect as a best practice in cloud adoption," stated Brian Hoekelman, VP Business & Cloud Ecosystem Development for Level 3.

http://www.level3.com/

KDDI Picks Ciena for JIH Cable Upgrade

KDDI has selected Ciena for the Japan Information Highway (JIH) submarine cable upgrade project.

Ciena’s GeoMesh submarine solutions will be used to provide high-capacity 100G services on KDDI's 3,000km link from Miyazaki-to-Okinawa and Shima-to-Okinawa.

Since 1999 KDDI’s JIH submarine cable has been providing connectivity to the Japanese main islands. The upgrade will add significant capacity on this vital network route.

http://global.kddi.com
http://www.ciena.com

Akitio's Thunder3 PCIe Extenal SSD Transfers at 2.5 GB/s

AKITIO introduced its Thunder3 PCIe external SSD, combining the full PCIe Gen3 x4 bandwidth of Intel's 750 NVMe SSD with Thunderbolt 3's 40Gbps port.

The company claims its external drive delivers performance of 2500MB/s (2.5 Gigabytes per second) with a storage capacity of 1.2TB.

This makes it about 8x faster than USB 3.1 Gen 1. It features two Thunderbolt 3 Ports as well as a DisplayPort video output to connect the latest 4K displays.  The second Thunderbolt 3 port operates the same as a Thunderbolt 3 computer port by supporting USB 3.1 (up to 10Gb/s), DisplayPort monitor or up to 5 daisy chained Thunderbolt 3 devices.  Pricing start at $1,299.

https://www.akitio.com/