WSJ: Key Engineering Team at Cisco Resigns

Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain, Luca Cafiero, and Soni Jiandani have resigned from Cisco, according a The Wall Street Journal, following a management shake-up.

The "MPLS" team (first letters of their names) were associated with Cisco "spin-in" companies -- start-ups that were officially outside of Cisco but acquired by Cisco once their products were ready.  The latest such venture was Insieme Networks, which developed application centric infrastructure (ACI) technology and the Nexus 9000 family of data center switches for End-of-Row (EoR), top-of-rack and middle-of-rack deployments. Cisco acquired Insieme in 2013 for $830 million.

Other acquisitions associated with the team include Crescendo Communications (1993), which became the Catalyst switching line; Andiamo Systems (2002), a Fibre Channel switch; and Nuova Systems (2008), which became the Cisco UCS line.

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Comcast Readies for Gigabit Internet Service Rollout in Nashville

Comcast is beginning an advanced consumer trial of Gigabit Internet service to Nashville, it's second market following an earlier trial launched in Atlanta in April. The service uses DOCSIS 3.1 technology.

Comcast said initial customers in Nashville will have the choice of a promotional contract price of $70 per month for 36 months, or an everyday price with no contract at $139.95.

http://www.xfinity.com/gig

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Starman Plans 10G EPON for Estonia, Not DOCSIS

Starman, the largest cable operator in the Baltic States, plans to deploy a 10-gigabit Ethernet Passive Optical Network (10G EPON) across Estonia beginning in Q4 2016.  The new network will deliver ultra-broadband services to residential customers living in Estonia and meet growing customer demand for high-speed, high-quality triple-play (voice, Internet and cable) services. Furthermore, the solution supports DOCSIS provisioning over EPON (DPoE), which allows for a low-touch integration into the existing cable network and DOCSIS back-end systems. The solution also includes Nokia's Optical Network Termination (ONT) devices, providing consumers with the latest generation gigabit Wi-Fi technology.

Nokia said the contract shows "how cable operators globally are considering deep fiber and fiber-to-the-home deployments as a realistic and cost-effective alternative to upgrading their current DOCSIS 3.0 Hybrid Fiber Coax networks to 3.1, in order to meet subscriber demands." Starman is the first European cable operator to commercially deploy a 10G EPON fiber access residential solution for brownfield deployments.

"After careful consideration of the different technology options, we determined that Nokia's 10-gigabit fiber network would allow us to deliver the best service and end-user experience to our customers. We chose Nokia because of their unique ability to provide both the latest technology innovations and expertise from their top specialists. When investing in the Internet services we bring to our customers' home, ensuring the technology is future-proof is essential. Today we are choosing solutions that can allow for symmetrical connections greater than 1Gbps, enabling us to skip some current technological developments and take a seat on the new high-speed 10G train," Starman Group Technology Director Jaanus Erlemann.

http://www.nokia.com

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China Mobile Implements Nokia GPON for Mobile Backhaul

China Mobile is deploying a GPON mobile backhaul network in Jiangsu and Henan provinces of China using the Nokia 7360 Intelligent Services Access Manager and the Nokia 7368 ISAM ONT. The same technology provides China Mobile with the backhaul infrastructure needed to support residential subscribers, enterprises, hotels, banks, schools and hospitals spread over some of China's most populated areas. Financial terms were not disclosed.

"It's no secret that mobile traffic is exploding, growing exponentially as the world continues to go wireless. To support the data demands of wireless subscribers, operators are increasingly turning to fixed fiber networks such as GPON for their backhaul requirements to satisfy the scale, efficiencies and cost savings they seek. GPON also eliminates the need to create parallel and dedicated networks for backhaul, while simultaneously expanding the fiber footprint to support growing residential and business ultra-broadband demands," stated Federico Guillèn, president of Nokia's Fixed Networks business group.

http://www.nokia.com

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Qadium Raises $20M for Indexing Connected Devices

Qadium, a start-up based in San Francisco, announced $20 million in Series A funding for developing its platform for indexing every device on the public Internet.

Qadium, which was seeded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), seeks to identify relationships between connected devices at scale for corporate and government cybersecurity applications. The company said its platform sends signals throughout the public internet space, interpreting returned data to determine what devices are running where, and building network graphs to understand relationships between those devices.Results are made available to customers in a software product called Expander with associated professional services.

The funding round was led by Scott Sandell, prominent technology investor and managing partner of NEA. Peter Thiel (via Founders Fund) and other previous investors also participated in the Series A.

“Our platform is relevant to every IT transaction,” stated Tim Junio, Qadium’s co-founder and CEO. “Every time a company would otherwise pay a team of consultants to come in with clipboards, or to have a security team dig through voluminous log files, Qadium can provide analytic software.”

http://www.qadium.com

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ARM Adds Tools for Embedded and IoT Developers

ARM will offer simplified and expedited access to EDA tooling and design environments from Cadence and Mentor Graphics. The partnership builds on the benefits of free access to ARM Cortex-M0 processor IP offered through the DesignStart portal, which offers SoC designers free access to ARM Cortex-M0 processor IP for design, simulation and prototyping with the option to buy a simplified and standardized $40,000 fast track license.

ARM said the addition of Cadence and Mentor Graphics tools for DesignStart users accelerates the development of custom SoCs for embedded and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

“ARM’s DesignStart portal, with its convenient access to the Cortex-M0 package and its low-cost path to commercialization, is already making it easier for start-ups and OEMs to create embedded and mixed-signal SoCs,” said Nandan Nayampally, vice president of marketing and strategy, CPU group, ARM. “Simplifying access to EDA tools from Cadence and Mentor Graphics will further spur rapid innovation, creating a fast path to production silicon for companies looking to deliver an embedded or connected IoT product.”

http://www.arm.com

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Video: GBET - Simplifying and Standardizing Contracts Between Carriers

Reducing the administrative costs of telecom operators is difficult when the back offices retains stone age practices.

The mission of GBET (Global Business Exchange for Telecom ) is to adopt industry standard eXchange principles for international wholesale commercial, operational and financial transactions and foster collaboration among carriers across the value chain using best practices and transformational solutions.

Carriers must work together to simplify, automate and standardize the contracting process, says Simon Dodsworth, Chair of the GBET Executive Council.

https://youtu.be/WrDfOE9wh50

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Video: Fujitsu Virtuora Service Orchestrator — Agile Services with Carrier-Grade Delivery

Service providers are seeing many new revenue opportunities brought about by IoT and other technologies, but legacy network architectures can inhibit the speedy deployment of these services.

By applying standard IT virtualization technologies, providers can transform their network to enable end-to-end operational automation, service orchestration and network programmability, to deliver new services like virtual firewalls and virtual CPE faster and more efficiently.

See Video: https://youtu.be/yon5hU-sIQo

 

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Video: ComEd's Sainab Ninalowo - Bringing Utilities into the 21st Century

Sainab Ninalowo, Smartgrid Engineer with ComEd, talks about bringing the utility industry into the 21st century. By leveraging the physical grid, as well as the social grid that now exists on top, the power company can provide a smarter service that benefits the customer.

See Video:  https://youtu.be/C7FCM8LrTQo

 

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Video: TI's Xiaolin Lu - IoT Innovation Has No Boundaries

Innovation really has no boundaries and is everywhere, says Xiaolin Lu, Fellow and Director of the IoT Lab at Texas Instruments. Innovation is not just about creating cool new things, but in bringing improvements to how we do things, including cost and power consumption.

In this video, she offers advice and encouragement to women in the field.

https://youtu.be/uvrq0mQrspo

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