Wednesday, June 22, 2016

CenturyLink Intros SD-WAN Service

CenturyLink rolled out a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) service that provides business customers with centralized control over a variety of private network access technologies.

The fully-managed service bundles site connectivity, equipment, software licensing, configuration, performance tuning and monitoring with a management and analytics portal. CenturyLink said the customer has the option of managing their own policies or letting CenturyLink manage their policies. CenturyLink also can manage connectivity from a wide range of providers as part of an aggregated solution. Customers can build standalone SD-WAN networks or pursue hybrid approaches that seamlessly integrate MPLS and SD-WAN connected sites. Some key features:

  • Unified management – One network manager that ties disparate networks and access types into a more agile, responsive wide area network that is easy to administer.
  • Access to bandwidth – Leverage broadband connectivity for bandwidth-intensive applications.
  • Speed and agility – Turn up new locations quickly and easily.
  • Simplicity – Add on-demand features that previously required hardware procurement.
  • Security – Access, implement and enforce a broad array of security controls.
  • Economic pricing – Reduce capital expenses and operating expenses for equipment, maintenance and staffing.
  • Visibility – Monitor network and application performance at any point in the network, with access to broad and granular analytics and reporting.
  • Reliability – Experience uniform service levels across all locations, thanks to flexible carrier choices and the ability to scale using network functions virtualization (NFV).
  • Integration – Extend and complement existing network services, such as MPLS and Ethernet, through integration into the SD-WAN platform.
  • Proactive customer support – Access personal support, ongoing performance tuning and recommendations from CenturyLink.


CenturyLink is launching a free-of-charge, 90-day proof-of-concept offer for businesses interested in testing SD-WAN within their wide area network.

"Cloud-based applications, media streaming, video surveillance, enhanced analytics and in-store experience continue to push the network needs of the enterprise. Without significant increases to their traditional private network budgets, enterprises are challenged to meet these ever-growing demands, improve the end-user experience and ensure security and application performance," said CenturyLink Chief Technology Officer Aamir Hussain. "CenturyLink SD-WAN offers a game-changing approach, enabling an instantly better network experience and addressing many of the common pain points faced by organizations that need high-speed, cost-effective network services for numerous locations."

http://news.centurylink.com/news/centurylink-unveils-fully-managed-sd-wan-service

Equinix Silicon Valley Expansion - Interview with Karl Strohmeyer

Equinix has just broken ground on its eight data center in the San Francisco Bay area.

The new building, Equinix SV10, joins two other data centers on the company's campus in south San Jose.  The first phase is expected to come online in 2017 with capacity for about 800 cabinets. Karl Strohmeyer, President of the Americas for Equinix, says this first phase of expansion represents an investment of about $125 million. Equinix is aiming for 100% sustainable power.

See video:  https://youtu.be/qqevSOs0M1Q





Elisabetta Romano: Immersive Experience & VR

Immersive experiences and virtual reality will drive transformative change across the media business.

Big changes in media patterns over the next 5 years will be much more impactful than the industry's evolution over the preceding 50 years, says Elisabetta Romano, VP and Head of TV & Media, Ericsson.



See video:  https://youtu.be/AqKKJ2NiNiE


Twilio's IPO Priced at $15

Twilio announced the pricing of its public offering of 10,000,000 shares of Class A common stock at a price of $15.00 per share. The shares are expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on June 23, 2016 under the symbol “TWLO.”

Twilio's platform enables developers to embed real-time communication and authentication capabilities directly into their software applications. The company was founded in 2008 and has over 500 employees, with headquarters in San Francisco and other offices in Bogotá, Dublin, Hong Kong, London, Mountain View, Munich, New York City, Singapore and Tallinn.

http://www.twilio.com

  • Twilio was founded by Jeff Lawson, previously a Product Manager for Amazon Web Services, and Evan Cooke, previously a Postdoctoral research fellow in network security and distributed systems at the University of Michigan.

HPE Joins OPNFV Pharos Community Test Labs Project

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has joined the Linux Foundation’s OPNFV Pharos Project to help advance the evolution of network functions virtualization (NFV) and ensure consistency and interoperability for the HPE OpenNFV partner ecosystem. The Pharos project is a federated NFV testing infrastructure of community labs around the world designed for hosting continuous integration, deployment and testing of the OPNFV platform. The diversity of perspectives across developers, users and vendors participating in these labs make the project critical to the success of the OPNFV platform.

In addition, HPE will institute processes to verify that its more than 75 HPE OpenNFV partners have OPNFV compliant solutions. This will allow HPE OpenNFV partners to confirm they can run on the OPNFV platform and ensure OPNFV compatibility across environments and vendors, reinforcing HPE’s open, multi-vendor approach to NFV. Communications service providers (CSPs) will then then be able to connect with OPNFV-certified virtual network functions (VNF) partners through the HPE OpenNFV Solution Portal.

“Our involvement in OPNFV Pharos Labs and our plan to integrate HPE and OPNFV’s onboarding processes are evidence of HPE’s commitment to open source and demonstrate how HPE OpenNFV and OPNFV are complementary efforts to accelerate NFV deployments,” said Prodip Sen, CTO, NFV, HPE and board chair, OPNFV. “Now that we are part of a broader NFV testing environment, we will be able to exchange our experience and learnings with the industry and will be able to improve NFV implementation and interoperability in a consistent way.”

http://www.hpe.com/us/en/networking/nfv.html

Cloudify Offers Open Source NFV MANO

GigaSpaces Technologies announced that a Telecom Edition of its Cloudify platform will be ready for production in early July.

The Cloudify Telecom Edition, which is tailored to the needs of NFV operators, offers NFV-specific plugins as well as blueprints showcasing VNFs and SFC (Service Function Chaining), including:

  • Netconf plugin
  • Clearwater vIMS blueprints and plugins
  • F5 BigIP plugin
  • Network service management
  • TOSCA/YANG data modeling interoperability
  • VNF updates for running VNFs and services
  • NIC ordering
  • Support for Cloud Native services through Kubernetes plugin
  • Multi-VIM - Now fully open source vCloud and vSphere plugins, alongside OpenStack native support
  • Overlay Service Chaining
  • Enhanced Platform Awareness coupled with Data Plane Acceleration through integration with Intel
  • Drag and drop Cloudify Composer with VNF-specific components
  • Native integration with ARIA
  • Support installation within environments with no internet access

The Cloudify Telecom Edition, based on the telecom-friendly TOSCA standard, will be delivered with the ARIA TOSCA Orchestration Engine at its core, an open source and open governance embeddable reference implementation of TOSCA targeted for NFV users.

The Cloudify platform is on display at the Cloudify community booth at this week's OPNFV Summit in Berlin.


Red Hat to Acquire 3scale for API Management

Red Hat agreed to acquire 3scale, a start-up specializing in application programming interface (API) management technology.

3scale, which was founded in 2007, offers a hybrid cloud based API management platform that separates the cloud management layer from the API gateway, providing customers with flexibility, performance, and scale. 3scale provides this API management platform within a self-service model at more than 700 organizations across multiple industries, including Campbell’s Soup; Cartera Commerce; CrunchBase; Johnson Controls; Oxford University Press; SITA; and the University of California, Berkeley. 3scale has offices in Barcelona and San Francisco.

3scale and Red Hat began partnering in early 2015 to deliver a comprehensive platform for API-based application development. The joint solution combined the 3scale API Management Platform with technologies from Red Hat JBoss Middleware, Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Mobile Application Platform to provide an API-centric development, deployment, and management offering designed to accelerate application time-to-market.

Most recently, 3scale introduced a containerized version of their API Gateway for Red Hat OpenShift.

http://www.redhat.com

Red Hat Posts Revenue of $568 Million, up 18% YoY

Red Hat reported revenue $568 million for the first quarter of its fiscal 2017, up 18% in U.S. dollars year-over-year and as measured in constant currency. GAAP net income for the quarter was $61 million, or $0.33 per diluted share, compared with $48 million, or $0.26 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.

Subscription revenue from Infrastructure-related offerings for the quarter was $403 million, an increase of 14% in U.S. dollars year-over-year and 13% measured in constant currency. Subscription revenue from Application Development-related and other emerging technologies offerings for the quarter was $98 million, an increase of 39% in U.S. dollars year-over-year and as measured in constant currency.

“Strong adoption of our technologies has been reflected in our total revenue growth including 18% year-over-year growth in Q1 that was driven in part by 39% growth of our Application Development-related and emerging technologies," stated Jim Whitehurst, President and Chief Executive Officer of Red Hat.

http://www.redhat.com