AT&T Expands Service Offerings on AWS

AT&T is integrating its NetBond service with the AWS Direct Connect (DX) bundle to offer highly secure access to Infor and Pegasystems, two leading application and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers. Both Infor and Pegasystems will become a part of the AT&T NetBond ecosystem. AT&T NetBond is now active in seven domestic and global AWS Direct Connect regions including: Northern CA, Northern VA, Oregon, Ireland, Frankfurt, Singapore, and Sydney.

AT&T NetBond creates a highly secure connection to AWS SaaS providers using a customer's AT&T Virtual Private Network. This allows users to bypass the public internet, enhancing reliability and performance.

"We help businesses get added value out of the cloud and software services they already use through our leading network. It's the foundation for all of our integrated cloud solutions," says Mo Katibeh, senior vice president, Advanced Solutions, AT&T Business Solutions. "As a result, the network's performance and scale provides highly-secure access to key, cloud-based applications from nearly anywhere and at any time."

"AT&T NetBond provides a fast and reliable connection to the Infor Cloud environment," said Brian Rose, senior vice president, Infor Labs. "AT&T NetBond lets us integrate seamlessly and securely with our customers' networks. Further, it simplifies network management for an optimized customer experience."

http://www.att.com

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Palo Alto Networks Offers AutoScaling Firewalls on AWS

Palo Alto Networks has integrated its VM-Series virtualized next-generation firewalls with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing (ELB). This allows enterprise customers to automatically scale the cyber breach prevention capabilities of the Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Security Platform as their AWS workload demands fluctuate.

Additionally, Palo Alto Networks joins the AWS Competency Program for Security, which highlights partners who have demonstrated success in building products and solutions on AWS to support customers in multiple areas, including infrastructure security, policy management, identity management, security monitoring, vulnerability management, and data protection.

"Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Security Platform provides customers with superior cyber breach prevention capabilities, including security for cloud-based applications. Through our close integration with AWS, customers can now grow and scale their cloud environments with even greater ease and automation while enhancing and maintaining their security posture across public cloud and hybrid environments," stated Lee Klarich, executive vice president, Product Management, Palo Alto Networks.

http://www.paloaltonetworks.com

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Barracuda Adds Metered Billing for Application Firewall on AWS

Barracuda announced a new metered billing option for its Web Application Firewall on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The metered billing option enables customers to deploy an unlimited number of Web Application Firewalls and only pay for what they consume.

The company said its Web Application Firewall is the first third-party web application security solution available on the AWS Marketplace where customer usage is aggregated and charged as part of an existing AWS bill, regardless of the number of the Barracuda Web Application Firewalls deployed.

Barracuda also announced an API integration between Barracuda's Web Application Firewall and NextGen Firewall solutions, helping customers simplify the way application security is deployed and managed.

"Barracuda and AWS actively embrace the shared responsibility model to ensure our customers are able to maximize their cloud investments," said Nicole Napiltonia, vice president, Alliances at Barracuda. "The current threat landscape has proven the importance of web application security and extending that to the cloud. As a long-time AWS partner, we are excited to be the first ISV to roll out web application firewall metered billing to our customers, giving them more choice and flexibility in how they secure their AWS environment."

http://www.barracuda.com

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Chef Launches as Fully Managed Service on AWS

Chef's commercial platform have been integrated into a new managed service provided, supported, and backed by Amazon Web Service (AWS).

Chef's tools aid in configuring, deploying, and scaling cloud and on-premises infrastructure automating infrastructure as code.

The cloud version provides access to Chef's entire platform, while also taking care of all Chef maintenance, from provisioning environments to backups.

"Many of our customers have been using Chef for years to easily manage their cloud infrastructure. This new solution delivers robust automation capabilities with almost no setup or maintenance required," said Scott Wiltamuth, VP of Developer and Productivity Tools, AWS. "AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate makes it even easier for customers to ensure their cloud and on-premises resources are fast and secure. Development and operations teams have a strong foundation for leveraging DevOps practices in AWS or on-premises to turbocharge software delivery."

https://www.chef.io/opsworks/

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Juniper to Acquire AppFormix for Cloud Optimization

Juniper Networks agreed to acquire AppFormix, a start-up based in San Jose, California, specializing in cloud operations management for enterprise devops teams. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The AppFormix software platform provides real-time analytics, capacity planning, and orchestration tooling in a shared dashboard that gives cloud operators and applications developers a better way to understand performance across the entire cloud stack.  AppFormix works with popular cloud environments like AWS, OpenStack, Azure and Kubernetes.

In 2015, AppFormix raised $7 million in funding from August Capital.

Juniper said the acquisition will bring the power of analytics through machine learning and telemetry to Juniper's customers.

"The networking industry is accelerating at an unprecedented rate, and new technologies like analytics and machine learning are enabling companies to have more insight into their network than ever before," said Pradeep Sindhu, founder, vice president and CTO at Juniper Networks. "We recognize our customers' needs and desires for a self-driving infrastructure; one that is optimized, secure and automated. With the acquisition of AppFormix, we're accelerating our vision to use software automation and intelligence to deliver a smarter network and more simplified operations for our customers around the world."

http://www.juniper.net
http://www.appformix.com

• AppFormix is headed by Sumeet Singh, who previously served as Principal Development Manager for Microsoft Azure, and, before that, as Data Center Architect - Principal Engineer at Cisco Systems.

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IDC: Worldwide Server Sales Decline 7% in Q3

Vendor revenue in the worldwide server market declined 7.0% year over year to $12.5 billion in the third quarter of 2016 (3Q16), according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker. Server demand across enterprise portfolios was soft for the quarter, and demand for high-end systems experienced a year-over-year revenue decline of 25.0% to $1.1 billion.

IDC said overall server market growth had recently slowed in part due to a slowdown in hyperscale datacenter growth and continued drag from declining high-end server sales. In addition, the robust enterprise refresh cycle of 2015 has created difficult comparisons in 2016 to the prior year's quarterly results. Worldwide server shipments decreased 4.6% to 2.38 million units in 3Q16 when compared with the same year-ago period.

"The server market suffered a difficult quarter as previously healthy volume server growth faltered, suggesting that weakness in enterprise demand was more pronounced than expected," said Kuba Stolarski, research director, Computing Platforms at IDC. "While cloud datacenter buildouts by key hyperscalers helped in part to prop up the quarterly results, the overwhelming downward trend was difficult to overcome. It remains to be seen whether hyperscale can drive enough demand to keep the market positive going into the home stretch of 2016."

Some highlights:

• Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) retained the number 1 spot in the worldwide server market with 25.9% market share in vendor revenue for 3Q16, as revenue decreased 12.1% year over year to $3.2 billion. 
• Dell Technologies maintained its number 2 position in the worldwide server market with 17.8% of vendor revenue for the quarter, while revenue decreased 8.7% year over year to $2.2 billion. 
• Lenovo and Cisco both moved up into a three-way tie* for the third market position with IBM, with 7.9%, 7.4%, and 6.9% revenue share, respectively. Lenovo's revenue declined 7.4% to $986 million, while Cisco grew its revenue 4.8% to $928 million. IBM's revenue decreased 32.9% year over year to $864 million in 3Q16.

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS41969816

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Telefónica Hits 10Gbps with Nokia's XGS-PON FTTH

Telefónica has successfully tested Nokia's XGS-PON next-generation fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) technology in its labs, delivering symmetrical broadband speeds of up to 10Gbps. The technology is expected to facilitate Telefonica's 5G mobile network roll-out.

Nokia said its XGS-PON will provide a simple upgrade path from the current GPON fiber technology deployed by Telefonica.

The companies noted that the XGS-PON lab trial showed four times more upstream bandwidth than XG-PON.

Federico Guillen, president of Nokia's Fixed Networks business group, said: "Streaming services, gaming and HD video continue to drive demand for gigabit services, and the use of next-generation fiber technologies like XGS-PON will play a critical role in Telefonica's ability to deliver these enhanced services to customers - by wireless or fixed networks. The enhancements to our next-generation PON portfolio make it easier and more cost-effective for service providers to seamlessly evolve their existing fiber networks in line with demand."

http://www.nokia.com/en_int/news/releases/2016/12/01/telefonica-prepares-for-5g-with-successful-test-of-nokias-next-generation-fiber-technology-xgs-pon

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Ericsson's Accelerated Network Build Looks to Automation

Ericsson launched Accelerated Network Build, a new solution aimed at accelerating and streamlining the network build process for operators to deliver a faster time to market with quicker return on investment. The solution uses a proprietary cloud-based toolkit that delivers streamlined process improvements.

Ericsson Accelerated Network Build promises to cut build time 50 percent, improve quality by reducing number of site visits by 70 percent and provide better predictability with 99 percent first-time right delivery.

"Results from the pilots show that Accelerated Network Build makes a difference to our customers. By combining technology innovation, cloud-based tools with streamlined processes, our solution will revolutionize how networks are built and set a new standard in the industr," stated Fredrik Jejdling, Head of Business Unit Network Services, Ericsson.

https://www.ericsson.com/news/2059977

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