AT&T launches Microservices Supplier Program

AT&T is launching its microservices supplier program in partnership with IBM.  The idea is to offer a new approach to delivering business functionality for software developers. AT&T said that it is a heavy user of microservices for its internal systems.

Under this partnership, IBM will collaborate with AT&T to design, develop and deploy microservices that will transform AT&T’s business backend processes. IBM’s creation of microservices across sales, ordering, and enterprise data will enhance and modernize AT&T’s mission-critical systems. This enables higher-performing backend processing with minimal downtime while allowing the whole business to adapt quickly to changing market dynamics through the deployment of new fast and easy to access services and capabilities.

“Our software journey has focused on virtualizing our network functions to give more speed and flexibility than the traditional hardware model,” said Melissa Arnoldi, president, AT&T Technology and Operations. “We’re now looking at the 2,200+ apps in our IT system. And we’re starting to break them up into microservices to create agility, speed, and scalability that wasn’t possible before. Microservices are at the very core of our vision for the future of our network.”

Earlier this week, AT&T introduced Acumos, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that makes it easy to build, share and deploy AI applications, built with microservices.

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100G Lambda MSA looks for new wavelength spec

A new 100G Lambda Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) Group is aiming to develop specifications based on 100 Gbps per wavelength optical technology.

Founding members of the group include Alibaba, Arista Networks, Broadcom, Ciena, Cisco, Finisar, Foxconn Interconnect Technology, Inphi, Intel, Juniper Networks, Lumentum, Luxtera, MACOM, MaxLinear, Microsoft, Molex, NeoPhotonics, Nokia, Oclaro, Semtech, Source Photonics, and Sumitomo Electric.

The new interfaces defined by the 100G Lambda MSA double the speed per wavelength for 100 Gbps and 400 Gbps applications.

The group said it aims to complement the 100 Gbps (100GBASE-DR) and 400 Gbps (400GBASE-DR4) 500 m reach interfaces currently being defined by IEEE P802.3.  Its work focuses on reaches of 2 km and 10 km over duplex single-mode fiber.

http://100glambda.com/

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Sweden's Norrsken First to Deploy Infinera XTM II and 400G Flexponder

Norrsken, a Sweden-based regional operator, is the first to deploy the Infinera XTM II and the recently released 400G Flexponder. The carrier operates a regional network in Sweden providing Layer 1 wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) services and Layer 2 Ethernet services.

The equipment will be used for new 100 Gb/s services to leading internet service providers and carriers. Infinera said its XTM II platform and 400G Flexponder enable network operators like Norrsken to activate multiple 200 Gb/s wavelengths on a fiber, providing up to an eightfold density increase and a reduction in power per gigabit of 3.5 times over the previous generation of 100 Gb/s technology.

“We are excited to be the first carrier to deploy Infinera’s newly released XTM II platform and the new 400G Flexponder,” said Björn Jonsson, CEO at Norrsken. “This state-of-the-art network upgrade allows us to expand our end-user offerings to include 100 Gb/s services and scale to meet increasing traffic demands from our rapidly growing customer base. This upgrade delivers higher capacity, higher density, ultra-low latency and lower power consumption while keeping our existing chassis and protecting our network investments with this market-leading packet-optical platform.”

“The XTM II platform is the ideal solution for Norrsken’s network upgrade,” said Karl Thedéen
Senior Vice President, Metro Business Group, Infinera. “By delivering the 400G Flexponder as committed to the market and upgrading Norrsken’s network to the XTM II platform as planned, Infinera is helping Norrsken benefit from industry-leading innovation, meet mounting customer demands and win in its market.”

Infinera Intros XTM II for Cloud Scale Metro Packet-Optical

Tuesday, June 13, 2017  Infinera, Metro  No Comments

In June, Infinera introduced its next generation packet-optical platform for metro networks. The XTM II, which delivers Layer 0, Layer 1 and Layer 2 services, is optimized for bandwidth-intensive cloud scale applications at the metro edge, such as Remote PHY, 5G transport and data center interconnect (DCI). The new platform builds on Infinera's XTM Series, but now adds 200 gigabits per second (200G) per wavelength capabilities, with an eightfold density increase and a reduction in power per gigabit of 3.5 times. Power consumption is believed to be the lowest in the industry for 100/200G transport. It also features Infinera Instant Bandwidth, which is the company's open grid line system with SDN control. This gives network operators a highly flexible, open and software-programmable packet-optical solution for Layer 0, Layer 1 and Layer 2 services.

A key component of the XTM II platform is the new range of 200G per wavelength traffic units, featuring:

• The 400G Flexponder: A dual, 200G muxponder that uses 16QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) for high-capacity transport, or a dual 100G transponder that uses quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) for longer reach operation. This device provides 400G of line and client capacity per slot, giving an eightfold density increase over the previous generation. Including optics, the device operates at as low as 20 watts per 100G service, which the company believes is the lowest power consumption per 100G available in the industry on any wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM)-based platform.
• The 200G Muxponder: A 200G Layer 1 muxponder that supports a broad range of client signals, including 10G/40G/100G Ethernet and Optical Transport Network (OTN) as well as 8/16/32G Fibre Channel. The device can also be paired to create an OTN add-drop multiplexer (ADM).
• The EMXP440 Packet-Optical Transport Switch: A high-capacity addition to the existing range of EMXP devices that provides Layer 2 packet-optical switching with dual 100/200G ports and 12 or 24 10G ports. The EMXP440 supports Carrier Ethernet (CE) and MPLS-TP, packet transport with sub-50 milliseconds protection, Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) CE 2.0 service creation and quality of service-aware traffic aggregation. In addition, the EMXP440 has feature-harmonization with the EMXP/IIe range and PT-Fabric.

Additional enhancements to the XTM Series include:

• A new portfolio of XTM II upgraded chassis for improved power management and cooling and increased density to support nodes that require large volumes of new traffic units. 

• Instant Bandwidth capability, enabling the on-demand licensing of 100G bandwidth increments to align capital expense spend with service revenue and to reduce operational expenses through automated software activation of new capacity.
• New 400G+ per wavelength-ready flexible grid 4x and 9x ROADM modules and optimized hybrid erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA)/Raman optical amplifiers to support sophisticated modulation formats and higher baud rates required above 100G. In addition, the new XTM II open flexible grid line system supports fiber capacity up to 24 terabits per second.
• A unified solution providing end-to-end software control from core to access. The XTM Series, including the XTM II, is supported by Infinera’s Xceed Software Suite and DNA network management system. This new range of packet-optical platforms provides network operators with leading low power and high density at Layer 0, Layer 1 and Layer 2, and supports full interworking with the large installed base of XTM Series and the DTN-X platforms.

https://www.infinera.com/xtm-ii-cloud-scale-metro-packet-optical-applications/

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Ixia intros Network Visibility OS for open networking

Ixia introduced its new Network Visibility Operating System (NVOS) solution, a software version of Ixia’s network packet broker (NPB) product that allows Ixia’s NPB’s capabilities to run on open networking switches, such as those from Edgecore Networks.

Ixias said its NVOS embraces the movement of disaggregating software and hardware in software defined data center (SDDC) networks.

Network packet brokers aggregate, filter, and load-balance network packet data and then deliver it to security, forensics, and performance management tools. The new NVOS software transforms open switches into NPBs, providing rack and data center level visibility. It offers complete access to network packets to facilitate real-time visibility, insight, and security for high density hyperscale, microscale, and SDDC networks, even as they expand.

“IT management will appreciate the flexibility of Ixia’s NVOS,” says Recep Ozdag, Vice President of Product Management at Ixia. “Customers can build a data-center of any size by leveraging existing hardware or the hardware solution of their choice, which is ideal for creating an efficient and cost-effective IT operation.”

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Frontier sees stabilization in Q3 as it trims losses

Frontier Communications reported Q3 revenue of $2.25 billion, down from $2.30 billion in the preceding quarter. Net loss for the quarter was $38 million.

“Our third quarter results highlight the ongoing stabilization across our business as we focus on executing our strategy,” said Dan McCarthy, President and CEO. “During the quarter, we were pleased with the continued improvement in subscriber trends and churn in our California, Texas and Florida (CTF) markets, ongoing stabilization in our commercial business, and continued operating efficiencies.

Some highlights:

• Consumer revenue was $1.1 billion, a sequential decline of $22 million versus the $40 million sequential decline in the second quarter.
• Customer churn improved to 2.08% (1.92% for Frontier Legacy and 2.33% for CTF operations) compared to 2.24% for the second quarter of 2017 (1.95% for Frontier Legacy and 2.69% for CTF operations), with CTF FiOS being the primary driver of the overall improvement. 
• Combined Average Revenue Per Customer (ARPC) of $80.91 ($63.99 for Frontier Legacy and $107.33 for CTF operations). Excluding the positive one-time impact of the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight in the quarter, each of these measures of ARPC was stable sequentially.
• The hurricanes in Texas and Florida led to $12 million in losses, including operating expenses of $9 million and capital expenditures of $3 million.
• CAPEX for Q3 was $268 million, up from $263 million in Q2.

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Netscout releases packet flow switch management software

Netscout released new packet flow switch management software that aims to simplify the challenge of visibility networks.

The Fabric Manager software, which supports Netscout's nGenius 5000 and nGenius 6000 series of packet flow switches,
simplifies the creation of packet flow topologies for large-scale networks by providing intuitive workflows and lifecycle orchestration. The software adopts a lifecycle-based management approach, focusing on configuration, deployment, and monitoring. This allows easier scaling of packet broker deployments.

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Nutanix appoints Conway and Bostrom to board

Nutanix has added Craig Conway and Sue Bostrom to its board of directors. , effective Friday, October 27, 2017.

Conway served as President and CEO of PeopleSoft, Inc., an enterprise application software company from 1999 to 2004. Prior to PeopleSoft, he served as President and CEO of One Touch Systems, a high bandwidth network communications provider, and TGV Software, a TCP/IP protocol and applications company.

Bostrom served as Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer and Worldwide Government Affairs of Cisco Systems, Inc., a networking equipment provider, from 2006 to 2011. From 1997 to 2011, she held various leadership positions at Cisco, including Senior Vice President of the Internet Business Solutions Group, which shared Internet best practices with global Fortune 500 companies and governments

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Orbital's Minotaur C Rocket Carries 10 Satellites to Orbit

Orbital ATK successfully launched 10 commercial spacecraft into orbit aboard its commercial Minotaur C rocket.

The miniature satellites belong to Planet, a San Francisco based company that is rapidly becoming a major provide of satellite imagery services. Planet now has a constellation of 275 "Dove" satellites in orbit.  It also now has a constellation of 13 "SkySat" satellites, making it he world’s largest commercial, sub-meter fleet of high-res satellites operating in space.

Orbital's Minotaur C rocket was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

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SpaceX launches Koreasat-5A

SpaceX successfully delivered the Koreasat-5A satellite into orbit aboard a Falcon 9 rocket launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Falcon 9’s first stage successfully landed on the company's droneship in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Koreasat-5A satellite is owned by KT SAT, South Korea’s sole satellite service provider and it will provide Direct-to-Home (DTH) broadcast, broadband, and backhaul services with its Ku-Band capacity. The spacecraft was manufactured by Thales Alenia Space and is equipped with 12 Ku-band transponders of 36MHz, and 24 Ku-band transponders of 54MHz.

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AT&T moves Acumos into open source as an AI-enabling platform

AT&T, in collaboration with Tech Mahindra, is backing an open source artificial intelligence (AI) platform called Acumos that can be used to build smart applications.

Acumos, which will be hosted by The Linux Foundation, makes it easy to build, share and deploy AI applications. More specifically, it provides the capability to edit, integrate, compose, package, train and deploy AI microservices. Acumos will provide a marketplace for accessing, using and enhancing those applications.

“Our goal with open sourcing the Acumos platform is to make building and deploying AI applications as easy as creating a website,” said Mazin Gilbert, vice president of Advanced Technology at AT&T Labs. “We’re collaborating with Tech Mahindra to establish an industry standard for AI in the networking space. We invite others to join us to create a global harmonization in AI and set the stage for all future AI network applications and services.”

“We’re opening up AI. We’re focusing on the telecommunication, media and technology spaces, starting with the network. The platform will be available to anyone and the more users who adopt it, the better it will get,” added Gilbert.

AT&T said the Acumos platform is built on open source technologies and can be powered by AT&T Indigo, its next-generation platform for delivering a seamless network experience.

Earlier this year, AT&T moved its ECOMP into the open source curation of The Linux Foundation under the newly launched ONAP project. With Acumos, AT&T said it was acting to place the initial framework into open source as quickly as possible.

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AT&T expands business cloud networking with AWS

AT&T announced an expansion of its alliance with Amazon Web Services (AWS) by expanding its business cloud networking solutions and focusing on security and IoT.

Highlights:

• FlexWare: AT&T is expanding the reach of how AWS customers can access the cloud more securely. AT&T FlexWareSM is now cloud-ready, and can directly—and more securely—connect to AWS. This will help businesses be more agile with edge computing. 
• Private Mobile Connect: With AT&T Private Mobile Connect, AWS customers can more securely access AWS from a mobile device.  Workloads are moved from the mobile device, via the public network or through NetBond for Cloud, to AWS for all customers. 
• Cybersecurity: AT&T Threat Manager will allow AWS customers to proactively identify data patterns and threat activity that could affect their network and cloud environment. AT&T analyzes the traffic in near real-time coming in and out of a device, connection or application. AT&T can then identify abnormalities to help prevent, detect and respond to vulnerabilities. 
• Internet of Things: Earlier this year AT&T introduced a dedicated IoT Starter kit, powered by AWS. The kit lets developers build their own solutions using AT&T IoT and AWS IoT. Developers can also use AT&T’s highly secure network and get application-level security. The companies are currently exploring options to bring AWS Greengrass to the AT&T FlexWare platform, which would enable edge computing to open up new IoT opportunities for businesses.

AT&T also offers Cloud Transformation Consulting services.

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FCC approves CenturyLink + Level 3 merger

After a year-long review, the FCC voted to approve the CenturyLink + Level Communications merger. The FCC ruled that the public interest would not be harmed by the transfer of necessary licenses to secure the merger and that any potential harms to competition are mitigated by the conditions set forth in the DOJ consent decree.

• On October 3rd, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice cleared CenturyLink's pending acquisition of Level 3 Communications with certain conditions, including the divestiture of certain Level 3 metro network assets and certain dark fiber assets.
  
  Specifically, the combined company is required to divest Level 3 metro network assets in Albuquerque, N.M.; Boise, Idaho; and Tucson, Arizona. In addition, the combined company is required to divest 24 strands of dark fiber connecting 30 specified city-pairs across the country in the form of an Indefeasible Right of Use (IRU). CenturyLink said that because these fibers are not currently in commercial use, this divestiture will not affect any current customers or services.

CenturyLink to Acquire Level 3 for $34 Billion

Monday, October 31, 2016  CenturyLink, Level 3, Mergers And Acquisitions  No Comments

CenturyLink agreed to acquire Level 3 Communications in a cash and stock transaction valued at approximately $34 billion, including the assumption of debt.

The deal combines CenturyLink's larger enterprise customer base with Level 3's global network footprint. The companies said this scale will enable further investment in the reach and speeds of its broadband infrastructure for small businesses and consumers. After close, CenturyLink's Glen Post will continue to serve as Chief Executive Officer and President of the combined company.  Sunit Patel, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Level 3, will serve as Chief Financial Officer of the combined company. The combined company will be headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana and will maintain a significant presence in Colorado and the Denver metropolitan area.

Under terms of the agreement, Level 3 shareholders will receive $26.50 per share in cash and a fixed exchange ratio of 1.4286 shares of CenturyLink stock for each Level 3 share they own, which implies a purchase price of $66.50 per Level 3 share (based on a CenturyLink $28.00 per share reference price) and a premium of approximately 42 percent based on Level 3's unaffected closing share price of $46.92 on October 26, 2016. Upon the closing  CenturyLink shareholders will own approximately 51 percent and Level 3 shareholders will own approximately 49 percent of the combined company.

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JUPITER transpacific cable to carry 400G wavelengths

JUPITER, a new large-capacity, low-latency subsea cable between Japan and the United States has received the backing of SoftBank, Facebook, Amazon, PLDT and PCCW Global.

The JUPITER cable system. which will have a total length of 14,000 km, will have two landing points in Japan — the Shima Landing Station in Mie Prefecture and the Maruyama Landing Station in Chiba Prefecture — as well as a U.S. landing station in Los Angeles, California, as well as a landing station at Daet in the Philippines.

JUPITER will feature a state-of-the-art submersible ROADM employing WSS (wavelength selective switch) for a gridless and flexible bandwidth configuration. The cable system will also be designed to support 400 Gbps wavelengths. The initial design capacity is 60 Tbps.

NTT Com said its Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE), Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) and Pacific Crossing-1 (PC-1) cables will connect with JUPITER to provide a redundant three-route structure linking major cities in Asia, Japan and United States. NTT Com is also planning direct connections from the cable landing stations in Japan to data centers in Tokyo and Osaka.

JUPITER is expected to come online in early 2020.

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CyrusOne sees strong demand in Q3 for data center services

CyrusOne reported strong demand in Q3 for its collocation data centers. Revenue in Q3 was $175 million, up 22% over a year earlier. There was a net loss of $55 million, primarily due to $54 million impairment charge for a facility in Connecticut.

Some highlights for the quarter:

• Leased 15 megawatts (MW) and 151,000 colocation square feet (CSF) in the third quarter, totaling $27 million in annualized GAAP revenue
• Backlog of $37 million in annualized GAAP revenue as of the end of the third quarter, representing more than $290 million in total contract value
• Added five Fortune 1000 companies as new customers in the third quarter, increasing the total number of Fortune 1000 customers to 195 as of the end of the quarter
• Company record construction with completion of eight projects totaling 555,000 CSF and 76 MW to add inventory across key markets, including Phoenix, Northern Virginia, Chicago, Dallas and San Antonio
• Closed the previously announced acquisition of 66 acres of land in Allen, Texas, with an option to acquire an additional 24 acres of adjacent land, to support growth in the Dallas market
• Subsequent to the end of the quarter, signed a commercial agreement with and made $100 million investment in GDS Holdings Limited (“GDS”), a leading data center provider in China, creating cross-selling opportunities and expanding our global presence.

“We had an outstanding quarter in virtually all aspects of our business, including high growth rates across our key financial metrics, continued strong bookings, and a record level of capacity brought online, which positions us well to meet the demand in our late-stage sales funnel across our top markets,” said Gary Wojtaszek, president and chief executive officer of CyrusOne.

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PacketFabric extends Network-as-a-Service with AEConnect transatlantic cable

PacketFabric, which offers a highly scalable, SDN-powered network-as-a-service platform, will use the America-Europe Connect (“AEConnect”) subsea cable system to provision secure, low-latency transatlantic capacity and extend its reach to Europe.

PacketFabric enables dynamic, real-time connectivity services between major carrier-neutral colocation facilities at terabit-scale.

Aqua Comms’ AEConnect submarine cable system links New York to Ireland with diverse backhaul fibre to additional Points of Presence (PoPs) in the U.S., Ireland and U.K.

As part of the strategic partnership, Aqua Comms also utilizes the PacketFabric platform to extend the reach of its service footprint across the U.S.  PacketFabric’s scalable network facilitates coast-to-coast connectivity between more than 150 premier colocation facilities across 17 U.S. markets.

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Orange sees another quarter of growth in France

Citing its second consecutive quarter of growth in France, Orange reported Q3 revenue of 10.274 billion euros, up 0.9% on a comparable basis compared to last year and in line with the first half (+1.1%). Adjusted EBITDA for the Group grew 2.1% in the third quarter of 2017 on a comparable basis, in line with the first half (+2.2%).

Stéphane Richard, Chairman and CEO of the Orange Group, commented: “This quarter demonstrates very good momentum at Orange, supported more than ever by investment in customer experience and our networks. We attracted nearly half a million mobile contract customers and 321,000 fibre customers in France and the Europe segment in the past three months. Despite new roaming regulation in Europe, we delivered revenue growth for the ninth consecutive quarter and adjusted EBITDA growth of 2.1%. Excluding regulatory changes, adjusted EBITDA rose 4.4%. "

Highlights for Q3 2017:

• Orange France had a particularly strong third quarter in mobile, with 320,000 net additions – its best performance since 2008. 
• Orange France is continuing to grow in fibre broadband and now reaches more than 1.8 million customers. 
• Interconnection revenue with operators in other European countries (visitor roaming) grew but was offset by the end of roaming charges for customers traveling in Europe. 
• Orange Europe continued to record sustained growth, driven by Spain and Central European countries. 
• Revenue in the Africa & Middle East segment confirmed a return to solid growth, 
• Revenue in the Enterprise segment fell 0.5% on a comparable basis. In the first nine months of 2017, revenues were 30.550 billion euros, up 1.0% (+317 million euros) on a comparable basis.
• The Group’s capital expenditure for the first nine months of the year was 4.873 billion euros, in line with the 2017 forecast of 7.2 billion euros. 
• CAPEX increased by 2.8% compared to the first nine months of 2016 on a comparable basis. 
• CAPEX from telecom activities (4.836 billion euros) rose 2.0% and the ratio of CAPEX from telecom activities to revenues was 15.8%. 
• Investments in fibre and in very high-speed mobile (4G and 4G+) rose 14.2% compared with the first nine months of 2016.

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T-Mobile connects with Project Loon in Puerto Rico

T-Mobile has recovered more than 80% of its original pre-storm outdoor signal in Puerto Rico. In a blog post, Neville Ray, T-Mobile's CTO, said the carrier has done everything possible to restore service following Hurricane Maria. Damage was extensive to the backhaul network, the cell sites and of course to the electrical grid, which still remains out for much of the island.

T-Mobile in Puerto Rico is now serving a live signal via the experimental Project Loon balloon, which enables LTE access with limited data and texting to customers in hard to reach areas.

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China Mobile marks 20th anniversary, now at 877 million subscribers

China Mobile marked the 20th anniversary since its debut as a publicly listed company with a first generatio, analogue mobile network. The company first began trading on the main board of the Hong Kong HKEX on 23 October 1997.

As of 30 September 2017, China Mobile was serving 877,708,000 mobile lines, including 621,757,000 4G subscribers. The number of net new mobile customers for 2017 has now surpassed 28 million.

The number of fixed broadband lines grew to 103.425,000, topping the 100 million milestone for the first time during September. The number or net new fixed line broadband customers has surpassed 25 million for 2017 so far.

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QTS plans mega data center campus in Ashburn

QTS Realty Trust has kicked off development a mega data center campus in Ashburn, Virginia. Phase 1 of its multi-tenant development, representing approximately four megawatts of critical sellable capacity, is expected to come online by mid-2018.

This year, QTS acquired 52 acres of land in Ashburn, Virginia in two parcels for a total purchase price of $53 million.  The first parcel, representing 24 acres and a $17 million purchase price, closed during the third quarter of 2017. The second parcel, representing 28 acres and a $36 million purchase price, closed subsequent to the end of the third quarter of 2017. The combined site is located adjacent to QTS’ existing Vault campus in Dulles, Virginia.

QTS said it has pre-leased 2.2 megawatts, representing over 50 percent of Phase 1 development capacity, to a global health insurance provider. Discussions with several other potential customers are ongoing.

“We are excited to have additional sellable capacity in a strategic QTS market to expand our ecosystem of more than 130 customers currently supported within our Northern Virginia footprint,” said Chad Williams, Chairman and CEO – QTS. “Our fully-integrated 3C platform, combined with mega data center scale, position QTS to take advantage of increasing hybrid IT requirements, particularly from hyperscale companies.”

QTS is also actively planning expansions in Arizona and Oregon. During Q3, QTS acquired 84 acres of land in Phoenix, Arizona for a purchase price of $25 million and located approximately four miles from its existing data center in the city. This month, QTS also acquired 92 acres of land in Hillsboro, Oregon for a purchase price of $26 million.

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Aerohive adds NFV-appliance for branch offices

Aerohive Networks introduce a software-defined, cloud networking platform that uses a network-function-virtualized (NFV) appliance to extend a corporate network to remote workers and branch offices.

Any Aerohive access point can operate as a tunnel terminator for the Aerohive VPN solution.

With this launch, Aerohive is now offering a cloud managed Virtual Gateway Appliance (VG-VA) that can handle over a thousand IPsec tunnels and can be installed in any VMware-virtualized environment.

Aerohive said its VG-VA also provides additional functions on top of extending VPN capabilities, including centralizing authentication and GRE tunneling support to offer additional scalability in an extensible form factor.

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Australia's NBN to deploy G.fast in 2018

Australia’s broadband network, NBN, confirmed plans to deploy G.fast beginning next year.

G.fast becomes another access technology in NBN's "multi-Technology toolkit." G.fast technology will be supplied by the company's three existing fixed-broadband suppliers Nokia, ADTRAN and Netcomm Wireless.

G.fast can take broadband speeds past the current 100Mbps levels delivered by VDSL technology to deliver speeds of up to 1Gbps over copper lines by using higher frequencies of either 106MHz or 212MHz – compared to just 17MHz on VDSL.

JB Rousselot, Chief Strategy Officer, nbn said "adding G.fast to the toolkit for the FTTC and FTTB networks will allow us to deliver ultra-fast services faster and more cost effectively than if we had to deliver them on a full Fibre-to-the-Premises connection."

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MACOM divests AppliedMicro’s Compute Business

MACOM reached an agreement to sell the Compute business it acquired in its AppliedMicro acquisition earlier this year to Project Denver Holdings LLC , a new company backed by The Carlyle Group. Financial terms were not disclosed, but MACOM said it will hold a minority equity ownership interest in the new company.

“After a thorough review process, we are very excited about the sale of the Compute business and the opportunity it provides for both the employees of that business and our shareholders,” said John Croteau, MACOM’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “The Carlyle Group is one of the world’s largest and most successful global investment firms, with over $170 billion in assets under management. I believe NewCo’s exceptional leadership team and Carlyle’s backing combines the necessary elements to make the business a long-term success, and through a minority equity ownership MACOM is positioned to participate in the company’s long-term value creation.”

• In January 2017, MACOM Technology Solutions Holdings acquired Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (AppliedMicro") for approximately $8.36 per share, consisting of $3.25 in cash and 0.1089 MACOM shares per share of AppliedMicro. The deal was valued at approximately $770 million on the day it was announced..
  
  MACOM said it made the acquisition to accelerate its growth in optical technologies for Cloud Service Providers and Enterprise Network customers.
• MACOM and AppliedMicro's pro forma combined TTM revenue was approximately $709 million including AppliedMicro's Compute business, or approximately $644 million excluding the Compute business

AppliedMicro's Connectivity business is highly complementary to MACOM's product portfolio, through the addition of market-leading OTN framers, MACsec Ethernet networking components, and the industry's leading single-lambda PAM4 platform.

• In March 2017, the company announced the sampling of its third generation 16-nanometer FinFET Server-on-a-Chip (SoC) solution, X-Gene 3.  The device is an ARMv8-A compatible processor that matches comparable x86 processors in CPU throughput, per-thread performance, and power efficiency while offering advantages in memory bandwidth and total cost of ownership. It features 32 ARMv8-A 64-bit cores operating at speeds up to 3.0 GHz, eight DDR4-2667 memory channels with ECC and RAS supporting up to 16 DIMMs and addressing up to 1TB of memory and 42 PCIe Gen 3 lanes with eight controllers. The processor is expected to have a performance that is up to six times that of the currently shipping X-Gene family of products.

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Tunisie Telecom deploys ADTRAN's outside DSLAMs

Incumbent operator Tunisie Telecom (TT) is deploying ADTRAN's sealed outside plant (OSP) DSLAMs, which feature unique Discrete Multi-Tone (DMT) capabilities to deliver next-generation copper-based broadband services to locations where laying fiber is cost-prohibitive and/or electrical power sources are unreliable or unavailable.

In trials conducted with TT, ADTRAN said its 1148VX OSP DSLAM delivered broadband rates in excess of 90Mb/s on loops of several hundred meters.

In extreme cases, where customers on loops exceeding 2 km in length were historically without service, the 1148VX OSP DSLAM is able to deliver reliable 20 Mb/s services and higher. ADTRAN also demonstrated the ability to reliably remote power its 1148VX OSP DSLAM through existing copper pairs from a central location several kilometers away.

Tunisia Telecom is also planning on bonding up to 8 existing twisted pairs of copper as data uplink plus remote power to expedite time to market and minimize cost of fiber uplink. The 1148VX is fiber-ready and will accept fiber uplink when fiber becomes available.

“By harnessing next-generation access technology in innovative and sustainable ways, TT can transform communities and boost local economic growth among residential and business subscribers,” said Werner Heinrich, director broadband solutions at ADTRAN. “Having already deployed over 130,000 of these nodes in some of the world’s harshest climates, ADTRAN is the market-leading choice for accelerating affordable broadband service deployment in these environments.”

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A10 posts Q3 revenue of $61m, up 12% yoy

A10 Networks reported Q3 revenue of $61.4 million, up 12% compared with $55.1 million for the same period last year. There was a GAAP net loss of $2.7 million, or $0.04 per basic share.

“We delivered a strong third quarter and are pleased with the team’s execution. Revenue exceeded our initial and revised guidance and increased 12% year-over-year to reach $61.4 million. Our top-line performance was driven by solid demand and the team’s improved execution as we began to see the initial progress from some of the recent changes we implemented in the quarter,” said Lee Chen, president and chief executive officer of A10 Networks.

On the earning conference call, A10 executives disclosed that during Q3 the company secured large win with a mobile provider in the U.S., where it continued to expand its
footprint and replaced the incumbent ADC vendor with its ThunderADC and ThunderSSLi solutions. In total, this customer contributed 14 percent of Q3 revenue.

Third quarter product revenue grew 12 percent year-over-year to 39.4 million dollars, representing 64 percent of total revenue. Third quarter service revenue was 22.0 million dollars, or 36 percent of total revenue.

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Cypress sees gains from IoT

Cypress Semiconductor posted Q3 revenue of $604.6 million, up from $593.8 million a year earlier. Net income was $11 million, or $0.03 EPS, compared to a net loss of $23 million a year earlier. Margin was 41.8%.

“We continue to strengthen our position as the Internet of Things (IoT) leader with our state-of-the-art IoT connectivity solutions, flexible microcontrollers and high-performance memories,” said Hassane El-Khoury, Cypress president and chief executive officer.

“After a strong second quarter, we continued to deliver record revenue with strength across our key markets,” El-Khoury continued. “These results demonstrate we are delivering on our Cypress 3.0 strategy of selling embedded solutions into markets growing faster than the overall semiconductor industry. Our customers are relying on us for more bill-of-material coverage, with approximately 80% of our revenue generated by customers buying more than one product family across connectivity, microcontrollers and memory.”

• During the quarter, Cypress introduced a 28nm, ultra-low power Wi-Fi and Bluetooth combo solution for wearables, smart home products and portable audio applications. The new device cuts power consumption up to 70 percent in receive mode and up to 80 percent in sleep mode when compared to current solutions.

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AWS continues 42% yoy growth pace

Amazon Web Services continues to grow at a 42% year-over-year pace.

In its Q3 2017 financial report, Amazon disclosed that AWS sales for Q3 2017 amounted to $4.584 billion.

During the quarter, AWS launched per-second billing in all regions for Linux-based EC2 instances, Elastic Graphical Processing Units (GPU), Elastic Block Store (EBS) Volumes, AWS Batch, and Elastic Map Reduce (EMR). Customers using these services will now be billed in one-second (versus one-hour) increments. AWS also introduced a free service that provides a single location for customers to track the status of migrations across their application portfolio. The company also revealed plans for a new infrastructure region in the Middle East in 2019. Currently, AWS provides 44 Availability Zones across 16 infrastructure regions worldwide, with another 14 Availability Zones across five AWS Regions in China, France, Hong Kong, Sweden, and a second GovCloud Region in the U.S. expected to come online by the end of 2018.

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Elliott Management to privatize Gigamon in $1.6 billion deal

Elliott Management, a private investment firm known for shareholder activism, will acquire Gigamon for $38.50 per share in cash, for a total value of approximately $1.6 billion, making Gigamon a privately-held company. Elliott Management and its affiliates currently hold a 7.0% equity voting stake in Gigamon.

Under the deal, Gigamon shareholders will receive $38.50 in cash for each share of Gigamon common stock held.

"We are pleased to announce this transaction, which delivers immediate cash value to our shareholders upon closing at a premium to our unaffected stock price," said Paul Hooper, Chief Executive Officer of Gigamon. "The Gigamon Board, with the assistance of independent financial and legal advisors, conducted a thorough review of options to enhance shareholder value and unanimously concluded that entering into this agreement with Elliott represents the best way to maximize value."

"As the leading provider of visibility solutions that enable enterprises to guard against network and data breaches, Gigamon has a strong track record of innovation and delivering customer value that makes it a compelling investment," said Jesse Cohn, Partner at Elliott. "In partnership with Evergreen Coast Capital, our private equity affiliate, this is a landmark transaction in our long history of investing in leading enterprise technology businesses."


Gigamon's recent revenue trends
         2017                        2016
Q3    $79.2 million          $83.5 million
Q2    $69.1 million          $75.1 million
Q1    $69.6 million          $66.9 million

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Nokia posts Q3 sales of EUR 5.5b, a 7% slide yoy

Driven by strength in its patent licensing business and improve efficiency in its Networks division, but offset by some challenges in its Mobile Networks business, Nokia reported Q3 2017 net sales of EUR 5.5 billion, a 7% year-on-year decrease (4% decrease on a constant currency basis) compared to a year earlier.

Gross margin for Q3 was 42.7% (40.0% in Q3 2016), and non-IFRS operating margin ws 12.1% (9.3% in Q3 2016), driven by Nokia Technologies and resilience in Nokia's Networks business.

Nokia's Networks business

• 9% year-on-year net sales decrease (6% decrease on a constant currency basis) in Q3 2017, primarily due to Ultra Broadband Networks, reflecting challenges related to market conditions and certain projects in Mobile Networks, primarily in North America and Greater China.
• In Q3 2017, on a constant currency basis, the year-on-year net sales performance in IP Networks and Applications and Global Services improved, when compared to the year-on-year performance in Q2 2017. On a constant currency basis, year-on-year net sales grew by 2% in both Global Services and IP Routing.
• Gross margin was 38.6% supported by continued operational discipline. Operating margin of 6.9% reflected weak results in Ultra Broadband Networks, which was partially offset by improved year-on-year performance in Global Services and IP Networks and Applications.

Nokia Technologies

• 37% year-on-year net sales increase and 73% year-on-year operating profit increase in Q3 2017, primarily related to a settled arbitration in the third quarter 2017. 
• Approximately EUR 180 million of the net sales were non-recurring in nature and related to catch-up net sales for prior periods. 
• approximately doubled recurring license revenue from EUR 578 million in 2014.

Rajeev Suri, Nokia's President and CEO, stated: "Despite the progress we made in the quarter, we experienced some challenges in our Mobile Networks business and see a continued decline in our primary addressable market in 2018. That decline, which we estimate to be in the range of 2% to 5%, is the result of the multiple technology transitions underway; robust competition in China; and near-term headwinds from potential operator consolidation in a handful of countries."

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Intel sees record revenue for data center, IoT and memory

Intel reported Q3 revenue og $16.1 billion and record operating income and record earnings per share (EPS), driven by strong data-centric growth, expanding operating margins and gains on the sale of equity investments. The company cited record revenues for its data center, Internet of Things and memory businesses. Gross margin for Q3 was 62.3%, down from 63.3% a year earlier.

"We executed well in the third quarter with strong results across the business, and we’re on track to a record year,”said Brian Krzanich, Intel CEO. “I’m excited about our progress and our future. Intel’s product line-up is the strongest it has ever been with more innovation on the way for artificial intelligence, autonomous driving and more.”

For its Data Center Group, sales to Cloud/Communication Service Provides now accounts for 60% of revenue, up from 35% in 2013.

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How will Brexit impact the data center business in Ireland?

Leo Clancy, Head of Technology, Consumer & Business Services at IDA Ireland visits Silicon Valley to talk about data centers, IoT and the impending impact of Brexit on Ireland.

https://youtu.be/ShSwE69Pz3Y

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ADVA's Q3 revenues decline to EUR 111.2 Mill

Citing a drop in revenues from two major customers during the acquisition process of MRV Communications, ADVA Optical Networking reported a drop in revenues in Q3 2017 to EUR 111.2 million, down from EUR 144.2 in Q2 2017, and down 30.3% year-on-year (YoY) (Q3 2016: EUR 159.5 million). The figure was within the adjusted guidance announced on August 28, 2017.

Pro forma operating income in Q3 2017 stood at EUR -0.8 million or -0.7% of revenues, down from EUR 9.2 million or 6.4% of revenues in Q2 2017. This number is also within the adjusted guidance.

ADVA recorded one-time restructuring costs of EUR 8.4 million due to the integration of MRV and the related restructuring measures, as well as the consolidation of the product portfolios.

Regional revenues during Q3
Americas - 60%
EMEA - 33%
Asia-Pacific - 7%

"Q3, 2017 was one of the most challenging quarters in our company's history," commented Brian Protiva, CEO of ADVA Optical Networking. "We had to lower our guidance within a financial quarterly period for the first time since Q2, 2008. Nevertheless, the integration of MRV Communications is progressing very well. We have implemented much of the planned restructuring measures, updated our roadmaps and aligned our product portfolios, development teams and sales focus. All this provides us with a solid basis for a return to growth and profitability in 2018."

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DragonWave acquired by Transform-X

DragonWave, which a global supplier of packet microwave radio systems for mobile and access networks and which is bases in Ottawa, Canada, has been acquired by Transform-X, a private equity firm based in Tucson, Arizona.  Financial terms were not disclosed.

DragonWave’s carrier-grade point-to-point packet microwave systems transmit broadband voice, video and data, enabling service providers, government agencies, enterprises and other organizations to meet their increasing bandwidth requirement. The principal application of DragonWave’s portfolio is wireless network backhaul, including for small cell networks. The new company will operate under the name of DragonWave-X.

In addition, DragonWave announced the appointment of Hans B. Amell as the company’s new Chief Executive Officer. Amell’s background includes leading major transformations in Global Industry leading companies such as Unisys, Dun and Bradstreet, AlliedSignal/Honeywell and Ericsson. He started his career as a management consultant at McKinsey.

"The DragonWave-X acquisition is a crucial part of Transform-X's strategic goal to acquire and integrate best-in-class 5G+ communications technologies, manufacturers and service companies that will compete and excel in the market for 5G+, small cell densification and RAN solutions to modern data demands." said Dan Hodges, Transform-X CEO.

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Cisco and Google Partner on New Hybrid Cloud Solution

Cisco and Google Cloud have formed a partnership to deliver a hybrid cloud solutions that enables applications and services to be deployed, managed and secured across on-premises environments and Google Cloud Platform. The pilot implementations are expected to be launched early next year, with commercial rollout later in 2018.

The main idea is to deliver a consistent Kubernetes environment for both on-premises Cisco Private Cloud Infrastructure and Google’s managed Kubernetes service, Google Container Engine.

The companies said their open hybrid cloud offering will provide enterprises with a way to run, secure and monitor workloads, thus enabling them to optimize their existing investments, plan their cloud migration at their own pace and avoid vendor lock in.

Cisco and Google Cloud hybrid solution highlights:

• Orchestration and Management – Policy-based Kubernetes orchestration and lifecycle management of resources, applications and services across hybrid environments
• Networking – Extend network policy and configurations to multiple on-premises and cloud environments
• Security – Extend Security policy and monitor applications behavior
• Visibility and Control – Real-time network and application performance monitoring and automation
• Cloud-ready Infrastructure – Hyperconverged platform supporting existing application and cloud-native Kubernetes environments
• Service Management with Istio – Open-source solution provides a uniform way to connect, secure, manage and monitor microservices
• API Management – Google's Apigee enterprise-class API management enables legacy workloads running on premises to connect to the cloud through APIs
• Developer Ready – Cisco's DevNet Developer Center provides tools and resources for cloud and enterprise developers to code in hybrid environments
• Support – Joint coordinated technical support for the solution

"Our partnership with Google gives our customers the very best cloud has to offer— agility and scale, coupled with enterprise-class security and support," said Chuck Robbins, chief executive officer, Cisco. "We share a common vision of a hybrid cloud world that delivers the speed of innovation in an open and secure environment to bring the right solutions to our customers."

"This joint solution from Google and Cisco facilitates an easy and incremental approach to tapping the benefits of the Cloud. This is what we hear customers asking for," said Diane Greene, CEO, Google Cloud.

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AWS launches NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs instances

Amazon Web Services began offering P3 instances, the next generation of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) GPU instances for compute-intensive applications that require massive parallel floating point performance, including machine learning, computational fluid dynamics, computational finance, seismic analysis, molecular modeling, genomics, and autonomous vehicle systems. The instances are based on NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs.

AWS said the new P3 instances allow customers to build and deploy advanced applications with up to 14 times better performance than previous-generation Amazon EC2 GPU compute instances, and reduce training of machine learning applications from days to hours.

P3 instances can combine up to eight NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs to provide up to one petaflop of mixed-precision, 125 teraflops of single-precision, and 62 teraflops of double-precision floating point performance. A 300 GB/s second-generation NVIDIA NVLink interconnect enables high-speed, low-latency GPU-to-GPU communication. P3 instances also feature up to 64 vCPUs based on custom Intel Xeon E5 (Broadwell) processors, 488 GB of DRAM, and 25 Gbps of dedicated aggregate network bandwidth using the Elastic Network Adapter (ENA).

“When we launched our P2 instances last year, we couldn’t believe how quickly people adopted them,” said Matt Garman, Vice President of Amazon EC2. “Most of the machine learning in the cloud today is done on P2 instances, yet customers continue to be hungry for more powerful instances. By offering up to 14 times better performance than P2 instances, P3 instances will significantly reduce the time involved in training machine learning models, providing agility for developers to experiment, and optimizing machine learning without requiring large investments in on-premises GPU clusters. In addition, high performance computing applications will benefit from up to 2.7 times improvement in double-precision floating point performance.”

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Sprint's revenue declines but income rises as it gains subscribers

Driven by lower wireless and wireline service revenue, partially offset by higher equipment revenue, Sprint reported net operating revenues of $7.9 billion for the quarter declined $320 million year-over-year and declined $230 million sequentially.  Sprint reported operating income of $601 million and its highest fiscal second quarter adjusted EBITDA in 10 years at $2.7 billion.

Some highlights:

• The company had 378,000 net additions in the current quarter compared with 599,000 in the year ago period and 61,000 net additions in the prior quarter.
• Sprint ended the quarter with just over 54.0 million connections, including 31.7 million postpaid, 8.7 million prepaid, and 13.6 million wholesale and affiliate connections.
• The company has had nearly 1.4 million net additions over the last four quarters.
• Postpaid net additions were 168,000 during the quarter compared to net additions of 344,000 in the year-ago period and net losses of 39,000 in the prior quarter. 
• Tablet and other device net losses of 111,000 in the quarter compared to 3,000 in the year-ago period and 127,000 in the prior quarter. 

“Sprint was able to deliver net additions in both its postpaid phone and prepaid business for the third consecutive quarter,” said Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure. “I’m even more proud that the team was able to deliver this customer growth while continuing to attack the cost structure, improve the network, and maintain positive adjusted free cash flow.”

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