Zayo provides US terrestrial fiber for New Cross Pacific cable

Zayo has been selected to provide a private dedicated network (PDN) for New Cross Pacific (NCP) US Backhaul group, comprised of Chunghwa Telecom, KT Corporation, China Telecom, China Mobile International and China Unicom.

Zayo's PDN will be used to backhaul traffic from NCP's U.S. landing station across the western United States.

The NCP subsea cable, which spans more than 13,000km (8,000 miles), will link Asian landing stations in Chongming, Nanhui, Lingang, Busan, Toucheng and Maruyama with its U.S. landing station in Hillsboro, Oregon. The NCP subsea cable is expected to land in the next few months, providing capacity that can scale up to 80 Tbps.

Zayo’s 4,300km (2,700 mile) backhaul solution will provide NCP’s US Backhaul group with connectivity from the landing station throughout the West Coast, including San Jose and Los Angeles, with connectivity options throughout North America. The PDN solution provides dark fiber as well as a full range of managed fiber solutions.

“This milestone agreement leverages our dense fiber connectivity across the west coast to cable landing stations and provides the group with a high-capacity solution that we can turn up quickly and efficiently,” said Jack Waters, CTO and president of Fiber Solutions at Zayo. “Zayo’s recent acquisition of Electric Lightwave this year has been pivotal, enabling Zayo to provide a high-capacity solution of this scope and scale.”

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OIF starts work on long reach and medium reach CEI-112G

The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) has begun work on long reach (LR) and medium reach (MR) CEI-112G. The goal is to define an interface to enable high-loss 112G backplane channels. This project will also facilitate direct attach copper (DAC) cable channel links at 112G. The CEI-112G-MR project will develop specifications for a chip-to-chip (c2c) interface which can also be used to support applications of 112Gx2 (224G), and 112Gx4 (448G) with reduced power, complexity, and enhanced density.

The CEI-112G-LR project builds upon two existing 100G serial electrical link projects.

“These projects build upon the relevant and foundational 56G and 112G CEI roadmap the OIF has established,” said Nathan Tracy of TE Connectivity and OIF vice president of marketing.  “The industry continues to look to the OIF to deliver interoperable implementation agreements that will drive adoption of both 100 Gb/s serial applications and the interfaces needed to address higher bandwidth.”

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New IEEE 802.11 Light Communications Study Group gets underway

A new IEEE 802.11 Light Communications Study Group has been formed to engage with manufacturers, operators and end users to discuss a global wireless local area network light communications standard.

IEEE said solid state lighting, e.g., LED lighting, could leverage available and very large source of wireless spectrum outside of the traditional radio spectrum and that the technology has notable potential as a wireless solution that offers greater bandwidth and efficiency, security, and data density, while not being subjected to or contributing to electromagnetic interference (EMI) below 3 THz.

“In just a few short years, the interest in light communications has grown significantly and there is an enormous amount of valuable knowledge that vendors and operators can share as they work together to advance the technology globally,” said Nikola Serafimovski, chair of the IEEE 802.11 Light Communications Study Group. “It’s an exciting time for the light communications market sector, as it is poised for substantial growth over the next five years. We look forward to broad participation under the auspices of the IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN Working Group and the IEEE-SA as we work to develop the light communications market in line with industry needs, and to ensure best practices that drive market expansion.”

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Nutanix posts revenue of $275.6 million, up 46% year-over-year

Nutanix reported quarterly revenue of $275.6 million, up 46% year-over-year from $188.6 million for the same period last year. GAAP net loss was $61.5 million, compared to a GAAP net loss of $140.3 million last year.

 Nutanix ended the first quarter of fiscal 2018 with 7,813 end-customers, adding over 760 new end-customers during the quarter. First quarter customer wins included ConocoPhillips; JLL; Leonardo SpA; Scholastic Inc.; Shinsegae; Toyota Motor North America, Inc. and Trek Bicycle Corporation.

Nutanix noted that it had 49 customers with deals over $1 million in the quarter, up 36% YoY.

“Over the coming quarters we will thoughtfully adopt a software-centric strategy. Customers will continue to experience the same simple purchasing process and high-quality customer service. With a strong instinct for go-to-market, an imminent and differentiated roadmap for hybrid cloud, and a diverse executive team, I'm very much looking forward to a strong performance in the remainder of fiscal 2018,” stated Dheeraj Pandey, Chairman, Founder and CEO of Nutanix.

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Radisys cites $5 million order from Asian customer

Radisys received an approximately $5 million order for its MediaEngine product from its large Asian customer, of which roughly $4 million is expected to be shipped in the fourth quarter of 2017, with the remainder of the order to be fulfilled in early 2018. In addition, Radisys announced that this customer recently made a cash payment of approximately $4.7 million against an existing accounts receivable balance.

“This order further validates the value-add of our MediaEngine solution as well as the strength of the relationship with our large Asian customer,” said Brian Bronson, Radisys President and Chief Executive Officer. “A portion of the order was factored into our outlook for the fourth quarter, and we now have increased confidence in the guidance range provided as part of our earnings call on November 7th.”

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Italy's TIM evaluates ADTRAN

TIM, Italy’s leading telco and ICT group, will evaluate ADTRAN’s SD-Access solution within its analysis of the advantages and the flexibility offered by SDN architectures applied to its ultra-broadband fiber access network.

ADTRAN said its Mosaic SD-Access solution enables service providers to better compete with emerging OTT providers operating at web-scale. ADTRAN will demonstrate the potential of an open, SDN-controlled network providing a reliable, scalable network that allows quick and efficient deployment of current and next-generation services.

“Operators in highly competitive environments are challenged to extend Gigabit services due to the time and cost that can be associated with traditional optical access technologies,” says Ronan Kelly, CTO EMEA and APAC, ADTRAN. “With SDN and NFV innovation, operators like TIM can significantly accelerate Gigabit Society goals by launching flexible Gigabit services that dramatically reduce subscriber disruption and time-to-market.”

“TIM is actively working on the evolution of the access network towards an open, easily upgradeable and programmable asset with greater operational efficiency, lower TCO and improved service automation,” comments Andrea Calvi, head of network innovation in TIM. “These are the features we plan to assess on ADTRAN’s solution as part of the ongoing collaboration on our way to achieving the European Commission’s Gigabit Society goals.”

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China Mobile and ZTE sign partnership agreement

China Mobile signed a strategic cooperation agreement with ZTE covering joint development of smart city, smart home, secure terminal service platform, smart next-generation network operation and maintenance, and next-generation network technologies. The two parties will be committed to co-building a healthy ecosystem as well as encouraging efforts for continuous development in the industry.

The agreement was signed at the China Mobile Global Partners Conference 2017.

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Verizon readies 5G fixed residential service launch in 2018

Verizon's first 5G application will be a fixed residential broadband service.

The first commercial launch will occur in Sacramento, California during the second half of 2018. Additional markets are also expected to launch in 2018.

Verizon did not disclose the performance characteristics of its 5G residential service but said it will provide unprecedented wireless speeds for Internet access.

Verizon estimates the market opportunity for initial 5G residential broadband services to be approximately 30 million households nationwide. The company also noted that the 5G residential rollout will not have a material impact on Verizon’s consolidated capital expenditures in 2018. CAPEX is expected to be consistent with the past several years.

“This is a landmark announcement for customers and investors who have been waiting for the 5G future to become a reality,” said Hans Vestberg, Verizon president of Global Networks and Chief Technology Officer. “We appreciate our strong ecosystem partners for their passion and technological support in helping us drive forward with 5G industry standards, for both fixed and mobile applications. The targeted initial launches we are announcing today will provide a strong framework for accelerating 5G’s future deployment on the global standards.”

Verizon, Qualcomm and Novatel to expedite 5G NR mmWave rollout

Monday, October 16, 2017  5G, 5GNR, Qualcomm, Verizon  No Comments

Verizon, Qualcomm Technologies, and Novatel Wireless, are pushing ahead with plans to expedite the rollout of 5G New Radio (NR) millimeter wave (mmWave) technology.  The companies have agreed to collaborate on over-the-air field trials based on the 5G NR Release-15 specifications being developed by 3GPP, with hopes of moving the mobile ecosystem towards faster validation and commercialization of 5G NR mmWave technologies at scale before the end of the decade.

The expedited plan call for an initial focus on 5G NR operation in 28 GHz and 39 GHz mmWave spectrum bands. The goal is to achieve robust multi-gigabit per second data rates with mobility at significantly lower latencies than today’s networks. Over-the-air trials are expected starting in 2018, that will be compliant with the first 3GPP 5G NR specification that will be part of Release 15. The trials will utilize 5G NR mmWave mobile test platforms from Qualcomm and will employ advanced 5G NR Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antenna technology with adaptive beamforming and beam tracking techniques.

Samsung and Cisco work with Verizon to implement 5G in Detroit

Saturday, May 13, 2017  #5G, Cisco, Samsung, Verizon  No Comments

Samsung Electronics America, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, and Cisco, in partnership with Verizon, announced the successful deployment of what is believed to be the first multi-vendor end-to-end 5G trial network in the field, specifically in the Ann Arbor suburb of metropolitan Detroit in Michigan.

The companies noted that earlier in the year, Verizon announced that it planned to conduct customer trials of 5G technology for home broadband service via fixed wireless access. Under this program, Verizon is planning to launch trials in five U.S. cities in the second quarter of 2017 and expects to be conducting pilot trials in a total of 11 markets by the middle of the year.

The partners stated that each trial location presents a unique set of test parameters, including in terms of equipment vendors, geographies, population density and demographics. Ann Arbor is the first location to address a multi-vendor deployment of 5G, leveraging a solution that includes a 5G virtualised packet core based on the Cisco Ultra Services Platform with Advanced Services and Samsung's virtual RAN (vRAN), combined with its 5G Radio base stations and 5G home routers, to enable the delivery of broadband services to trial customers.

Based on Verizon's 5G Technical Forum specification, the three companies have completed a series of network vendor interoperability tests (NVIOT) that demonstrated seamless interworking between core network, radio edge and user devices. The tests also served to demonstrate a core principle of next-generation network virtualisation via multi-vendor support.

The Verizon multi-vendor trial is designed to showcase the readiness of key 5G technologies and prepare the way for the deployment of commercial 5G networks in the future. The trial also demonstrates that service providers can implement 5G networks to address specific market requirements by selecting network infrastructure components from a range of vendors.

Early ecosystem development has become a core focus for 5G, with IT and telecom pioneers alike working to build alignment and stability around next-generation R &D. Verizon’s 5G Technical Forum, to which Cisco and Samsung are strong contributors, has set out to establish early direction for commercial 5G technologies and services, with the goal of establishing a body of experience that is already being used to inform global 5G standards development efforts and ensure a smooth transition to commercialization.

https://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=webcontent&articleId=1844370

https://news.samsung.com/us/samsung-cisco-team-verizon-deliver-first-interconnected-multi-vendor-5g-trials/

• Verizon announced in February plans to rollout 5G pre-commercial services to select customers in 11 U.S. markets by mid-2017. The company noted that the trials would encompass hundreds of cell sites and several thousand customer locations, with pilot markets to include Ann Arbor, Atlanta, Bernardsville (New Jersey), Brockton (Massachusetts), Dallas, Denver, Houston, Miami, Sacramento, Seattle and Washington DC.

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Nokia denies Juniper acquisition rumor

Nokia denied published rumours of a pending acquisition bid for Juniper Networks. Nokia issued the following statement:

"Nokia is not currently in talks with, nor is it preparing an offer for, Juniper Networks related to an acquisition of that company."

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Ribbon Communications takes off -- Sonus + GenBand

Sonus Networks has officially changed its name to Ribbon Communications following its merger with GENBAND.

The ticker symbol of the company’s common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market is now “RBBN”.

“Our new name is not just about connecting point “a” to point “b”. It reflects our strong desire to continue moving the real-time communications industry forward by dramatically improving the communications experience and encompassing the ability to ensure our contact points are elegantly and seamlessly simple to create, manage and monitor. Ribbon Communications serves as the connection across all of our worlds,” stated Ray Dolan, the company's CEO.

Mr. Dolan added, "With humans more connected in so many different ways than ever before, the real-time communications we rely on must become a more comprehensive, engaging, and all-encompassing experience. Additionally, the new Ribbon Communications name reflects the unparalleled suite of real-time communications software solutions that the combined company brings to the market. Ribbon Communications is ready to deliver the flexibility, security and stability that today's digital life requires, enabling better business outcomes."

Sonus and GENBAND to merge to create company with $680m annual revenue

Wednesday, May 24, 2017  Genband, Mergers, Sonus  No Comments

Sonus Networks, a provider of solutions that enable secure and intelligent cloud communications, and GENBAND, a supplier of carrier and enterprise network transformation and real-time communications solutions, announced a definitive agreement under which the two companies will combine to create a major next-generation communications networking company.

Under the terms of the agreement, Sonus and GENBAND shareholders will each own approximately 50% of the combined entity. Based on the closing price of Sonus' common stock on May 22nd of $7.79 and estimated net cash at the time of closing, the transaction values the combined company at an enterprise value of approximately $745 million.

On closing, Sonus and GENBAND will combine into a newly formed holding company. Each Sonus shareholder will receive one share of common stock in the combined company for each existing Sonus share held; the new company will issue approximately 50 million shares to GENBAND's equity owners, plus $22.5 million in the form of an unsecured note. The combined company will have an estimated net cash position of $40 to $45 million.

The transaction will combine Sonus' established software-based real-time communication virtualisation, cloud-based SIP and 4G/VoLTE and security solutions with GENBAND's network modernisation, unified communications and mobility and embedded communications solutions. Together, Sonus and GENBAND will be better positioned to enable the transformation to IP and cloud-based networks for service providers and enterprise customers.

The combined company will have a global sales footprint in 27 countries, a customer base that includes may Tier 1 carriers, with 67% of combined 2016 revenue for the two companies generated in the U.S. and Canada, 18% in EMEA, 11% in APAC and 4% in CALA.

The two companies' combined revenue and EBITDA in 2016 would have been approximately $680 million and $50 million, respectively, excluding synergies. The transaction is expected to be significantly accretive to Sonus' earnings per share in 2018. The combined company expects to realise annual cost synergies of $40 to $50 million by the end of 2018.

The CEO of the combined company will be Raymond Dolan, current president and CEO of Sonus; David Walsh, current CEO and chairman of GENBAND, will oversee the Kandy business, GENBAND's cloud communications platform as a service (CPaaS). Daryl Raiford, current CFO of GENBAND, will serve as CFO of the combined company. The board of directors of the combined company will comprise five representatives designated by GENBAND and four representatives designated by Sonus.

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Ericsson’s Mobility Report finds 65% year-over-year growth in mobile data traffic

There are two must-read, vendor-led research market reports. The first is Cisco’s Visual Network Index series, including its mobility edition.  The second is the Ericsson Mobility Report, the latest edition of which was released earlier this week. Both companies base their reports on actual data traffic provided by their service provider customers worldwide. Both companies also extrapolate current trends to provide forecasts for several years into the future. In the past, it has been our view that the Ericsson predictions have tended to be on the conservative side, whereas the Cisco’s predictions have tended to be a bit rosier. 

For instance, in our view, Ericsson’s LTE forecast from several years back appeared predicted a long life for 3G networks in Europe. Mostly, this has turned out to be true, although it seemed that the early LTE success in the Japanese and the U.S. markets would be easily replicated in Western Europe.

This year, the Ericsson Mobility Report turned up one number that is anything but conservative:  on a global basis, in Q3 2017, data traffic grew around 10 percent quarter-on-quarter and around 65 percent year-on-year.  The volume of traffic of course always rises year-over-year, but it is significant that the growth rate has been rising even as smartphones have reached the saturation point in developed markets some time ago. The driving factor is video consumption on mobiles.

Ericsson finds that North America continues to have the highest usage of mobile data.Here traffic is expected to reach 7.1 GigaBytes (GB) per month per smartphone by the end of the year and increase to 48GB by the end of 2023. Western Europe has the second highest usage, with traffic set to reach 4.1GB by the end of 2017 and 28GB by the end of 2023.

But surely the global growth rate for mobile data consumption has been boosted by Reliance Jio’s attack on the Indian market with unlimited data. Ericsson calculates that average mobile data usage in India will reach 3.9GB per month per smartphone at the end of 2017 – and remember that Jio still has only a fraction of the Indian population as subcribers.  There are ten other major operators in the battle. The Ericsson forecast call for data traffic to reach18GB per month per smartphone in India in 2023.

Globally, Ericsson is predicting that total mobile data traffic for all devices is anticipated to increase by 8 times during the forecast period, reaching around 110EB per month by the end of 2023. 

Much more is online. The Ericsson Mobility Report is recommended reading for anyone tracking the development of the networking business.

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Sprint adds PoP at key carrier hotel in Denver

Sprint announced the addition of a new Point of Presence (PoP) at 910Telecom in Denver, Colorado.  Sprint can now provide access to Global MPLS and Dedicate IP customers at up to 100G at 910Telecom.

Sprint said the deployment is part of its strategy to expand in major carrier hotels to broaden its network and provide access at the lowest cost.

“910Telecom is the most well connected data center in the Denver area and was one of our high-priority sites when we started our strategy to expand the number of carrier hotels where we have a PoP,” said Mike Fitz, President and General Manager of the Sprint Global Wireline Business Unit. “As we continue to aggressively expand our network, deploying in a major carrier hotel 910Telecom allows us to provide access to our global all-IP network to a significant number of customers.”

In 2016, Sprint added 52 U.S. IP/MPLS nodes.  This year, Sprint will add more than 70 nodes, expanding to more than 220 U.S. IP/MPLS nodes. Additionally, Sprint has built hundreds of Network-to-Network Interconnections (NNI) with more than 50 ILEC and cable providers, creating an Ethernet access footprint that blankets the United States.

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Microsemi acquires Vectron's timing business

Microsemi has acquired the high-performance timing business of Vectron International, a Knowles company, for $130 million, excluding working capital adjustments.

Vectron specializes in frequency control, sensor and hybrid solutions using the very latest techniques in both bulk acoustic wave (BAW) and surface acoustic wave (SAW)-based designs from DC to microwave frequencies. Products include crystals and crystal oscillators; frequency translators; clock and data recovery products; SAW filters; SAW oscillators; crystal filters; SAW and BAW based sensors and components used in telecommunications, data communications, frequency synthesizers, timing, navigation, military, aerospace, medical and instrumentation systems.

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Box posts Q3 revenue of $129 million, up 26% yoy

Box reported Q3 revenue of $129.3 million, an increase of 26% from the third quarter of fiscal 2017. Deferred revenue as of October 31, 2017, was $253.0 million, an increase of 31% from October 31, 2016.

The GAAP net loss per share, basic and diluted, in the third quarter of fiscal 2018 was $0.32 on 135 million shares outstanding, compared to a GAAP net loss per share of $0.30 in the third quarter of fiscal 2017 on 128 million shares outstanding.

Box's paying customer base has grown to 80,000 businesses, including new or expanded deployments with leading organizations such as Conair, Foster Farms, HGST, LionsGate, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Box using Azure is generally available -- the first product milestone in the expanded partnership between Box and Microsoft, which also enables both companies to co-sell Box offerings that leverage Azure.

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AWS PrivateLink now extends to 3rd party SaaS apps

Earlier this month, Amazon Web Services introduced the ability for customers to access AWS services over AWS PrivateLink. Now AWS is extending PrivateLink to let users access third-party SaaS applications from their Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) without exposing their VPC to the public Internet. Traffic stays within the AWS network, reducing threat vectors such as “brute force” and distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Services supported on AWS PrivateLink are delivered using private IP connectivity and security groups, and function like services that are hosted directly on a customer’s private network.

AWS PrivateLink also lets users connect services across different accounts and VPCs within their own organizations, significantly simplifying their internal network architecture.

AWS PrivateLink is now generally available in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), US West (N. California), EU (London), EU (Ireland), EU (Frankfurt), Canada (Central), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Tokyo) and South America (São Paulo) regions.

“We have seen a growing desire from our enterprise customers to move from traditional on-premises applications to SaaS offerings hosted in the cloud. However, we have also heard that adoption of many SaaS offerings is limited by customers’ desire not to expose their data to the Internet. With AWS PrivateLink, customers now have a way to access third-party services over their dedicated AWS network,” said Matt Garman, Vice President, Compute Services, AWS. “With AWS PrivateLink, it has never been easier or more secure for our customers to use SaaS applications within their AWS environment.”

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AWS launches its own security service with Amazon GuardDuty

Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced a fully managed intelligent threat detection service for protecting their AWS accounts and workloads by continuously monitoring account activity for malicious or unauthorized behavior.

Amazon GuardDuty continuously applies machine learning to identify any events that fall outside the normal patterns. AWS said it is using both proprietary, AWS-developed threat intelligence sources and industry-leading third-party sources.

Amazon GuardDuty can send all findings to AWS CloudWatch Events and supports API endpoints through the AWS SDK, allowing for interoperability with third-party solutions such as Alert Logic, Evident.io, Palo Alto Networks, Rapid7, Redlock, Splunk, Sumo Logic, and Trend Micro.

“Customers often tell us that the best way we can help them stay secure is to give them smarter tools that make it easier to get security right,” said Stephen Schmidt, Chief Information Security Officer, Amazon Web Services. “We designed Amazon GuardDuty to be so simple and cost effective that turning it on would be an easy choice for every AWS customer, regardless of their security expertise or the existing security services they use. Amazon GuardDuty intelligently identifies hard-to-detect threats that might slip through the cracks of other security products and easily scales to meet the needs of any organization, whether they have two AWS accounts or two thousand.”

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Turner picks AWS to reengineer digital content distribution

Turner, which is the  Time Warner global entertainment, sports, and news company, has selected AWS as its preferred cloud provider.

Turner's properties include TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, CNN, NCAA, and NBA.

Turner is reengineering its end-to-end media supply chain on AWS.  The company is looking for a more secure, cost effective, and elastic way to distribute digital content to its customers.

The effort includes moving decades of content to the cloud—including a 15-petabyte-sized library of archived CNN videos—and is using AWS for a wide variety of services spanning compute, storage, networking, databases, developer tools, analytics, and machine learning. Turner plans to use ML to analyze and extract video metadata to make decisions about how to best optimize content delivery systems for more personalized viewer experiences, and better inform advertisers, content creators, and media research analysts on viewing trends.

“We’re going through the largest technology transformation since Ted Turner started the company, and the advancements we’re making today are enabling us to reimagine what television can be for our viewers,” said Jeremy Legg, Chief Technology Officer at Turner. “We’re changing our broadcast technology stack to a fully digital, cloud environment built on AWS, which will enable us to adapt to new video delivery models, as well as provide our viewers with more personalized content and advertisements. Our relationship with AWS and the services they provide are essential to our success. Given that we reach over 80 percent of adults and 70 percent of millennials every month, we needed a cloud provider that has the ability to support massive-scale media businesses like ours which often have spikes in demand across our diverse portfolio.”

Other media companies on AWS include Amazon Video, AOL, BBC, Channel 4, C-SPAN, Daily Voice, Discovery Communications, Flipboard, GoPro, Guardian News & Media, Hearst Corporation, Hulu, LIONSGATE, NDTV, Netflix, News International, News UK, Newsweek, PBS, Simfy Africa, Sony DADC, SoundCloud, Spotify, Time Inc., and United Daily News.

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Google plans cloud data center in Hong Kong

Google Cloud Platform will open a new data center region in Hong Kong in 2018.

The GCP Hong Kong region is being designed for high availability, launching with three zones to protect against service disruptions.

Hong Kong will be the sixth GCP region in Asia Pacific, joining the recently launched Mumbai, Sydney, and Singapore regions, as well as Taiwan and Tokyo.

Google says it has other Asia Pacific investments in the works.

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Samsung begins 10nm FinFET Process Production

Samsung Electronics Co. announced mass production of System-on-Chip (SoC) products built on its second generation 10-nanometer (nm) FinFET process technology.

The new 10LPP (Low Power Plus)process technology boasts up to 10-percent higher performance or 15-percent lower power consumption compared to its first generation 10nm process technology, 10LPE (Low Power Early).

Samsung also announced that its newest manufacturing line, S3, located in Hwaseong, Korea, is ready to ramp up production of process technologies including 10nm and below.

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Western Digital backs RISC-V

Western Digital pledged its support for the RISC-V, an open and scalable compute architecture.

The company plans to transition future core, processor, and controller development to the RISC-V architecture.

Western Digital currently consumes over one billion processor cores on an annual basis across its product portfolio. The transition will occur gradually and once completely transitioned, Western Digital expects to be shipping two billion RISC-V cores annually. The company is committed to advancing RISC-V technology for use in mission-critical applications so that it can be deployed in its products.

Western Digital recently completed a strategic investment in Esperanto Technologies, a developer of high-performance, energy-efficient computing solutions based on the open RISC-V architecture. Esperanto, which is headquartered in Mountain View, California, includes a seasoned team of experienced processor and software engineers with the goal of making RISC-V the architecture of choice for compute-intensive applications, such as machine learning.

“Western Digital is a leader in storage products and technologies, and we are now expanding that leadership to open, data-centric compute architectures,” said Mike Cordano, president and chief operating officer, Western Digital. “RISC-V will allow the entire industry to realize the benefits of next-generation architectures while also enabling us to create more purpose-built devices, platforms and storage systems for Big Data and Fast Data applications. We are moving beyond just storing data to now creating entire environments that will enable users to realize the value and

https://riscv.org

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Toshiba samples 64-Layer, 3D Flash Memory

Toshiba Memory Corporation started sampling Universal Flash Storage (UFS) devices based on 64-layer, BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory. Four capacities are offered 32GB, 64GB, 128GB and 256GB.

Target applications include mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, and augmented and virtual reality systems.

The devices boast a theoretical interface speed of up to 5.8Gbps per lane (x2 lanes = 11.6Gbps) while also suppressing any increase in power consumption. Sequential read and write performance of the 64GB device are 900MB/s and 180MB/s, while the random read and write performance are around 200% and 185% better, respectively, than those of previous generation devices

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Zayo to acquire Spread Networks for $127 million

Zayo agreed to acquire Spread Networks for $127 million in cash.

Spread Networks is a privately-owned telecommunications provider that owns and operates a 825-mile, high-fiber count long-haul route connecting New York and Chicago. The company currently serves more than 60 customers. Of the 432 fibers available on the route, less than 25 percent are utilized today and the acquisition provides Zayo with overpull rights and additional conduit. The route connects 755 Secaucus Rd. in Secaucus, NJ and 1400 Federal Blvd. in Carteret, NJ to 350 Cermak Rd. in Chicago, IL, with additional connectivity enabled by Zayo’s existing network.

Zayo said the deal provides it with the lowest latency and most direct fiber route between New York and Chicago and additional physical path diversity. Zayo will use the acquired assets to provide a low-latency wavelength route from Seattle to New York.

“Spread constructed this route to provide the fastest possible speed on the shortest possible route,” said Jack Waters, CTO and president of Fiber Solutions at Zayo. “This asset is an outstanding complement to our existing network, providing customers with low-latency options to and from the country’s leading centers of finance and commerce. Given the relative simplicity of the business, this will be a straightforward integration with meaningful, near-term synergies.”

Spread Networks Cuts Chicago-New York Latency to 12.98 Milliseconds Roundtrip

Thursday, October 04, 2012  100G, Spread Networks  No Comments

Spread Networks  announced further performance improvements on its low-latency Chicago-to-NYC fiber route. Spread's flagship Ultra Low Latency Chicago-New York Dark Fiber service is now operational at a roundtrip latency of 12.98 milliseconds roundtrip, a 100 microsecond improvement from Spread's previous 13.1 millisecond offering.  

Spread's Ultra Low Latency Chicago-New York Wavelength service promises operational round-trip latency between Chicago and New York below 14.1 milliseconds roundtrip when it becomes operational on October 12th.  Spread said these latency improvements to the ULL Wavelength service follow up immediately upon its recent deployment of 100G technology on the same ULL Wavelength service. 

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Thoma Bravo to privatize Barracuda Networks for $1.6B

Thoma Bravo, a leading private equity firm, will acquire all shares of Barracuda Networks (NYSE: CUDA) in an all-cash transaction valued at $1.6 billion. Barracuda shareholders will receive $27.55 in cash for each share of Barracuda common stock they hold. The price represents a premium of 22.5 percent to the company's 10-day average stock price prior to Nov. 27, 2017, of $22.49.

Barracuda supplies appliance and cloud-enabled solutions for data protection.

"We believe the proposed transaction offers an opportunity for us to accelerate our growth with our industry-leading security platform that's purpose-built for highly distributed, diverse cloud and hybrid environments. We will continue Barracuda's tradition of delivering easy-to-use, full-featured solutions that can be deployed in the way that makes sense for our customers," said BJ Jenkins, chief executive officer of Barracuda. "Thoma Bravo has an excellent history of investing in growing security businesses, and this transaction speaks to the value and strength of Barracuda's security platform, which helps customers protect and manage their networks, applications, and data. I expect that our employees, customers, and partners will benefit from this partnership."

"Barracuda is a proven industry leader, consistently bringing powerful, comprehensive solutions to customers in an increasingly prevalent, hostile, and complex threat environment," said Seth Boro, a managing partner at Thoma Bravo. "We believe that Barracuda is at the forefront of innovation in several highly strategic areas of the cybersecurity market and are excited to be the company's partner in the next phase of its growth."

Thoma Bravo to Acquire Majority Stake in DigiCert

Sunday, August 30, 2015  Mergers And Acquisitions, Security, SSL, Thoma Bravo  No Comments

Thoma Bravo, a leading private equity investment firm, agreed to acquire a majority interest in DigiCert from TA Associates, another private equity firm currently holding the majority share. Financial terms were not disclosed. DigiCert is a global SSL Certificate Authority (CA) and the leading provider of trusted certificate management solutions.  The company provides its digital certificates to over 115,000 customers in more than 180 countries,...

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Thoma Bravo Completes Acquisition of Riverbed

Sunday, April 26, 2015  Privatization, Riverbed  No Comments

Thoma Bravo, a leading private equity investment firm, and Teachers’ Private Capital, the private investor department of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, completed their previously announced acquisition of Riverbed Technology. The acquisition is valued at approximately $3.5 billion, with Riverbed stockholders receiving $21.00 per share in cash. “With this acquisition now complete, our team can begin to move forward with the strategic initiatives...

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Blue Coat to be Acquired by Bain Capital from Thoma Bravo

Wednesday, March 11, 2015  Blue Coat, IPO, Mergers And Acquisitions, Privatization  No Comments

Bain Capital, one of the world’s foremost private investment firms, will acquire Blue Coat Systems from Thoma Bravo for approximately $2.4 billion in cash. Blue Coat, which is based in Sunnyvale, California, provides on-premise, hybrid and cloud-based solutions for protecting web connectivity, combating advanced threats and responding to security breaches. Bain Capital indicated a possible return to the public market for Blue Coat. “We are excited...

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NTT Com plans data center expansion in Africa

NTT Communications (NTT Com) is looking to deliver its Nexcenter data center service in the African continent.

The service will be delivered through Internet Solutions of South Africa, which is a subsidiary of Dimension Data and NTT Communications.

The first colocation services will launch in December of this year under the Nexcenter brand at Internet Solutions’ Parklands data center in Johannesburg. The data center will deliver globally-standardized Nexcenter service meeting more than 300 standards governing facilities and operations.

The Nexcenter certified “Parklands Data Center” is located in the heart of Johannesburg’s main business district. The building houses approximately 1,900 square meters of server room facilities over four floors, and provides 1.3 MW of standby battery power. Emergency generators provide power redundancy to a 2N level, and have a fuel capacity that allows for 45 hours of uninterrupted operation. The air conditioning facilities offer cooling system redundancy to N+1 level, and the building’s network topology incorporates an internet exchange (IX) point, improving routing efficiency and fault tolerance. The facility is built to meet TIA942 Tier 3, SOC2 Type2, Type1 and ISO27001 standards. It is planned to expand the building through the addition of a new tower wholly designed by the facility standards of Nexcenter™ to provide 570 high density racks with 2.2 MW power in July 2018.

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MEF17: The SD-WAN market is opening up

SD-WAN is no longer a conversation just for network operators - the market is opening to a range of new customer experiences, says Mary Stanhope or iMarket2.  There are new opportunities for cloud providers, application providers, and IoT provider to offer SD-WAN to their users.

See video:  https://youtu.be/tF-MipHBE1Q

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McAfee to Acquire Skyhigh for CASB

McAfee agreed to acquire Skyhigh Networks, a start-up offering a cloud access security broker (CASB), for an undisclosed sum.

Skyhigh Networks, which is based in Campbell, California, provides its clients with visibility into content, context, and user activity across SaaS, PaaS and IaaS environments. Skyhigh Networks CEO Rajiv Gupta will join McAfee CEO Chris Young’s leadership team to run McAfee’s new cloud business unit.


“Skyhigh Networks had the foresight five years ago to realize that cybersecurity for cloud environments could not be an impediment to, or afterthought of, cloud adoption,” Young stated. “They pioneered an entirely new product category called cloud access security broker (CASB) that analysts describe as one of the fastest growing areas of information security investments of the last five years – where Skyhigh continues to innovate and lead. Skyhigh’s leadership in cloud security, combined with McAfee’s security portfolio strength, will set the company apart in helping organizations operate freely and securely to reach their full potential.”

“Becoming part of McAfee is the ideal next step in realizing Skyhigh Networks’ vision of not simply making the cloud secure, but making it the most secure environment for business,” Gupta said. “McAfee will provide global scale to further accelerate Skyhigh’s growth, with the combined company providing leading technologies and solutions across cloud and endpoint security – categories Skyhigh and McAfee respectively helped create, and the two architectural control points for enterprise security.”

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ZTE wins biggest share of China Unicom's IMS project

ZTE Corporation was awarded 47% of the total contract for China Unicom’s IMS project -- the biggest share of the whole project.

According to the bidding plan, China Unicom selects top 3 vendors of the ranking as its partners to deploy IMS networks in various provinces for services like VoLTE, one number with multiple devices, VoWiFi, and 5G voice services, etc.

ZTE also noted that it won a 70% share of China Mobile’s CM-IMS network VoLTE project in 2015.

To date, ZTE has deployed over 280 IMS commercial/trial projects, including over 70 vIMS projects around the world.

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AWS rolls out video production toolset

Amazon Web Services is rolling out a new set of tool to help content developers to create scalable video offerings in the cloud.

AWS Elemental Media Services include the following individual services:

• AWS Elemental MediaConvert: Format and compress video-on-demand content for delivery to virtually any playback device, with high-quality video transcoding and broadcast-level features.
• AWS Elemental MediaLive: Encode broadcast-grade live video for televisions or connected devices. Quickly stand up broadcast channels or live events and deliver them reliably to your viewers.
• AWS Elemental MediaPackage: Prepare and protect live video streams for delivery to Internet devices with rich playback experience features such as start-over TV.
• AWS Elemental MediaStore: Deliver video from high-performance storage optimized for media.
• AWS Elemental MediaTailor: Insert targeted advertising into your video without sacrificing quality to increase viewer engagement and boost revenues.

AWS said its goal with these new Elemental Media Services is to eliminate the need to procure expensive equipment for video data centers.

“For the better part of six decades, professional-grade video workflows were limited to a few major industry players who could afford to build and maintain customized infrastructure that would be updated only once or twice each decade,” said Alex Dunlap, General Manager at AWS Elemental. “These companies spent a great deal of time, money, and focus operating infrastructure with resources that could have been better spent creating great content and viewer experiences. We built AWS Elemental Media Services to let customers focus on delivering top-quality video reliably to any device, everywhere, without the undifferentiated heavy lifting of managing infrastructure.”

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Trend Micro acquires Immunio and for hybrid cloud security

Trend Micro announced the acquisition of Montréal, Canada-based Immunio, a pioneer in real-time web application security (RASP), providing automatic detection and protection against application security vulnerabilities. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Immunio's mission is to make truly effective real-time web protection technology easily available and widely deployed, and by doing so, stop the biggest source of breached data records.

“We are excited to acquire Immunio’s application protection technology, their team of application security experts and their customers,” said Bill McGee, SVP and GM of Hybrid Cloud Security at Trend Micro. “Technology changes, like cloud computing and container platforms, are enabling faster application development. Immunio’s run-time application security allows our customers to increase protection against software vulnerabilities within the applications they are building.”

Trend Micro is also enhancing its container-specific security capabilities, by supporting container image scanning, which allows security issues to be identified and resolved prior to production release. Customers will be able to scan images in the container registry so that development teams can fix issues prior to deployment and apply run-time protection capabilities based on findings from the imaging.

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Aquantia posts Q3 revenue of $26.7 million, up 19% yoy

Aquantia reported Q3 revenue of $26.7 million, an increase of 6.2 percent compared to $25.2 million in the prior quarter, and an increase of 18.6 percent compared to $22.5 million in the third quarter 2016. Total revenue by market for the third quarter 2017 consisted of Data Center revenue of $14.9 million, Enterprise Infrastructure revenue of $10.8 million, Access revenue of $0.9 million, and Automotive revenue of $0.1 million.

Gross profit for the third quarter 2017 was $15.1 million, or 56.5 percent of revenue, compared to $14.3 million, or 56.6 percent of revenue, in the prior quarter, and $13.4 million, or 59.5 percent of revenue, in the third quarter 2016.

Third quarter 2017 net loss was $1.0 million, or $0.21 per basic share, compared to second quarter 2017 net loss of $1.3 million, or $0.29 per basic share, and third quarter 2016 net income of $88,000, or $0.00 per diluted share.

“We are very pleased to have completed our initial public offering on November 3rd, raising more than $65 million for the company,” said Faraj Aalaei, Chairman and CEO of Aquantia. “In the third quarter, we delivered record quarterly revenue. We believe this is a testament to our products and that Aquantia’s leadership in ICs for Multi-Gig Ethernet connectivity in multiple markets gives our customers confidence to build their networks on our technology.”

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