Verizon Rolls Pre-Commercial 5G in 11 U.S. Markets

Verizon plans to rollout 5G pre-commercial services to select customers in 11 U.S. markets by mid-2017.

Verizon describes its 5G build as the largest 5G proving ground in the world, encompassing several hundred cell sites that cover several thousand customer locations. Pilot markets include: Ann Arbor, Atlanta, Bernardsville (NJ), Brockton (MA), Dallas, Denver, Houston, Miami, Sacramento, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

"Ericsson's partnership with Verizon in rolling out 5G customer trials is accelerating the global 5G ecosystem," said Rima Qureshi, Head of Region North America, Ericsson. "These end-to-end solutions are a key step for preparing Verizon's network for commercial deployment with different 5G scenarios and use cases."

"The tremendous progress we have made with Verizon in commercializing 5G represents our companies' mutual focus on delivering the highest level of innovation to our customers," said Woojune Kim, Vice President, Next Generation Business Team, Samsung Electronics. "The 5G systems we are deploying will soon provide wireless broadband service to homes, enabling customers to experience cost-competitive, gigabit speeds that were previously only deliverable via fiber."

"5G technology innovation is rapidly evolving," said Adam Koeppe, Vice President, Network Planning at Verizon. "Network density is increasing to meet the demands of customers, and following the FCC's aggressive action on 5G spectrum, the time is right to deliver the next generation of broadband services with 5G."

Verizon's 5GTF ecosystem partners include Ericsson, Intel, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and Samsung.

http://www.verizon.com

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ARRIS to Acquire Ruckus Wireless and ICX Switch Business for $800M from Brocade

ARRIS agreed to acquire Brocade Communication Systems' Ruckus Wireless and ICX Switch business for $800 million in cash, plus the additional cost of unvested employee stock awards, following the closing of Broadcom's acquisition of Brocade.

ARRIS expects the acquisition to be accretive to its Non-GAAP earnings per share in the first 12 months. The deal is contingent on Broadcom closing its acquisition of Brocade, previously announced on November 2, 2016 and approved by Brocade shareholders on January 26, 2017. Broadcom presently expects to close the Brocade acquisition in its third fiscal quarter ending July 30, 2017.

ARRIS said the deal expands its leadership in converged wired and wireless networking technologies beyond the home into the education, public venue, enterprise, hospitality, and MDU segments.  ARRIS plans to establish a dedicated business unit within the company focused on innovative wireless networking and wired switching technology to address evolving and emerging needs across a number of vertical markets. The business unit will be led by current Ruckus COO, Dan Rabinovitsj.

"We are building upon our successful history of making investments that significantly grow our business and create value for our customers, employees, shareholders and partners," said Bruce McClelland, ARRIS CEO. "Driven by ever-growing demand for high-speed, reliable, and effortless connectivity, service providers and enterprises will continually invest in their wired and wireless networks. The next five years will see exciting changes as every service provider will become a wireless operator of some fashion. Enterprises and venues will upgrade their broadband networks to provide new innovative value-added services and faster, more seamless internet access."

"We have a history of partnering with Ruckus and the talented employees that created this powerful brand and platform. We are excited to welcome about 1,600 new employees and an extensive network of enterprise channel partners to the ARRIS family," added McClelland.

http://ir.arris.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=87823&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2248392

Brocade to Acquire Ruckus Wireless for $1.5 Billion

Monday, April 04, 2016  Brocade, Mergers And Acquisitions, Ruckus, Wi-Fi  No Comments

Brocade agreed to acquire Ruckus Wireless in a deal valued at approximately $1.5 billion, consisting of $6.45 in cash and 0.75 shares of Brocade common stock for each share of Ruckus common stock. Ruckus' wireless products add to Brocade's enterprise portfolio and will also significantly strengthen Brocade's strategic presence in the broader service provider space. Ruckus has over $370 million in annual revenue and over 1,000 employees w

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T-Mobile U.S. Deploys LTE-U

T-Mobile U.S. confirmed that it is now deploying LTE-U technology in its LTE network, following today’s FCC certification of equipment from strategic partners Ericsson and Nokia. The company anticipates introducing new network capabilities and devices for consumers this spring.

LTE- will enable T-Mobile customers to tap into the first 20 MHz of underutilized unlicensed spectrum on the 5GHz band and use it for additional LTE capacity. T-Mobile said it already has more capacity per subscriber than AT&T and Verizon, and the addition of LTE-U will only extend that lead and further improve the Un-carrier’s blazing-fast speeds. And, LTE-U will make it possible for T-Mobile to bring its forthcoming Gigabit LTE to more places across the country.

"T-Mobile’s network is second to none, with more capacity per customer than the Duopoly … and LTE-U will only accelerate our lead,” said Neville Ray, CTO at T-Mobile. “T-Mobile’s built a track record of introducing new innovations first, including deploying more LTE Advanced technologies than anyone in the US. All that innovation means one thing – a fantastic customer experience. That’s why T-Mobile customers are the most satisfied in US wireless!”

“We continue to push the boundaries of bringing new technologies in the unlicensed arena. Nokia is committed to working alongside T-Mobile to bring new solutions to market,” Ricky Corker, Nokia EVP and Head of North America said. “We stand ready to enhance T-Mobile’s leadership proposition and show what the future of mobile communications can be for Un-carrier customers."

http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage

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OVH Acquires Data Center in Oregon, Continuing U.S. Expansion

OVH announced its acquisition of a new data center facility in Hillsboro, Oregon. The name of the seller and terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Hillsboro data center will house about 80,000 servers in 112,500 square feet. The facility joins Vint Hill, Virginia as OVH's second US data center, with a third North American data center located in Canada.

OVH said the expansion enables it to support its more than one million customers and respond to the growing demand for outsourced digital infrastructures throughout the world.

OVH now has 23 data centers around the world in 11 countries, spanning four continents.

“For years, leading tech companies have been trying to figure out how to cool their data centers for less money,” said Pascal Jaillon, Vice President of Research & Development for OVH US. “Legacy data centers have been using expensive forced air conditioning to cool servers. OVH’s innovation in data center cooling is just the first of many that will be introduced in this growing market.”

https://www.ovh.com/us/discover

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Cisco Expands its DNA to enable Branch Network Virtualisation

Cisco has announced the introduction of new technologies designed to allow customers to virtualise and secure their networks leveraging its Digital Network Architecture (DNA).

Integrating network virtualisation and security functionality, Cisco is enhancing DNA with a new hardware platform and virtual network services that allow virtualisation to be extended to branch locations, as well as to customers' network perimeter and colocation centres. Cisco is also enabling software-defined segmentation across the entire network, from the network to the endpoint to the cloud, with full application visibility.

Utilising Cisco DNA, organisations are now able to extend network services such as routing and security to a diverse set of platforms across branch, campus and colocation sites and the public cloud.

Cisco is expanding its network virtualisation solutions portfolio in two key areas:

1. The Enterprise NFV platform, which increases flexibility for remote locations by virtualising the branch network, specifically with the Enterprise Network Compute System (ENCS 5400 Series), allowing network services such as routing, security and WAN optimisation to be extended to branch locations.

2. Virtualising the network perimeter via the Cisco Secure Agile Exchange solution that virtualises the network perimeter and extends it to colocation centres, allowing organizations to dynamically connect customers, employees and partners using on-demand, virtualised network services.

In addition, Cisco is also introducing new security features including:

1. Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE), which provides greater visibility and control of users and devices on the network, with the ability to define 'Defon' policy sets that allow customers to escalate their response to prolific threats.
    
2. Cisco TrustSec, enabling software-defined segmentation for isolation of attacks and to restrict the movement of threats in the network, offering integration with Cisco ACI, and claimed to make security policy changes 98% faster than traditional methods and an 80% reduction in operational efforts. 

Cisco also cited the results of a study conducted by research firm IDC into the adoption of digital-ready networks. Key findings include: over the next two years, 45% of organisations expect to achieve digital-ready network capabilities, three times the current adoption rate; companies that have invested in modern network capabilities are experiencing 2-3 times the rate of growth in revenue, customer retention and profit.

To help customers transition to digital-ready networks, Cisco is also introducing a series of new tools and services including network assessment tools and new DNA advisory services to help enterprises formulate a digital strategy.

https://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=press-release&articleId=1822128

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Diamanti Releases its Hyper-Converged Container Platform, Raises $18M

Diamanti (previously Datawise.io), a start-up based in San Jose, California, announced general availability of its Diamanti D10 hyper-converged container platform.

Diamanti said its platform enables enterprise IT organizations to deploy Docker containers in seconds with guaranteed service levels at a fraction of the cost of traditional data center infrastructure. The Diamanti D10 appliance ships pre-integrated with all of the container software, compute, networking and storage resources necessary to optimally deploy and operate high-performance containerized applications at production scale. Diamanti’s network and storage API contributions to popular Kubernetes open-source container orchestration software automate the container deployment process across all infrastructure resources, enabling production deployment in seconds versus days and weeks of manual approaches.

The company also announced the close of an $18 million Series B funding round to drive growth across product development, support, sales, and marketing, bringing the company’s total funding to more than $30 million. New investor Northgate Capital led the round, with additional investments from CRV, DFJ, Translink, and GSR Ventures.

“Modern enterprise container adopters are targeting data intensive applications,” said Jeff Chou, Diamanti CEO and co-founder. “Enterprises are delivering large-scale digital services in private and public clouds built around Docker containers faster than ever. These data-driven applications include real-time data pipelines and analytics that can overwhelm existing infrastructure built for monolithic virtualized applications. Serving this new class of agile digital services requires an operational model that brings predictable network and storage I/O service levels to workloads including Cassandra, MongoDB, and PostgreSQL across multiple environments as customers adopt varying hybrid cloud models.”

https://www.diamanti.com/

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Samsung Launches Exynos 9 Processor Built on 10nm FinFET

Samsung Electronics announced mass production of its Exynos 9 Series 8895 premium application processor (AP) produced in 10-nanometer (nm) FinFET process technology with improved 3D transistor structure.  The 10-nm FinFET process allows up to 27% higher performance while consuming 40% less power when compared to 14nm technology.

Samsung's new Exynos 9 Series 8895 is the first processor of its kind to embed a gigabit LTE modem that supports five carrier aggregation, or 5CA. It delivers data throughput at max.1Gbps (Cat.16) downlink with 5CA and 150Mbps (Cat.13) uplink with 2CA.

The Exynos 8895 is an octa-core processor, comprising of four of Samsung’s 2nd generation custom designed CPU cores for improved performance and power efficiency in addition to four Cortex®-A53 cores. With Samsung Coherent Interconnect (SCI) technology, the latest processor integrates a heterogeneous system architecture that allows faster computing for a wide range of applications such as artificial intelligence, and deep learning.

The Exynos 8895 also delivers unsurpassed multimedia experience with its powerful GPU and multi-format codec (MFC) as well as next level 3D graphic performance that minimizes latency for 4K UHD VR and gaming experience with ARM®’s latest Mali™-G71 GPU.

“In addition to being built on the most advanced 10nm FinFET process technology, the new Exynos 9 Series 8895 incorporates Samsung’s cutting-edge technologies including a 2nd generation custom CPU, gigabit LTE modem, and more,” said Ben Hur, Vice President of System LSI marketing at Samsung Electronics. “With industry leading technologies like VPU, the Exynos 8895 will drive the innovation of next generation smartphones, VR headsets, and automotive infotainment system.”

http://www.samsung.com

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cPacket Supports Distributed Wire-speed Monitoring and Analytics at 100G

cPacket Networks, a provider of next-generation network performance monitoring and analytics solutions, announced a new network monitoring solution that provides wire-speed network monitoring at 100 Gbit/s under any traffic condition.

The new cPacket Cx4100 solution is claimed to be the first to monitor the network at the wire, almost eliminating the risk of false positives or negatives and dropped packets, issues that can affect legacy systems such as packet brokers and packet capture NICs, which require backhauling of network traffic for analysis. The solution features cPacket's distributed architecture design, which enables monitoring to multiple points throughout the network.

The Cx4100 solution is designed to support monitoring for compliance, capacity planning and troubleshooting on high-speed networks and allows network engineers to monitor 100 Gbit/s links with millisecond resolution to enable capacity planning and provide wire-speed packet KPIs, as well as address regulatory monitoring requirements. The Cx4100 also allows scalable capture of selected packets to help speed troubleshooting and time-to-resolution.

cPacket's new Cx4100 solution also features:

1. High-performance spike detection (millisecond speeds at up to a thousand feeds) at 100 Gbit/s through hardware analytics.

2. Four 100 Gbit/s interfaces, with all interfaces supporting monitoring at wire-speed.

3. Nanosecond-precision timestamping, a key requirement for regulated environments.

4. Automated load balancing at rates from 100 Gbit/s down to 10 Gbit/s.

The Cx4100 is the latest member of cPacket's Integrated Monitoring Fabric, which includes cStor forensic storage for online storage and analytics; and includes the SPIFEE management dashboard providing a unified view for monitoring and managing 1 Gbit/s to 100 Gbit/s networks. The Cx4100 additionally incorporates RESTful APIs to facilitate integration with third-party automation solutions.

Separately, cPacket announced a next-generation NPM platform targeting 40 and 100 Gbit/s networks for monitoring and reporting network and application-related issues at wire-speed with nanosecond timestamping and millisecond accuracy. The solution can scale from 1 up to 100 Gbit/s and provides multi-hop analysis for multiple KPIs within the same context or a single KPI within multiple contexts.

https://www.cpacket.com/

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