ADTRAN expands ProCloud subscription services

ADTRAN, a supplier of next-generation open networking solutions, has announced the launch of its ProCloud UC offering based on technology from BroadSoft, a provider of cloud communications, collaboration and contact centre solutions,  and the expansion its ProCloud subscription services suite.

ProCloud UC

ADTRAN has added the BroadCloud call control platform to its ProCloud subscription services suite to enable managed service provider (MSP) partners to expand their cloud-based unified communications (UC) offerings. ADTRAN noted that it is amongst the first network infrastructure partners to be selected by BroadSoft as a provider of advanced voice and networking infrastructure solutions.

The ADTRAN ProCloud UC cloud-based solution offers an integrated bundle designed to simplify the process of launching and supporting business communications services such as mobility, instant messaging, HD audio and video calling, conferencing and collaboration.

The partnership between BroadSoft and ADTRAN is expected to represent the first of a number of open network alliances that will enable ADTRAN's partners to increase revenue leveraging best-of-breed networking and application services.

New ProCloud subscription services

ADTRAN also announced it is expanding its ProCloud subscription services suite to encompass four solution categories: ProCloud UC, ProCloud Security, ProCloud Analytics and ProCloud Network Management.

The ProCloud subscription services suite is designed to facilitate the delivery of managed services by combining advanced cloud-based business applications and removing the need to work with multiple vendors and platforms. The expanded offering includes the following over the top (OTT) applications:

1.         ProCloud UC, offered in partnership with BroadSoft (see above).

2.         ProCloud Security, delivered through collaboration with TitanHQ and featuring web filtering, a cloud-based content control solution, and spam filtering, a cloud-based malware solution.

3.         ProCloud Analytics, offering customer insights enabled by Purple, a cloud-based WiFi analytics solution that provides businesses with real-time behavioural and demographic information on guest network users.

4.         ProCloud Network Management.

Existing ProCloud subscription services include ProCloud WiFi and ProCloud LAN.
http://portal.adtran.com/web/page/portal/Adtran/wp_newsroom_newsreleases

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Telehouse Expands Cloud Interconnection to U.S.

Telehouse, a global provider of data centres, Internet exchanges and managed IT services, has announced the launch of Telehouse Cloud Link, which is currently available in the EMEA region, in the U.S.

Telehouse Cloud Link is a multi-cloud connectivity exchange that enables enterprises to manage access to multiple cloud services through a single, dedicated private connection.

Telehouse Cloud Link is designed to help customers simplify hybrid cloud infrastructures and accelerate data transfer between their network and cloud services by establishing direct, private connections to multiple cloud service providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, as well as network on-demand including Teleshous's own NYIIX and LAIIX.

Telehouse launched the Telehouse Cloud Link connectivity exchange in March, with availability due from April this year. The service was launched via an agreement with cloud connectivity service Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute, through a direct connection into the Telehouse London Docklands campus.

The availability of Microsoft ExpressRoute expands the connectivity available at Telehouse London Docklands, which provides a location for enterprises and service providers to build their hybrid IT solutions, and for cloud providers to host infrastructure.

In January, Telehouse announced it had been selected by UNIFI-IX, a new Internet exchange, to host its services across the London Docklands campus. UNIFI-IX was established in 2016 with the aim of creating a global network for the exchange of traffic, either locally or globally, via a single port of entry to the exchange. Members can also create private VLAN's across the network regardless of geographical location.

Telehouse owns and operates 48 data centres worldwide, including two data centres in New York at 85 Tenth Avenue in Manhattan and 7 Teleport Drive in Staten Island, New York, as well as a facility in California located in downtown Los Angeles at 626 Wilshire Blvd.
http://www.telehouse.com/2017/04/telehouse-launches-advanced-cloud-interconnection-solution-united-states/

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Telefonica selects Casa Systems Femto Cells

Casa Systems, a supplier of next-generation distributed and virtualised solutions for mobile, fixed broadband and cable access networks, announced that Telefónica Spain has selected it to supply 4G femto cells that will be deployed to improve in-building service and coverage for residential customers.

Telefónica serves around 349 million fixed, mobile and broadband commercial and residential accesses worldwide, and is seeking to increase the density of its mobile network to address growing demand resulting from new devices and applications. As part of this initiative it has selected 4G femto cells from Casa's Apex Ultra-Broadband 4G small cell solution offering.

By installing femto cells in its network, Telefónica can increase network capacity and availability for customers, as well as prepare for the future transition to the 5G.

Casa's end-to-end small cell solutions are complemented by the Axyom ultra-broadband software framework, which enables high-density transport and access concentration in a virtual multi-access edge-computing footprint located at the network edge. The solution provides support for both 3G/LTE and WiFi technology.

The Apex Ultra-Broadband small cells support 3G and 4G cellular, WiFi, LTE-A, 3.5 GHz CBRS and MuLTEFire access technologies, while the Axyom small cell manager provides a unified management framework designed to enable zero touch plug-and-play provisioning and autonomous optimisation to improve performance and help reduce opex.

These technologies combine with the virtual mobile EPC of the Axyom software framework to create an end-to-end mobile architecture designed to enhance mobile network performance and support the transition to 5G in the future.

In February at MWC Casa Systems announced the expansion of its mobile solutions portfolio to support the migration to providing 5G services. Casa's upgraded Apex small cells, Axyom small cell manager and virtual mobile EPC solutions, including S-GW, P-GW, MME and SAE-GW offerings, combine to create an end-to-end mobile architecture designed to meet the demands of 5G.

http://www.casa-systems.com/assets/press/17-04-12-Casa-Telefonica.pdf

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UK's CityFibre launches Gigabit City Projects

UK infrastructure provider CityFibre announced that it will shortly begin work on the deployment of an ultra-fast, fibre network in the towns of Slough and Maidenhead in Berkshire, to the west of London.

For the project, CityFibre partner, Berkshire-based IT and telecoms specialist BtL Communications, will connect businesses across the network to provide with access to Internet services with up to gigabit speeds. The project will entail lighting 38 km of fibre from the Slough Trading Estate to the town centre, with a further 10 km to be deployed across the neighbouring town of Maidenhead.

CityFibre noted that customers are already connected to its fibre networks in the nearby towns of Reading and Bracknell in Berkshire.

CityFibre announced in late March that as part of its roll-out in the Thames Valley, businesses in Reading and Bracknell were able to subscribe to services over its new all-fibre network, with the first customers connected to the network. Launched in late 2016, the new fibre network was delivered by CityFibre as part of its national initiative to deploy fibre in UK cities, with services provided via its partner BtL Communications.

CityFibre operates a national network in the UK and claims it has launched Gigabit City projects in 41 cities. The company offers a portfolio of lit and dark fibre services over a network that connects around 28,000 public sites, 7,800 mobile masts, 280,000 businesses and 4 million homes.

CityFibre states it has launched Gigabit City projects in the following UK cities and towns: Aberdeen; Bracknell; Bradford; Bristol; Coventry; Doncaster; Edinburgh; Glasgow; Huddersfield; Hull; Leeds; Maidenhead; Milton Keynes; Northampton; Peterborough; Reading; Rotherham; Sheffield; Slough; Southend-on-Sea; and York.
https://www.cityfibre.com/news/gigabit-city-status-set-supercharge-connectivity-slough-maidenhead/

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VMware to acquire Wavefront for Monitoring Technology

VMware, a major provider of cloud infrastructure and business mobility, announced an agreement to acquire Wavefront, developer of a metrics monitoring service for cloud and modern application environments based in Palo Alto, California, on undisclosed terms.

VMware noted that enterprises face growing challenges when monitoring applications, which comprise hundreds of microservices in containers with lifespans of seconds, across private and public clouds. To identify and resolve operational issues in dynamic cross-cloud environments, developers need new instrumentation for their applications and devops teams require advanced real-time analytics for their distributed systems to address problems before they impact the business.

Wavefront offers metrics monitoring designed to optimise clouds and modern applications by providing real-time operational insights based on millions of data points per second. Using the technology, operators and developers can interrogate real-time data streams to find ways to address issues, locate bottlenecks and test algorithms and models.

Provided as a cloud-hosted service, Wavefront ingests, stores, visualises and delivers alerts using streaming metric data from clouds and applications to help improve operational performance. Designed to scale to support the demands of large data centres, the service can measure, correlate and analyse across servers, devices, applications and end-users, as well as multiple public cloud and data centre attributes, SaaS, PaaS and IaaS environments and business metrics.

Wavefront's metrics monitoring capabilities will complement VMware's vRealize Operations platform for monitoring, troubleshooting and capacity planning across virtual environments. Through the combined offering, users will have a representation of their network, infrastructure and application environments utilising Wavefront with vRealize Network Insight, vRealize Operations and vRealize Log Insight.

Upon closing of the acquisition, which is expected to take place in the second quarter of this year, Wavefront will become part of the portfolio of VMware Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings. Additionally, VMware will leverage Wavefront's technology to advance the development of VMware Cross-Cloud Services, designed to help users manage and monitor modern application and their associated infrastructure across clouds.
http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases.html

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AT&T teams with NI on mmWave Channel Characterisation

NI, a provider of platform-based systems to engineers and scientists, announced collaboration with AT&T to deliver fast and accurate tools for 5G millimetre Wave (mmWave) channel characterisation.

NI noted that with mmWave frequencies set to feature in future 5G systems, having been identified by the FCC, 3GPP and other standardisation bodies for use in 5G mobile networks. As a result, there will be a requirement for tools that can measure channel performance to show how wireless signals are affected in a specific environment, for example, how signals reflect off, or are blocked by, objects such as trees and buildings.

This means that wireless channel characterisation is key for wireless researchers defining 5G technologies as they work to design next generation wireless networks. As a leading company in the development of 5G, AT&T is working with NI to create accurate models that will help it to map out where network equipment needs to be sited to provide customers with a quality mobile experience.

As part of this effort, AT&T has developed a channel sounder, named internally the Porcupine, which is believed to be the first product of its kind and is proprietary to AT&T. The channel sounder provides real-time channel parameter measurement and monitoring capability utilising an architecture based on NI's mmWave Transceiver System.

The solution was developed using the NI mmWave Transceiver System and LabVIEW design software, which enabled AT&T and NI to define and develop an advanced channel measurement system, with the PXIe and LabVIEW FPGA providing the bandwidth, data and signal processing capability needed to meet the requirements of mmWave testing for 5G.

The one-of-a-kind design is claimed to provide a number of advantages, including allowing angle-of-arrival (AoA) measurements that would typically take at least 15 minutes to be completed using pan-tilt units to be performed within 150 milliseconds, with results displayed in real-time.

The AT&T channel sounder is designed to capture channel measurements where all the data is acquired and processed in real-time, whereas other approaches capture raw data and post-process it to characterise the channel, while delivering one-measurement every 15 minutes. In contrast, the Porcupine can provide approximately 6,000 measurements over the same period.

AT&T noted that the real-time measurement capability can eliminate the need to repeat experiments or to adjust the equipment to take multiple measurements from one location. For example, the Porcupine allows the measurement of 5G mmWave frequencies via drive testing, which has not previously been possible.

http://www.ni.com/newsroom/release/ni-and-att-collaborate-on-one-of-worlds-fastest-mmwave-channel-sounders-for-5g/en/

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