FogHorn raises $30M for industrial IoT edge computing

FogHorn Systems, a start-up based in Mountain View, California, announced $30 million in Series B funding for its software stack designed for the industrial IoT (IIoT) edge computing segment.

FogHorn has built a complex event processing (CEP) - driven edge analytics software for on-premises edge computing. The software has a very small footprint enabling it to deliver real-time analytics to resource-constrained edge devices such as PLCs, gateways and industrial PCs. FogHorn recently enhanced its CEP platform with a new "Lightning ML" edge machine learning solution that can be used to train and execute machine learning algorithms and other advanced data science models on streaming sensor data. FogHorn says this facilitates the creation and iterative enhancement of “digital twins” and other sophisticated machine learning and AI models without the need to send all the sensor data to a cloud or data center for processing.

FogHorn's “edge intelligence” software targets industrial and commercial IoT application, such as complex machinery packed with sensors. For performance and cost reasons, FogHorn argues data from industrial equipment mostly should be processed locally and not sent to a distant cloud. On-premises computing provides better latency for near real-time feedback. It can also minimize the volume of data to be uploaded to the cloud. FogHorn's software is being used by OEMs and systems integrators. The company is also working directly with end customers in manufacturing, oil and gas, power and water, transportation, renewable energy, mining and agriculture, as well as Smart Building, Smart City and connected vehicle applications.

The new funding round was led by Intel Capital and Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures with new investor Honeywell Ventures and all previous investors participating, including Series A investors March Capital Partners, GE Ventures, Dell Technologies Capital, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Yokogawa Electric Corporation, Darling Ventures and seed investor The Hive. The company has raised $47.5 million to date.

“This major round of funding by many of the world’s largest and most innovative technology and industrial companies will enable FogHorn to continue its drive for industry-first innovation in the IIoT market segment,” said David C. King, CEO of FogHorn. “We have seen unprecedented interest from customers and partners in a huge variety of industries for advanced condition monitoring, predictive maintenance, asset performance management and process optimization solutions.”

• FogHorn is headed by David C. King (CEO), who previously co-founded AirTight Networks and served as its Chairman and CEO. Prior to AirTight, he served as Chairman, President and CEO of Proxim Inc., a pioneer in WLANs and the first publicly traded Wi-Fi company.

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FCC offers $76.9m advance to networks in Puerto Rico

The FCC will make available $76.9 million in emergency funding to help restore communications networks in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The action comes 2 weeks after Hurricane Maria devastated the islands, knocking out nearly all communications. As of October 04, 2017, 86.3% of cell sites remain out of service. In the U.S. Virgin Islands, 66.0% of cell sites are out of service, and 100% of cell sites in St. John are still out of service.

The FCC emergency funding actually draws upon funds designated for high-cost universal service support. Telecommunications carriers (ETCs) operating in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands who are already eligible for these funds may now choose a single advance payment of up to seven months of high-cost support to assist with their immediate needs and
anticipated large repair costs in restoring their communications networks.

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Ekinops acquires OneAccess

Ekinops, a leading supplier of next-generation optical network equipment based in Lannion, France, completed its previously-announced acquisition of OneAccess

France-based OneAccess, founded in 2001 and with around 350 staff, is a supplier of software and hardware platforms to telecom carriers and service providers serving large corporate and SME customers. The company claims nearly 130 telecom carriers as clients, including 29 in the global Top 100, and has four R&D centres, located in Velizy and Sophia Antipolis, France, Louvain, Belgium and Bangalore, India. In 2016, OneAccess generated revenue of Euro 58 million and EBITDA margin of 9.1%.

For its part, Ekinops mainly addresses second-tier carriers, many of which are in the U.S. market.

Ekinops said the deal strengthens its position as a major player in transport, Ethernet and corporate routing solutions for telecommunications networks. The combined company will have revenues of approximately 76 million euros and EBITDA margin of 6.3% (2016 proforma). The market capitalization of the new group amounts to approximately EUR 119 million (as of September 29, 2017).

Didier Brédy, Chief Executive Officer, said, “With the completion of this acquisition, Ekinops will be a stronger company, positioned for future growth. Our shared technological vision, strong software culture and significant commercial, geographic and product sets complementarity will enable us to create value for our customers, employees, and shareholders.”

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Mobile Market Update for India

The total number of wireless subscribers (GSM, CDMA & LTE) in India actually dipped slightly in July, from 1,186.84 million at the end of Jun-17 to 1,186.79 million at the end of Jul-17, according to the latest figures compiled by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) . The dip, which represents a monthly growth rate of -0.004%, was driven by the loss of about two million wireless subscriptions in rural areas. India’s urban centres continued to gain subscribers during July.

The highly unusual decline in mobile subscriptions comes after an extended period of rapid growth for mobile networks in India.  Although one month is too short of a period to draw any hard conclusions about the future growth in mobile subscriptions for the nation, we know that the dip coincides with economic turmoil brought about by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s currency and tax reforms among other factors. India’s macro economic indicators have been pointing down for a while, penetration rates have reached saturation levels in many markets, and the disruptive entrance of Reliance Jio perhaps are all taking a toll on the telecoms sector.

TRAI reports that the wireless tele-density(%) in India declined from 92.12 at the end of Jun-17 to 92.03 at the end of Jul-17. The urban wireless tele-density increased from 167.97 at the end of Jun-17 to 168.21 at the end of Jul-17, however rural wireless tele-density declined from 57.31 to 57.04 during the same period.

Wireline subscribers declined from 24.00 million at the end of Jun-17 to 23.92 million at the end of Jul-17, representing a decrease of 0.08 million lines.

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Uniserver deploys Cisco Virtual Topology System in its data centre

Uniserver, a Netherlands-based cloud hosting provider, has deployed Cisco Virtual Topology System (VTS), a standards-based, open software-overlay management and provisioning system for network provisioning of its virtual and physical infrastructure. The goal is greater programmability and accelerated provisioning of its data center network fabric.

Cisco said its Virtual Topology System brings increased simplicity and a repeatable process for high-quality, error-free provisioning. It supports multivendor infrastructure and operational systems like OpenStack and vCenter.

“Our focus is to help service providers such as Uniserver, as well as enterprise operations teams, reduce network configuration complexity and enhance the agility of their multi-tenant cloud environments,” said Jonathan Davidson, SVP/GM Service Provider Networking, Cisco. “This is in line with their mission of simplifying complex IT, and we are pleased to help enable Uniserver provide quality of service to its partners through the adoption of this technology. We are committed to continuing to support them in their network transformation journey.”

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Mellanox announces software-defined SmartNIC adapters based on ARM

Mellanox Technologies announced its BlueField family of software-defined SmartNIC adapters, designed for scale-out server and storage applications.

The new adapters leverage embedded ARM processor cores based on the company's BlueField system-on-chip processors and accelerators in the network interface card (NIC).

Key features of the BlueField intelligent adapters:

• 2 network ports of Ethernet or InfiniBand: 10G/25G, 40G, 50G or 100Gb/s options
• RDMA support for both InfiniBand and RoCE from the leader in RDMA technology
• Accelerators for NVMe-over-Fabrics (NVMe-oF), RAID, crypto and packet processing
• PCI Express Gen3 and Gen4, with either x8- or x16-lane configurations
• Integrated low-latency PCIe switch with up to 8 external ports for flexible topologies
• Up to 16 ARMv8 Cortex A72 processors with 20MB of coherent cache
• 8 – 32GB of on-board DDR4 DRAM
• Comprehensive virtualization support with SR-IOV
• Accelerated Switching and Packet Processing (ASAP2) OVS offloads
• Multi-host and SocketDirect™ enabling a single adapter to support up to four CPU hosts
• Multiple server form-factor options including half-height, half-length PCIe and other configurations

Mellanox said its new BlueField SmartNIC could be used for a range of applications, including Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), security and network traffic acceleration. The fully programmable environment and DPDK framework support a wide range of standard software packages running in the BlueField ARM subsystem. Examples include: Open vSwitch (OVS), Security packages such as L3/4 firewall, DDoS protection and Intrusion Prevention, encryption stacks (IPsec, SSL/TLS), traffic monitoring, telemetry and packet capture.

“Our BlueField adapters effectively place a Computer in Front of the Computer,” said Gilad Shainer, vice president marketing, Mellanox Technologies. “They provide the flexibility needed to adapt to new and emerging network protocols, and to implement complex networking and security functions in a distributed manner, right at the boundary of the server. This brings more scalability to the data center and enhances security by creating an isolated trust zone.”

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PacketLight gains GSA certification for its optical solutions

PacketLight Networks has been awarded General Services Administration (GSA) certification, enabling their full suite of DWDM and optical transport networking (OTN) solutions to be sold to the United States government and agencies. Under this certification, federal, state, and local government agencies can purchase PacketLight products through GSA Advantage!®, the government’s electronic online ordering system.

PacketLight supplies DWDM and OTN solutions that offer up to 200G over a single fiber for systems interconnect, metro and long haul networks.

“As the US government continues its shift towards the cloud, ensuring access to the fastest and most secure infrastructure becomes a critical concern,” says Koby Reshef, CEO of PacketLight Networks. “With this certification we look forward to providing the US government with the solutions they need to increase the capacity of their fiber networks, while maintaining the highest level of security at the lowest capital and operational costs.”

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ZTE and Softbank hit 956 Mbps on 20 MHz Massive MIMO

ZTE and SoftBank achieved a peak downstream rate of 956 Mbps on a 20MHz bandwidth in a trial of pre-5G TDD massive MIMO. The trial, which was conducted on Softbank's commercial network in Nagasaki, Japan, featured 24-stream space division multiplexing technology.

ZTE previously achieved a similar rate of 1.1Gbps in a 24-stream field test in Shenzhen, China that also used its Pre5G TDD Ma

ssive MIMO solution.

ZTE and SoftBank are also collaborating on a Smart Life strategic project for post-4G networks, including improvement of spectrum efficiency, 4G/5G network integration, mobile bandwidth, IoT, and Internet of Vehicles.

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ZTE signs up as Official Smartphone for PGA Tour

ZTE has signed a three-year marketing agreement to become the PGA TOUR’s first-ever Official Smartphone.

The deal, which includes global rights through 2020, was officially signed today by PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan and ZTE Mobile Devices CEO Lixin Cheng.

“The PGA TOUR is delighted to introduce ZTE as a new marketing partner as we enter the smartphone category for the first time,” said Brian Oliver, PGA TOUR Senior Vice President, Sponsorship & Partnership. “Mobile devices have become such a critical means by which fans watch and get updates on our competition, find information about their favorite players and share PGA TOUR-related content. In ZTE, we are partnering with a global leader in the telecommunications industry.”

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