Monday, November 13, 2017

AT&T and Verizon strike a deal to build cell towers with Tillman

AT&T and Verizon reached an infrastructure sharing agreement in which they will work with a third party, Tillman Infrastructure, to build hundreds of cell towers.

Tillman will build, own and operate the towers, small cells and smart cities infrastructure. AT&T and Verizon have committed to leasing and co-anchoring the co-located towers. Construction will begin in Q1 2018. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The three companies see the potential for significantly more new site locations in the future.

“We continue to focus on technology innovation and investing in the latest software platforms to provide the best possible customer experience on our network,” said Nicola Palmer, Chief Network Officer for Verizon Wireless. “At the same time, it is imperative to reduce operating costs. We are reviewing all of our long-term contracts as they come up for renewal and we are excited to develop new vendor partners to diversify our infrastructure providers.”

“We need more alternatives to the traditional tower leasing model with the large incumbents. It’s not cost-effective or sustainable. We’re creating a diverse community of suppliers and tower companies who will help increase market competition while reducing our overhead,” said Susan Johnson, SVP of Global Supply Chain, AT&T. “We look forward to working with Verizon as we establish site locations and sign new lease agreements with additional suppliers in the coming years.”

“Tillman is excited about the opportunity to work with AT&T and Verizon in order to further develop the cell tower model of the future,” said Suruchi Ahuja, CFO of Tillman Infrastructure. “Over the past year we have built a strong team at Tillman and are committed to rapidly building a leader in wireless infrastructure in the U.S. in order to best serve carriers and the broader communities in which we will enable connectivity.”

Verizon offers SD-WAN for wholesale customers

Verizon Partner Solutions (VPS) has launched a Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) solution for wholesale customers.

Verizon said the new service provides its wholesale customers with better control of network operational costs while improving bandwidth efficiency.

Key features of Verizon Partner Solution’s SD-WAN

  • Transport independence: IPsec overlay and traffic distribution over multiple paths, with built-in load balancing and automatic fail-over capability.
  • Application optimization: centralized network visibility and control, as well as quality of service and bandwidth management with traffic shaping.
  • Intelligent path control: policy-based routing, which assigns a traffic path based on source, destination or application; and dynamic path selection, which chooses a traffic path per-application based on loss, latency and jitter.
  • Secure connectivity that features intuitive, AES encryption to maintain data privacy.
  • Centralized SDN control and policy management that helps Enterprise scale efficiently

“Verizon’s SD-WAN solution essentially gives enterprises the best of both worlds - the power of the Internet and the performance and reliability of a private IP network - to help them keep up with the continued growth of network traffic,” said Eric Cevis, Verizon Partner Solutions. “Network traffic demand continues to increase due to SaaS applications, cloud migrations, video and IoT. SD WAN improves bandwidth usage and enables the network to act as a sensor to enhance delivery of applications.”

Video: Welcome to MEF17 - Nan Chen



 Nan Chen gives an overview of this week's MEF17 event in Orlando, Florida.

See video: https://youtu.be/WhRkEBzdG4Q


Video: SDN is Real - Michael Howard



When we look back at 2017, we'll say it was the year that SDN became real - says Michael Howard, Senior Research Director at IHS Markit - Technology. Many operators now have real deployments with real SDN and NFV customers.

See video: https://youtu.be/zSNufkBPeUA


NTT Com and Dimension Data to integrate their clouds

Dimension Data, the global technology solutions and services provider, and NTT Communications, the ICT solutions and international communications business within NTT Group, will create a single ‘cloud powerhouse’ by bringing together their cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) capabilities under the management of NTT Communications.

Dimension Data is a subsidiary of the NTT Group based in South Africa and with operations in 48 countries.

Both NTT Communications and Dimension Data will retain their existing strategic partnerships under the new structure.

NTT Communications said it will be able to deliver new hybrid IT solutions that offer greater visibility, automation, management and governance.

Katsumi Nakata, Senior Executive Vice President, NTT Communications said: “We’re excited that our augmented capabilities and broadened footprint will take us to the next level in global cloud IaaS platform, coupled with one of the largest software-defined network services that connect over 190 countries worldwide, more than 140 global data centres, and the world’s leading Tier 1 IP network. We are confident that we will continue to deliver superior results and contribute significantly to the success of both our clients and our cloud business.”

Dimension Data Group Chief Executive Officer, Jason Goodall said: “Combining our cloud IaaS assets provides enterprises on their hybrid IT journey with a unique combination of services and expertise, on a global basis. We’ll deliver services at-scale and provide a level of innovation not currently available in the managed cloud-based hybrid IT solutions space.”

Mellanox: Infiniband powers most Supercomputers

InfiniBand solutions accelerate 77 percent of the new high-performance computing systems on the TOP500 list deployed since the previous list (June 2017 to November 2017), according to Mellanox Technologies.

Some highlights:

  • Mellanox accelerates the fastest supercomputer on the list
  • InfiniBand connects 2 of top 5 systems - #1 (China) and #4 (Japan)
  • InfiniBand connects 6 times more new HPC systems versus proprietary interconnects (June’17 - Nov’17)
  • InfiniBand connects 15 times more new HPC systems versus Ethernet (June’17 - Nov’17)
  • InfiniBand connects 77% of new HPC systems (June’17 – Nov’17)
  • Mellanox connects 39 percent of overall TOP500 systems (192 systems, InfiniBand and Ethernet)
  • InfiniBand connects 33 percent of the total TOP500 systems (164 systems)
  • InfiniBand connects 60 percent of the HPC TOP500 systems
  • 25G Ethernet first appearance on the Nov’17 TOP500 list (China Hyperscale companies) - 19 systems
  • Mellanox connects all of 25G, 40G and 100G Ethernet systems on the Nov’17 TOP500 list
  • InfiniBand is the most used high-speed Interconnect on the TOP500

“Due to its smart acceleration and offload advantages, InfiniBand connects the vast majority of the new TOP500 high-performance computing and deep learning systems deployed in the last 6 months. Furthermore, InfiniBand accelerates the fastest supercomputer in the world and in China, the fastest supercomputer in Japan, and has been selected to connect the fastest supercomputers in Canada, and in the US. By delivering highest applications performance, scalability and robustness, InfiniBand enables users to maximize their data center return on investment and improve their total cost of ownership by 50 percent,” said Eyal Waldman, president and CEO of Mellanox Technologies.

“We are also happy to see our 25 Gigabit and above Ethernet solutions on the TOP500 list, representing the adoption of our Ethernet NICs, switches and cables in hyperscale and cloud companies, as they deliver highest efficiency to these platforms. Finally, we are excited to showcase our HDR 200Gb/s switch systems portfolio at the Supercomputing’17 conference, as we plan to release our HDR InfiniBand solutions in the first half of next year, further increasing the technology advantage of Mellanox in high-performance computing, cloud, Web2.0, database, deep learning and compute and storage platforms.”

NTT Communications to Acquire Secure-24

NTT Communications (NTT Com) agreed to acquire Secure-24 Intermediate Holdings, Inc. (Secure-24), a U.S.-based leading provider of comprehensive managed services. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Secure 24, which is based in Southfield, Michigan, uses proprietary automated operation tools to deliver managed security services.

NTT Com and NTT Group companies including Dimension Data expect to combine Secure-24 services to enhance their ability to meet hybrid IT requirements, including Secure-24’s portfolio of managed application and database services, including SAP, SAP HANA, Oracle, Hyperion, JD Edwards, Microsoft, Epic, custom, industry and other mission-critical applications.