ARRIS completes acquisition of Ruckus Wireless

ARRIS completed its previously-announced acquisition of the Ruckus Wireless and ICX Switch business from Broadcom.

When the deal was first announced in February 2017 the announced price was $800 million in cash, plus the additional cost of unvested employee stock awards, following the closing of Broadcom's acquisition of Brocade.

Ruckus Networks will operate as a dedicated business under Enterprise Networks. Its target vertical markets span hospitality, education, government, service providers, multi-dwelling / tenant units, sports / entertainment venues, and transportation centers. ARRIS said another opportunity for Ruckus is the small-cell CBRS LTE market.

Dan Rabinovitsj—previously COO of Ruckus Wireless—will lead a new ARRIS Enterprise Networks business segment.

The business will focus on the delivery of innovative, high-performance wireless and wired network infrastructure, with a robust channel-led sales strategy.

"This combination underscores our shared vision of achieving market leadership across wireless and wired networks in close partnership with our valued customers and channel partners," said Dan Rabinovitsj, President of ARRIS Enterprise Networks. "We're very excited about the collaboration opportunities across our product portfolios to enable connectivity from the office to the home and to all the places in between. Joining ARRIS means we still do what Ruckus does best, but on a larger, global scale. I'm excited to lead the Ruckus Networks team into our next stage of growth and innovation."

"I'm proud to welcome the 1,700 talented Ruckus Wireless and ICX Switch Business employees into the ARRIS family," said Bruce McClelland, ARRIS CEO. "It's an important milestone, not only for ARRIS but for our industries. Ruckus' unmatched expertise in wireless and wired networking perfectly complements our growth strategy of driving towards a constantly connected, mobile future. The acquisition brings diversification to our portfolio, building on our strength in networking and helping us to serve new verticals. Ultimately, our combined portfolios and scale will help our customers and partners deliver a smart, simple connected world for billions of people."

Broadcom completes Brocade acquisition - one year since bid

Sunday, November 19, 2017  Broadcom, Brocade, Merger & Acquisitions  No Comments

Broadcom completed its acquisition of Brocade Communications Systems. Brocade will operate as an indirect subsidiary of Broadcom and will be led by Jack Rondoni as General Manager. Previously, Rondoni served as Senior Vice President of Storage Networking at Brocade, having joined the company in 2006. "We are pleased to complete this transaction, which strengthens Broadcom's position as a leading provider of enterprise storage and networking solutions...

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

Wednesday, February 22, 2017  ARRIS, Brocade, Mergers And Acquisitions, Ruckus  No Comments

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.

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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MEF 3.0 Certification - new subscription model

Want to learn more about the new subscription model for MEF 3.0 certification?

In this video, Bob Mandeville, President & Founder of Iometrix, talks about all of the changes for certification of MEF 3.0 products and services.

Iometrix has developed a radically different certification test platform for MEF 3.0. The certification model undergoes profound changes and the way that companies can access certification also undergoes profound changes.

See video: https://youtu.be/Ac5nsoFXWs0

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NTT DOCOMO licenses its IP to Samsung

NTT DOCOMO has granted a patent license to Samsung Electronics Co. covering DOCOMO's standard-essential patents. Samsung will pay an undisclosed licensing fee to DOCOMO.

DOCOMO confirmed that it has now granted standard-essential patent licenses to more than 30 companies. The company said its R&D and patent licensing covers mobile-network and service technologies for systems based on the W-CDMA, LTE, LTE-Advanced and to-be-standardized 5G standards.

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MEF 3.0 - Transformational Global Services Framework

by James E. Carroll

MEF, which is the industry organisation that first brought common service definitions to Carrier Ethernet, introduced its “Transformational Global Services Framework for “defining, delivering, and certifying agile, assured, and orchestrated communication services across a global ecosystem of automated networks.”

MEF 3.0 is essentially an umbrella term encompassing all the organisation’s previous and promoting its long-term vision of the “The Third Network” -- the first network being the Internet, the second network being business-class Carrier Ethernet services. The goal is to enable the dynamic applications of the digital economy to run seamlessly over multivendor, multicarrier networks.  MEF brings its existing body of work with Carrier Ethernet and its latest work in LSO (Lifecycle Service Orchestration) APIs to enable on-demand, cloud-centric experience.  Think of it as SDN+NFV operating in multicarrier domains according to a common set of specifications.

Certainly, the acronyms are a mouthful. Over the years, there have been doubters as well as to whether the work of the MEF was essential for the advancement of networking technology, or whether it was just another industry forum backed by a handful of industry players. With this latest MEF 3.0 iteration, the sweet spot of software-defined wide-area services is in sight – the automated, orchestration of services across multi-provider networks.

What is included in MEF 3.0

There are four spokes to the MEF 3.0 wheel

       

• Standardized, Orchestrated Services - including Carrier Ethernet, wavelength, IP, SD-WAN, Security-as-a-Service, and other virtualized services that will be orchestrated over programmable networks using LSO APIs. MEF 3.0 CE R1 is the first release within the MEF 3.0 framework, while work on standardizing orchestration-ready wavelength, IP, SD-WAN, and security services currently is progressing within MEF.
•         Open LSO APIs - MEF’s LSO Reference Architecture guides the agile development of standardized LSO APIs that enable orchestration of MEF 3.0 services across multiple providers and over multiple network technology domains (e.g., Packet WAN, Optical Transport, SD-WAN, 5G, etc.). MEF recently announced the first releases of two LSO SDKs (software development kits) that feature inter-provider APIs for address validation, serviceability, and ordering and an intra-provider API for network resource provisioning. The LSO APIs included in these SDKs are available for experimental use by MEF members and associated MEF programs.
•         Service and Technology Certifications. MEF is increasing the agility of its popular certification programs to accelerate availability and adoption of MEF 3.0 certified services and technologies. Iometrix continues as MEF’s testing partner, but the certification process is now being virtualized and taken into the cloud. A subscription model will be used for that vendors and carriers will be able to certify that their services and technologies comply with the latest MEF 3.0 standards. This should speed up the certification process considerably from days to minutes.
•         Expanded Community Collaboration. MEF is working with service and technology providers, open source projects, standards associations, and enterprises to realize a shared vision of dynamic services orchestrated across automated networks. MEF has created a new compute, storage, and networking platform – MEFnet – that enables development, testing, integration, and showcasing of prototype MEF 3.0 implementations using open source and commercial products. MEFnet projects will help accelerate the understanding and adoption of MEF 3.0, as well as provide immediate feedback for standards development within MEF.

Just last month, MEF announced a collaboration with The Linux Foundation’s Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP).  Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP), a Linux Foundation to jointly facilitate development of an LSO Framework and the creation of standardized open LSO APIs. This too aims to automate the “entire lifecycle” for services orchestrated across multiple provider networks and multiple network technology domains.

The accolades from MEF members are pouring in. In a keynote address at the MEF17 event in Orlando, Kevin O’Toole, Senior Vice President of Product Management, Comcast Business, described MEF 3.0 as a “pivotal moment for carriers - a generational leap”. He predicts that this common orchestration framework will reach maturity right at the time when big bandwidth pipes are reaching deep into the last mile. Comcast sees “transactional gigabit” connections being ubiquitous – meaning not only lots of bandwidth but smart bandwidth with the ability to transact with third-party networking services. He foresees rapid price compression matched with powerful new services.

A big carrier like Comcast, which soon will have DOCSIS 3.1 running in all its major U.S. market, certainly has sway to influence the market.  If they like MEF 3.0, that’s certainly a good omen.

Shawn Hakl, Senior Vice President Business Products, Verizon, said MEF 3.0 “covers the critical areas needed for the next generation of innovation in SDN/NFV based services,” and expressed confidence that this standardization of the orchestration of software-based services will help it launch new services with the visibility and control demanded by developers. The same type of positive feedback was also heard from CenturyLink, Windstream, GBI and Telecom Italia Sparkle.

Lots more work and convincing needs to happen

MEF has already standardized the orchestration of static Carrier Ethernet 2.0 services.  It is also ready to go with MEF 3.0 Carrier Ethernet services. However, we are still in the early stages for the orchestration of dynamic wavelength services. At MEF17, several proof-of-concept demos from optical transport equipment vendors and their service provider partners are on display. It’s good progress, but there is a significant distance between the proof-of-concept stage and mature carrier service. The same could be said for orchestrating dynamic IP services over the WAN – we’re not yet at the stage of standardized deployments. With SD-WAN services, the MEF has published common definitions, but again, it is everyone for themselves when it comes to orchestrating SD-WAN services with multicarrier interoperability. Eventually, MEF would like to add dynamic security services to its list of standardized capabilities.

Bear in mind that the ambition of this MEF 3.0 is all encompassing – a global framework. However, the MEF as an organization has been driven by Tier One operators in the U.S., including AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, Charter, Windstream, Level 3, and CenturyLink. The notable international operators backing MEF include Colt, PCCW, PLDT, Orange, and Telecom Italia Sparkle. There are a handful of other carriers as members too, but this leaves out the majority of service providers, whose support is essential before we can say that MEF 3.0 has become the defacto global services framework. With Carrier Ethernet we can see a global adoption. MEF reckons there are about 150 companies – including 100 service providers – selling Carrier Ethernet 2.0 certified solutions. Together, these account for an estimated $80 billion in annual global sales of products and services. 

Now it’s time to see if the same traction can be found for MEF 3.0.

The other missing ingredient in this recipe for transformational global services is the presence of the global public cloud providers. It is one thing to orchestrated services, but to achieve that end-to-end vision there are bound to be many connections originating or termination in the hyperscale data centres of Alibaba, AWS, Fabeook, Google, or Microsoft. They will have to join the party too. 

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MEF 3.0 - Looking to Expand the Community

Will MEF 3.0 help to expand the community beyond the Tier 1 Service Providers who have been the biggest backers of MEF to date?

Erin Dunne, Director of Research Service, Vertical Systems Group, comments on how the provisioning of automated, agile services presumes a deep ecosystem and common standards.

See video:  https://youtu.be/dZv7tIMoW0A

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Former Intel exec Diane Bryant joins Google Cloud

Diane Bryant, former Group President at Intel, has joined Google Cloud as Chief Operating Officer. She will report to Diane Greene,

Bryant is known for her leadership Intel’s Data Center Group (DCG) as general manager and executive vice president.  Intel's DCG generated $17 billion in revenue in 2016. She also serves on the board of United Technologies.

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Bitdefender attracts 30% investor at $600m valuation

Vitruvian Partners, an independent European private equity firm, has acquired an approximate 30% minority stake in Bitdefender Holding B.V..

Bitdefender, which employs 1,300 staff across nine offices, said its software is protecting 500 million users in over 150 countries. More than 40% of sales are currently generated in the U.S. Bitdefender is based in Bucharest, Romania.

Following the acquisition, Vitruvian becomes the second-largest shareholder with co-founders Mariuca and Florin Talpes continuing to hold the majority stake. A group of private investors hold a minority stake in the company.

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Gemalto and DOCOMO develop multi-profile SIMs

NTT DOCOMO and Gemalto announced the world's first multi-profile SIM for use in multi-carrier collaborative services, allowing users to switch between profiles, which include data such as contact information and telephone numbers, on their smartphone or tablet in multiple countries.

DOCOMO said the new SIM will help customers planning to stay overseas long term, such as expatriates and students, to access the DOCOMO network while in Japan, but also enjoy voice and data communications services provided directly by affiliated carriers in their respective service areas overseas, thus avoiding the need to insert the SIM card of a local carrier or carry a rental device.

The multi-profile SIM draws on DOCOMO's experience in international communications services and Gemalto's telecommunications know-how. The commercial launch is expected sometime in fiscal 2018.

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