ZTE reports 2017 sales of RMB 108.82 billion, up 7.49%

ZTE Corporation reported 2017 operating revenue of RMB 108.82 billion, 7.49% higher than a year earlier. Net profit attributable to holders of ordinary shares of the listed company in the whole year 2017 was RMB 4.55 billion, an increase of 293%.

Net cash flow from operating activities for 2017 was approximately RMB 6.78 billion, about 28.88% year-on-year growth. Excluding the impact of penalty payments imposed by U.S government authorities, the company's net cash flow from operating activities was RMB 12.44 billion, representing an increase of approximately 136.58% over the previous year.

In reflecting on 2017, ZTE said it successfully focused on the market of mainstream carriers and high-value customers, and persisted in a proactive yet prudent business strategy while exploring new opportunities for growth.

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Nokia reports stronger financials and outlook

Nokia reported Q4 2017 sales of EUR 6.7 billion, flat compared with the same period in 2016, however, on a constant currency basis, non-IFRS net sales increased 5% and reported net sales increased 6%, with 2% growth in Nokia's Networks business and 80% growth in Nokia Technologies.

Non-IFRS diluted EPS in Q4 2017 amounted to EUR 0.13, compared to EUR 0.12 in Q4 2016/

The improved performance of Nokia's Networks business was driven by IP Networks and Applications and by Ultra Broadband Networks. The large year-on-year variations in foreign exchange rates had a negative impact on reported net sales, with net sales down 4% compared to the year-ago period. Strong operational discipline produced a solid Q4 2017 gross margin of 37.6%, and an operating margin of 11.1%.

Nokia Technologies' sales increased 79% year-on-year primarily due to new license agreements. Approximately EUR 210 million of the net sales in Q4 2017 (zero in Q4 2016) were non-recurring in nature and related to catch-up net sales, of which approximately EUR 80 million related to 2017 and EUR 130 million related to the prior years.

Looking ahead, Nokia is targeting stronger profitibilit with non-IFRS diluted EPS rising to EUR 0.23 to 0.27 in full year 2018 and EUR 0.37 to 0.42 in full year 2020.

Rajeev Suri, Nokia's CEO, issued the following statement: "I am pleased that Nokia ended 2017 with a strong fourth quarter. We saw constant currency growth in three of our five Networks business groups as well as very strong growth in Nokia Technologies. Group profitability increased in both the quarter and the full year, and gross margin remained resilient in Networks despite the dilutive impact of robust competition in China.

"This performance reflects the progress we have made since Q3 with our mobile product portfolio, and positions us well for the upcoming transition to 5G. Our recent 4G/LTE software release was the highest quality in our history; our AirScale 5G-ready base stations are shipping in volume and delivering excellent results in the field; and we are making good progress in the execution of product migrations for key customers."

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AWS hit revenue of $5.113 billion in Q4, up 45% yoy

Revenues for Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Q4 2017 reached $5.113 billion, up 45% yoy. Operating income for AWS amounted to $1.354 billion, up 46% yoy, as disclosed in Amazon's quarterly financial report.

Amazon cited a laundry list of milestones for the quarter:

• Newly announced enterprise customers going all-in on AWS include Expedia, Ellucian, and DigitalGlobe. The Walt Disney Company and Turner named AWS their preferred public cloud provider; Symantec will leverage AWS as its strategic infrastructure provider for the vast majority of its cloud workloads; Expedia, Intuit, the National Football League (NFL), Capital One, DigitalGlobe, and Cerner announced they’ve chosen AWS for machine learning and artificial intelligence; and Bristol-Myers Squibb, Honeywell, Experian, FICO, Insitu, LexisNexis, Sysco, Discovery Communications, Dow Jones, and Ubisoft kicked off major new moves to AWS.
• In Q4, AWS launched a new region in France and a second AWS Region in China. AWS plans to open 12 more Availability Zones across four regions (Bahrain, Hong Kong, Sweden, and a second GovCloud Region in the U.S.) between now and early 2019. AWS now operates 52 Availability Zones across 18 infrastructure regions globally.
• AWS released 497 significant new services and features in the fourth quarter, bringing the total number of launches in 2017 to 1,430.
• AWS launched EC2 P3 instances which are optimized for machine learning and high performance computing — providing up to six times better performance than any other GPU instances available in the cloud today. 
• AWS introduced four Artificial Intelligence (AI) services that allow developers to build applications that emulate human-like cognition: Amazon Transcribe for converting speech to text; Amazon Translate for translating text between languages; Amazon Comprehend for understanding relationships and finding insights within text; and Amazon Rekognition Video, a deep-learning powered video analysis service that tracks people, detects activities, and recognizes objects, celebrities, and inappropriate content.
• AWS launched AWS DeepLens, a deep-learning enabled wireless video camera that pairs an HD camera developer kit with a set of sample projects to help developers learn machine learning concepts, including computer vision and deep learning.
• AWS announced two new container capabilities that make it easier to deploy, manage, and scale container workloads on AWS. Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (Amazon EKS) brings Kubernetes to AWS as a fully managed service, enabling customers to run Kubernetes applications on AWS without the need to become experts in operating Kubernetes clusters. AWS also introduced AWS Fargate that allows customers to launch and run containers without provisioning or managing servers or clusters.
• AWS announced AWS Media Services, a family of five integrated broadcast-quality media services that make it easy for video providers of all kinds to create reliable, flexible, and scalable video offerings in the cloud. These five services enable customers to build end-to-end workflows for both live and on-demand video with the professional features, image quality, and reliability needed to deliver premium video experiences to viewers across a multitude of devices. By combining the proven video solutions from AWS Elemental with the security, durability, availability, and scalability of AWS, video providers can focus on innovating and making great content instead of spending time building and maintaining on-premises video infrastructure.
• AWS and VMware announced that VMware Cloud on AWS is expanding availability from the U.S. West (Oregon) region to include the AWS U.S. East (N. Virginia) region. 

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Motorola Solutions to acquire Avigilon for video surveillance solutions

Motorola Solutions agreed to acquire Avigilon, a supplier of advanced security surveillance solutions, for CAD$27.00 per share, valuing the transaction at approximately US$1.0 billion including Avigilon’s net debt.

Avigilon, which is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, holds more than 750 U.S. and Canadian patents related to video surveillance.  The company's portfolio includes video analytics, network video management software and hardware, surveillance cameras, and access control solutions. Avigilon products are used by a range of commercial and government customers including critical infrastructure, airports, government facilities, public venues, healthcare centers and retail.

“This acquisition will bring Avigilon’s advanced video surveillance and analytics platform to the rapidly evolving public safety workflow, while also expanding our portfolio with new products and technologies for commercial customers,” said Greg Brown, chairman and CEO, Motorola Solutions. “Video can play a powerful role in creating safer cities and thriving businesses. It can serve as highly efficient ‘eyes and ears’ for monitoring a given location, and advanced video analytics can proactively alert officials to a perimeter breach or quickly find a person who left behind an object of interest.”

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VIAVI to Acquire Cobham's wireless test and measurement businesses

Viavi Solutions agreed to acquire the Test and Measurement business of Cobham plc for $455 million in cash.

Viavi said the acquisition strengthens its competitive position in 5G deployment and diversifies the company into military, public safety and avionics test markets. 

Cobham AvComm and Wireless T&M provides testing solutions for communication service providers' networks from the radio access network through to the network core. It has also served military, public safety and aviation markets for decades with its trusted land-mobile radio and avionics test solutions. The business generated more than $200 million of revenues in calendar year 2017.

"This combination is another step in our NSE strategy of driving operational scale and monetizing our NOL assets," said Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO of VIAVI. "Cobham AvComm and Wireless T&M are recognized leaders with a world-class team that has a long track record of successfully bringing innovative solutions to market. Together, we expect new opportunities to grow through channel expansion and technology sharing as we address rapidly emerging opportunities in 5G, software-defined and virtualized test."

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AT&T claims 1.1 million global route miles of fiber

AT&T now claims to have over 1.1 million global route miles of fiber. The carrier says more than 8 million business customer locations across the U.S. are either on or within 1,000 feet of its fiber.

In addition, nearly 400,000 U.S. business buildings are lit with AT&T’s fiber nationwide.

“It all starts with fiber. Fiber accelerates everything that businesses need to digitally transform. Without fiber, innovative solutions like highly-secure networking, cloud computing and 5G wouldn’t be possible,” said Mo Katibeh, chief marketing officer, AT&T Business. “As we continue to expand our national fiber network, we want businesses to take full advantage of our fiber highway that is essentially right to their doorstep.”

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Qualcomm and Samsung expand their relationship

Qualcomm and Samsung Electronics announced a multi-year strategic relationship agreement between the two companies in various technology areas and across a range of mobile devices.

"The announcement today underscores the importance of our longstanding strategic relationship with Samsung in driving core mobile technology into many different segments," said Cristiano Amon, president, Qualcomm Incorporated. "As Qualcomm continues to lead the world to 5G, the opportunities between our companies are growing and this agreement sets us both on a path for continued success." 

"We value our strategic relationship with Qualcomm Technologies," said TM Roh, executive vice president and the head of mobile R&D, Samsung Electronics. "And look forward to working together to deliver leading technologies in the years ahead."

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Vapor IO adds to Advisory Board: Strickland, Mockapetris and Tarazi #datacenters

Vapor IO, a start-up specializing in edge computing and edge data centers, announced three new members of its advisory board: Robert Strickland, former CTO of Leap Wireless and Cricket Communications (acquired by AT&T), Paul Mockapetris, inventor of DNS, and Ihab Tarazi, former CTO of Equinix.

Last year, Vapor IO announced Project Volutus, an edge co-location and data center as a platform service that will stitch together a network of fully-managed micro data centers at the base of cell towers.

“Interest and demand for edge computing and Project Volutus continues to accelerate. As we push forward to roll out our first Kinetic Edge cities, we’re thrilled to welcome Robert, Paul and Ihab as advisors and look forward to working closely with them. Each has uniquely pioneered success and innovation within their respected fields time and again, and we look forward to their valuable insights,” said Cole Crawford, founder and CEO of Vapor IO.

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Viavi reports sales of $202 million, down 2.3% yoy

Viavi reported revenue of $201.8 million for the quarter ended 30-Dec-2017, a decline of 2.3% compared to a year earlier.  There was a net loss of $(3.7) million, or $(0.02) per share. Prior quarter GAAP net revenue was $195.2 million, with net loss of $(4.8) million or $(0.02) per share. GAAP net revenue for the second quarter of fiscal 2017 was $206.5 million, with net income of $49.2 million, or $0.21 per share.

Non-GAAP net revenue was $201.8 million, with net income of $20.2 million, or $0.09 per share.

"VIAVI's fiscal Q2 revenue, non-GAAP operating margin and non-GAAP EPS all came in above the high end of our guidance," said Oleg Khaykin, VIAVI's President and Chief Executive Officer.  "Strong service providers' end market demand drove year-on-year revenue increase in the NE segment and OSP's core business was stronger than expected."

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NTT DATA INTELLILINK picks Cloudify's TOSCA orchestration

NTT DATA INTELLILINK Corporation, which delivers managed IT services, has chosen Cloudify’s open source cloud-native orchestration platform as a preferred TOSCA orchestration framework and is now offering Cloudify to its IT systems integration customers throughout the world.

Cloudify's orchestration framework automates the application stack installation and deployment processes as well as post-deployment processes such as monitoring, auto-healing, updating and auto-scaling. Cloudify can also orchestrate OpenStack or other on-premise cloud infrastructure, public clouds such as AWS and Azure, and other infrastructure technologies such as Docker containers. In addition to managing a wide variety of on-premises servers, clouds and network devices, Cloudify can manage multiple clouds simultaneously as well as automate cloud infrastructure and application changes.

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Netronome appoints Donnelly as SVP Business Development

Netronome appointed Leonard Donnelly as senior vice president of corporate and business development.

Previously, Donnelly held executive, chair and CEO positions at Apical (acquired by ARM), Artofus, Intune, FORE Systems, Cinehub (acquired by C&C) and Digital Hub (Ireland’s largest tech incubator). Leonard was also the EVP of sales, marketing and product of Euristix when it was acquired by FORE Systems.

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