Video: Five things to know about adding automation into your network

This video looks at five things you need to know about adding automation and orchestration to your network for your VNFs. NFV is going to be a keep part of 5G architecture. Presented by Paul Brittain, Senior Product Manager, Metaswitch.

See our whitepaper with Telia on this topic: https://www.metaswitch.com/knowledge-center/white-papers/cloud-native-vnf-operation-automation

See video: https://youtu.be/NMuvvsX8690

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Leading operators expand ONF mission to create Reference Designs as Gold Standards

AT&T, China Unicom, Comcast, Google, Deutsche Telekom, NTT Group, Telefonica, and Turk Telekom have agreed to back a new strategic plan for the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) focused on developing reference designs for open source, next-generation SDN solutions.

The operators will work together inside the ONF to create Reference Designs (RDs) to serve as “gold standards” for combining component projects into common platforms upon which operators will build solutions.  Each RD will be championed by a select group of operators, and will be designed with participation by invited supply chain partners sharing the vision and demonstrating active investment in building open source solutions.

The work activity will span all network layers, including mobile infrastructure, the edge cloud, multiaccess edge, and optical transport. The ONF has assembled partnerships with OEMs, systems integrators, VNF vendors, platform software developers, next-gen ODMs and chip companies.

The ONF, which was founded in 2011 and is based in Menlo Park, California, has been behind leading open source projects such as ONOS, Trellis and CORD. These projects have gained significant traction with operators as eighteen tier-1 operators are actively testing and trialling these solution. At least two tier-1 operators are moving into production with projects in 2018.

“The ONF is pleased to share our new 2018 strategic plan for market transformation,” said Andre Fuetsch, President and Chair of the ONF Board, and Chief Technology Officer and President, AT&T Labs. “This plan will position ONF as a premier, operator-driven community and will better align and accelerate open systems solutions to the marketplace. The plan is highlighted by two major components: 1) operators and ONF will work together to create common modular reference designs using components such as white boxes and open source platforms, and 2) operators and ONF will work on driving the components of the reference designs to be production-ready, and in selected areas will create integrated implementations of the designs.”

“Operators’ commitment to take open source solutions into production represents the next big step in realizing the full potential of software-defined, disaggregation and open source. It is also heartening to see operators’ determination to enable a new supply-chain that is well aligned with their goals. Clearly this is a landmark moment and it will set our industry on a new course for years to come. I am delighted that operators consider the ONF their partner in pursuit of this important agenda,” said Guru Parulkar, Executive Director for the ONF.

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The Acumos AI Project moves to the Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation launched the Acumos AI Project, a federated platform for managing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications and sharing AI models.

AT&T and Tech Mahindra contributed the initial Acumos code.

"An open and federated AI platform like the Acumos platform allows developers and companies to take advantage of the latest AI technologies and to more easily share proven models and expertise," said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. "Acumos will benefit developers and data scientists across numerous industries and fields, from network and video analytics to content curation, threat prediction, and more."

Acumos, which is now freely available for download, provides users with a visual workflow to design AI and ML applications, as well as a marketplace for freely sharing AI solutions and data models. The Acumos framework is user-centric and simple to explore. The Acumos Marketplace packages various components as microservices and allows users to export ready-to-launch AI applications as containers to run in public clouds or private environments.

In addition, The Linux Foundation has formed an umbrella organization called the LF Deep Learning Foundation. Its mission is "to support and sustain open source innovation in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning while striving to make these critical new technologies available to developers and data scientists everywhere."

 Founding members of LF Deep Learning include Amdocs, AT&T, B.Yond, Baidu, Huawei, Nokia, Tech Mahindra, Tencent, Univa, and ZTE. With LF Deep Learning, members are working to create a neutral space where makers and sustainers of tools and infrastructure can interact and harmonize their efforts and accelerate the broad adoption of deep learning technologies. https://www.acumos.org

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Southeast Asia-Japan 2 subsea cable to bring 144 Tbps of capacity

A consortium consisting of  China Mobile, Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom, Chuan Wei, Facebook, KDDI, SK Broadband, Singtel and Vietnam's VNPT, signed an agreement for the construction of the Southeast Asia-Japan 2 subsea cable network. NEC has been selected as the lead contractor.

The SJC2 submarine cable will span 10.500 kilometers, connecting Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China, Korea and Japan. It will have eleven cable landing stations in the region and is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2020. The cable will feature up to eight pairs of high capacity optical fibre with an initial design capacity of 144 Terabits per second (Tbps).

In Japan, SJC2 will land at KDDI's two stations at Chikura and Shima, providing geographical diversity.

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GTT attracts funding from Adelph Capital and Crestview

A group of investors, led by Aleph Capital Partners LLP and Crestview Partners, has committed to invest $175 million in GTT common stock at the closing of the acquisition of Interoute by GTT.

“Aleph and Crestview’s investment is a strong vote of confidence in our vision to create a disruptive market leader with substantial scale, unique network assets and award-winning product capabilities to fulfill our clients’ growing demand for cloud networking services in Europe, the U.S. and across the globe,” said Rick Calder, GTT president and CEO.

GTT's acquisition of Interoute would add 72K km of European fiber to its transatlantic cables

Monday, February 26, 2018 

GTT Communications agreed to acquire Interoute, operator of one of Europe’s largest independent fiber networks and cloud networking platforms, for approximately €1.9 billion ($2.3 billion) in cash.

Interoute's European fiber backbone spans 72,000 route kilometers connects nearly 200 data centres and colocation facilities.  Interoute also owns 15 of its own data centers and 33 colocation facilities. Its customers include international enterprises, as well as the world’s major service providers, ICPs and OTT providers. The company also operates 18 Interoute Virtual Data Centres (VDCs) globally, including three in Asia-Pacific, which are tied into its fiber backbone. In October 2017, Interoute launched its "Edge SD-WAN" service.

Interoute offers transport services (wavelength, Carrier Ethernet, managed bandwidth, storage connect, IP transit, cloud connect) and infrastructure services (dark fiber and data center colocation).

Interoute reported revenues of €718 million and adjusted EBITDA of €165 million for the 12 months ending September 30, 2017.

GTT said the merger contributes significant infrastructure, edge and hosted services to its network, as well as over 1,000 strategic enterprise and carrier clients, primarily headquartered in Europe.

In January 2017, GTT acquired Hibernia Networks and its five subsea cables, including Hibernia Express, the lowest latency transatlantic cable system, and eight cable landing stations, new global points of presence, and key clients in the financial services, media and entertainment, web-centric and service provider segments.

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Huawei Marine to build subsea cable in southern Chile

Chile's Comunicación y Telefonía Rural S.A. (CTR) has retained Huawei Marine to deploy the Fiber Optic Austral (FOA) subsea cable system.

FOA, which will be the southernmost submarine cable in the world, will connect three regions in southern Chile.

Huawei Marine will provide an end-to-end submarine cable solution using its 100G universal platform to provide a seamless optical network architecture between submarine and terrestrial networks. The system has a design capacity of 16 Tbps and a length of 2,800 kilometers. It is expected to be completed by the end of 2019.

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HIVE Blockchain plans crypto mining data centre in Norway

HIVE Blockchain Technologies Ltd., which owns GPU-based digital currency mining facilities in Iceland and Sweden for minting digital currencies like Ethereum, announced plans for a major new facility north of the Arctic Circle.

HIVE Blockchain has agreed to acquire Kolos Norway AS for approximately US$9.9 million.  Kolos' primary asset is a 64-hectare property located in Ballangen, Norway, approximately 225 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle and in proximity to hydroelectric facilities able to supply 1 GW of excess capacity to the planned data centre.

"This is another major milestone in our continuing global expansion as a leading blockchain and cryptocurrency infrastructure company," said Harry Pokrandt, CEO and Director of HIVE. "Kolos will be a flagship data centre project for HIVE for years to come and has the potential to expand to more than 1.0 GW, or 1,000 MW, of green hydroelectricity consumption dedicated to blockchain infrastructure. For context, our advanced mining operations in Iceland and Sweden will collectively represent 44.2 MW of consumption – also from green sources."

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Zayo supplies metro fiber in Paris to Interdata

Zayo announced a contract to supply approximately 50km of new fiber to Interdata, a systems and infrastructure integrator based in the Paris metropolitan area.

The solution includes two diverse, dark fiber rings connecting the company’s data centers in Paris and Nozay. Completion of the rings will enable Zayo to reach a large data center campus in France just south of Paris.

“The dark fiber will provide Interdata with dedicated, secure infrastructure with the performance and resilience they require,” said Annette Murphy, Zayo’s managing director of Europe. “Our reputation and extensive experience in deploying dark fiber is the reason Interdata chose Zayo for this major networking project.”

Zayo said it continues to invest in the European market having previously acquired AboveNet, Geo, Neo and Viatel.

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Microchip Technology unveils MEMS oscillators for automotive

Microchip Technology Inc.unveiled a new DSA family of automotive grade Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) oscillators.

The company says its MEMS devices provide 20 times better reliability, 500 times better tolerance to shock and five times better vibration resistance than traditional quartz-based crystal devices. The DSA family also includes the industry's first multiple output MEMS oscillator, offering customers a solution that can replace multiple crystals or oscillators with one device. The solutions could be used for applications such as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), in-vehicle Ethernet and autonomous driving.

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