IDC: Infrastructure sales for cloud data centers rises 27% in Q4 2017

Vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT, including public and private cloud, grew 27.3% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2017 (4Q17), reaching $12.8 billion, according the latest International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker. For the full year 2017, the combined public and private cloud deployments continued the double-digit annual growth trend from past years with revenues reaching $43.4 billion for 21.7% year-over-year growth.

Public cloud infrastructure revenue has almost doubled in the past two years to $8.5 billion, growing 34.0% year over year in 4Q17. Private cloud revenue reached $4.3 billion for an annual increase of 15.7%. Total worldwide cloud IT infrastructure revenue in 2017 more than doubled when compared to 2013. The combined public and private cloud revenues now represent 42.2% of the total worldwide IT infrastructure spending, up from 39.3% a year ago. Traditional (non-cloud) IT infrastructure revenue grew 12.8% from a year ago, although it has been generally declining over the past several years; at $17.5 billion in 4Q17 it still represents 57.8% of total worldwide IT infrastructure spending.

"2017 finished strong for public cloud IT infrastructure growth, led by continued expansion by Amazon and renewed growth in Google and Facebook infrastructure," said Kuba Stolarski, research director for Computing Platforms at IDC. "While there has been high growth in all IT infrastructure segments lately, public cloud, led by the hyperscalers, has resulted in the largest share of infrastructure growth, which is expected to continue at this pace for at least a few more quarters."

• Except for Latin America and Japan revenue, which grew 6.2% and 4.8% respectively from a year ago, all other regions in the world grew their cloud IT Infrastructure revenue by double digits. 
• Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) saw the fastest growth rates at 59.0% and 34.1%, respectively. 
• Canada (23.3%), Middle East & Africa (MEA) (27.5%) and USA (21.1%) had annual growth in the twenties, while Western Europe (16.6%) had annual growth in the teens.

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Arista debuts 25G and 100G systems

Arista Networks introduced its new generation of 25G and 100G platforms for leaf and spine switching and routing and feature new capabilities for visibility, load balancing, network segmentation, and scale.

The fixed form factor Arista 7050X3 and 7260X3 Series platforms are based on the Broadcom Trident 3 and Tomahawk 2 chipsets running Arista EOS for rich automation and visibility.

Arista said it has been able to scale performance at a tenfold increase in just seven years, enabling versatile two-tier cloud networks.

Here is the line up.

7260CX3 supports up to 64 ports of 100G or 12.8Tbps with up to 4.2Bpps of packet forwarding in 2U and a 42MB packet buffer

7050X3 Series offers consistent features and innovations in two models:

• The 7050CX3-32S is a compact 1U with 32 ports of 100G
• The 7050SX3-48YC12 delivers high density 25G server and 100G uplinks

Pricing starts at under $800/100G port for the 64 x 100G system.

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Huawei's R&D spending is at 17% of revenue

Huawei reported 2017 annual revenue was CNY603.6 billion (US$92.5 billion based on year-end exchange rates), an increase of 15.7% over 2016. Net profits were CNY47.5 billion (US$7.3 billion), an increase of 28.1% year-on-year.

Some highlights:

• R&D spending reached CNY89.7 billion (US$13.8 billion), up 17.4% compared with 2016. 
• The Carrier business group generated CNY297.8 billion (US$45.7 billion) in revenue, an increase of 2.5% year-on-year
• The enterprise business generated CNY54.9 billion (US$8.4 billion) in annual revenue, an increase of 35.1% compared with 2016.
• The consumer business group generated CNY237.2 billion (US$36.4 billion) in annual revenue, up 31.9% year-on-year.Huawei shipped a total of 153 million smartphones (including Honor) in 2017.
• The Cloud business unit, which was set up in 2017 now offers 99 cloud services across 14 major categories, and over 50 solutions. 

"We're on a new journey," said Ken Hu, Huawei's Rotating Chairman. "Opportunities and challenges are popping up faster than ever before, and nonstop open innovation is the only way we can keep ahead of the game. Over the next 10 years, Huawei will continue to increase investment in technological innovation, investing more than 10 billion dollars back into R&D every year. We will actively pursue open collaboration, attract and cultivate top talent, and step up efforts in exploratory research. We want to better enable all industries to go digital and intelligent."

Hu added, "As we look to 2018, emerging technologies like the Internet of Things, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and 5G will soon see large-scale application. Throughout this process, Huawei will stay at the forefront of technological innovation and business transformation. More importantly, we will pay special attention to the practical challenges that our customers face as they go digital. Our job is to help them overcome these challenges and achieve business success. Ultimately, we aim to bring digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world."

http://www.huawei.com/en/press-events/news

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Zayo wins fiber-to-the-tower contract with U.S. mobile operator

Zayo announced a contract with a major wireless carrier to supply fiber-to-the-tower (FTT) to new macro towers in 30 markets across 21 states. The name of the carrier was not disclosed.

Zayo said the contract is an expansion of a deal September 2016 -- Zayo's largest mobile infrastructure contract to date.

The new agreement pertains to macro towers. Under other contracts, Zayo is deploying small cell infrastructure for this customer. In many cases, these are full turnkey implementations, including RF design, site acquisition, permitting and installation of equipment

“This undertaking is the result of a trusted relationship with the customer,” said Dan Caruso, chairman and CEO of Zayo. “As they continue to densify to meet the growing demand for bandwidth, dark fiber provides the optimal long-term solution.”

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Mellanox interconnects NVIDIA's new DGX-2 AI box

Mellanox Technologies confirmed that its InfiniBand and Ethernet are used in the new NVIDIA DGX-2 artificial intelligence (AI) system.

NVIDIA's DGX-2, which delivers 2 Petaflops of system performance, is powered by sixteen GPUs and eight Mellanox ConnectX adapters, supporting both EDR InfiniBand and 100 GigE connectivity.

The embedded Mellanox network adapters provide overall 1600 gigabit per second bi-directional data throughout, which enables scaling up AI capabilities for building the largest Deep Learning compute systems.

"We are excited to collaborate with NVIDIA and to bring the performance advantages of our EDR InfiniBand and 100 gigabit Ethernet to the new DGX-2 Artificial Intelligence platform," said Gilad Shainer, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. "Doubling the network throughput as compared to previous systems to provide overall bi-directional 1600 gigabit per second data speed enables the DGX-2 platform to analyze growing amounts of data, and to dramatically improve Deep Learning application performance."

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Limelight and Akamai finally settle all legal disputes

Limelight Networks and Akamai Technologies have signed a binding Memorandum of Understanding that settles all outstanding legal disputes between the parties. The parties also agreed to license certain patents to one another as part of the settlement. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Both companies specialize in digital content delivery.

“We are pleased to finally have these disputes behind us,” said Bob Lento, Limelight’s Chief Executive Officer. “We remain focused on our top strategic priorities, including customer satisfaction, employee growth and retention, and delivering superior returns to our shareholders.”

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Qualys acquires software assets of 1Mobility, Singapore

Qualys, which specializes in cloud-based security and compliance, has acquired the software assets of 1Mobility, Singapore. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Qualys said the acquisition enables it to provide enterprises of all sizes with the ability to create and continuously update an inventory of mobile devices on all versions of Android, iOS and Windows Mobile in their environment; and to continuously assess their security and compliance posture, while quarantining devices that are compromised or out-of-compliance. It also allows Qualys to extend its PCI certification to mobile devices and to deliver a highly scalable Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solution that permits the distribution of apps and security policies over the air (OTA) to corporate or employee-owned devices (BYOD).

"With the acquisition of 1Mobility, Qualys is uniquely positioned to provide visibility across on-premises, endpoints, cloud(s) and now mobile and IoT environments," said Philippe Courtot, chairman and CEO, Qualys, Inc. "This is critical as companies are accelerating their digital transformation and looking at ways to consolidate their current security and compliance stack while expanding their mobile workforce. 1Mobility has built a comprehensive and well-architected technology that allows organizations to manage and secure mobile and IoT devices at scale, and we welcome them to the Qualys family."

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