Japan-Guam-Australia Cable promises design capacity of 36 Tbps

Construction has commenced on the Japan-Guam-Australia Cable (JGA),  a 9,500-kilometer undersea fiber optic cable system will deliver a design capacity of more than 36 terabits per second (Tbps) and is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2019.

JGA is being co-built by Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) and NEC.

JGA South (JGA-S), the segment between Sydney, Australia and Piti, Guam, is a consortium cable including AARNet, Google and RTI-C.

JGA North (JGA-N), the segment between the Minami-Boso, Japan and Piti, Guam, is a private cable with RTI-C as the sole purchaser. Both JGA-N and JGA-S will interconnect in Guam at GTA's newly built landing station.

Toru Kawauchi, General Manager of NEC's Submarine Network Division said, "We are honored to be selected once again by RTI-C to construct their third subsea cable. While both SEA-US and HK-G will provide horizontal East-West connectivity across the Pacific, JGA will now provide the much-needed vertical North-South connectivity, enabling high capacity communications to reach all corners. Furthermore, JGA will be the second project after HK-G to be co-financed by the Japanese government-led Japan ICT Fund, and the third project supporting RTI's investment after SEA-US and HK-G for the Japanese loan syndicate. We wish to further utilize these funds for many more cables in the future."

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Intel spins out Wind River

Intel has agreed to sell its Wind River subsidiary to TPG, a global alternative asset firm. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Wind River noted that its software "runs the computing systems of the most important modern infrastructure, including manufacturing plants, medical devices, aircraft, railway, automobiles, and communications networks."

“This acquisition will establish Wind River as a leading independent software provider uniquely positioned to advance digital transformation within critical infrastructure segments with our comprehensive edge to cloud portfolio,” said Jim Douglas, Wind River President. “At the same time, TPG will provide Wind River with the flexibility and financial resources to fuel our many growth opportunities as a standalone software company that enables the deployment of safe, secure, and reliable intelligent systems.”

Wind River President, Jim Douglas, and his existing executive management team will lead the newly independent Wind River after the transaction closes.

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Microsoft Azure opens partner data centre in Canberra, Australia

Microsoft launched a new Azure region in Canberra, Australia.

The new Australia Central regions enable customers to deploy their own applications and infrastructure within Canberra Data Centres directly connected via Azure ExpressRoute to Microsoft’s global network. The services are provided in partnership with Australian-owned Canberra Data Centres and are specifically designed to address the requirements of the Australian and New Zealand governments and critical national infrastructure, including banks, utilities, transport and telecommunications.

Microsoft now offers Azure from three cities in Australia: Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra with connectivity to Perth, Brisbane and Auckland.

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Vodafone sells its mobile towers in India to American Tower

Vodafone India completed the sale of its standalone tower business in India to ATC Telecom Infrastructure Private Limited (a unit of American Tower) for an enterprise value of INR 38.5 billion (EUR 478 million).

Vodafone India is merging with Idea. Both parties announced their intention to sell their individual standalone tower businesses to strengthen the combined financial position of the merged entity. Completion of Idea’s sale of its standalone tower business to ATC is also expected in the first half of this calendar year.

Completion of Vodafone+Idea merger is expected to complete in the first half of the current calendar year.

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Spirent adds scale testing for the new TLS v1.3 encryption protocol

Spirent Communications has expanded the functionality of its CyberFlood and Avalanche solutions by adding performance and scale testing for the new TLS v1.3 encryption protocol.

The new functionality enables testing and stressing traffic capacities on TLS v1.3-enabled devices and endpoint applications.

TLS (transport layer security) enables secure communication between web browsers and servers on the Internet. TLS v1.3 is the latest version and is quickly becoming the de facto encryption standard.

“TLS v1.3 will ultimately improve security and privacy for Internet users; however, there is risk with new standards and new potential holes in customers’ security,” said David DeSanto, director of products and threat research at Spirent Communications. “With Spirent’s performance and scale testing of this bleeding edge cryptographic standard, customers can validate that they are securely deployed, that they can achieve their desired performance, and that they know where the skeletons are in their TLS v1.3 deployments. With this capability, Spirent is helping to secure the future of the connected world.”

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Coriant names Senior VP of Global Sales Enablement

Coriant announced the promotion of Robert Shore to the role of Senior Vice President of Global Sales Enablement, where he will lead a global team driving the company’s ongoing transformation into a software-centric and multi-sided platform solutions provider in a new era of open ecosystem innovation. His responsibilities include global sales strategy, multi-sided platform partnerships, technical sales, systems engineering, network planning and design, product marketing, brand communications, and digital and social media marketing.

“I am thrilled to promote Rob to one of the most critical roles on my executive leadership team,” said Homayoun Razavi, Chief Customer Officer and Executive Vice President of Global Sales & Digital Marketing, Coriant. “Rob brings a wealth of customer-facing industry experience and solution expertise that will be instrumental as we expand the value we bring to our global customers with service-enabling software solutions and multi-side platform innovations spanning 5G, IoT, cloud, and the Industrial Internet.”

Coriant also announced new leadership appointments and roles under Shore that reinforce the Global Sales Enablement organization’s depth and breadth of industry knowledge, technical expertise and customer experience. The new appointments and roles include: Farshid Mohammadi, Vice President, Multi-Sided Platform Partner Program; Dr. Andreas Iselt, Director of Software Strategy; Bert Buescher, Vice President, Global Technical Sales; Russ Fordyce, Executive Director, Content Marketing & Solutions Promotion; Scott Larson, Vice President, Digital & Social Media Marketing; Bill Kautz, Director of Market Intelligence & Industry Analyst Relations; and Dr. Stefan Spaelter, Vice President of Global Technical Sales Support.

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DeepScale attracts $15M for perception software

DeepScale, a start-up based in Mountain View, California, announced $15 million in Series A funding for its work in efficient deep learning perception software for use in mass-produced automated vehicles.

DeepScale said it is using efficient deep neural networks (DNNs) on small, low-cost, automotive-grade sensors and processors. The goal is to interpret and classify sensor data in real-time for automated vehicles.

"One of our core objectives is to drastically reduce the number of deaths and injuries on the road," said Forrest Iandola, co-founder and CEO of DeepScale. "The company's Series A funding will not only empower our engineering team to continue to make breakthroughs in automated driving safety, but will also help us attract the brightest talent in the industry to transform the future of transportation."

DeepScale says it has lined up a number of strategic partnerships with Tier 1 suppliers, OEMs and semiconductor suppliers to provide automated driving perception solutions, including Visteon and HELLA-Aglaia Mobile Vision GmbH, a major German automotive supplier.

The funding round was led by Point72 and next47. Additional Series A funding was provided by existing investor Autotech Ventures and Trucks Venture Capital. Previous seed investors included Andy Bechtolsheim, Ali Partovi, Lip-Bu Tan and Jerry Yang's AME Cloud Ventures.

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Kingston intros consumer-grade PCIe NVMe SSD using 3D NAND

Kingston Digital introduced a line of entry-level consumer-grade PCIe NVMe SSD utilizing 3D NAND for notebooks and desktop. The drive is available in 240GB, 480GB and 960GB2 capacities,

The single-sided M.2 2280 (22mm x 80mm) form factor makes SSD features a Gen 3.0 x2 interface, 4-channel Phison 5008 controller, and 3D NAND Flash. It delivers 2x the performance of SATA SSDs with read/write speeds up to 1500MB/s and 1000MB/s.

Some key specs

Interface: PCIe NVMe Gen 3.0 x2 Lanes
Controller: Phison 5008
NAND: 3D TLC
Sequential Read/Write:

• 240GB: up to 1,500/800MB/s
• 480GB: up to 1,500/900MB/s
• 960GB: up to 1,500/1,000MB/s

Random 4K Read/Write:

• 240GB: up to 100,000/80,000MB/s
• 480GB: up to 100,000/90,000MB/s
• 960GB: up to 120,000/100,000MB/s

MTBF: 1 million hours

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JetStream launches cross-cloud data management platform

JetStream Software, a start-up based in San Jose, California, emerged from stealth to introduce its cross-cloud data management platform.

The JetStream Cross-Cloud Platform promises a better way to support workload migration, resource elasticity, and business continuity across multi-cloud and multi-data center infrastructures. The company says its platform will provide “built for the cloud” data management capability in an all-software, hypervisor-integrated solution for multi-cloud, multi-data center operations. The platform will be designed to complement VMware-based cloud infrastructures offered by VMware Cloud Provider Partners and VMware Cloud on AWS. Beta testing is underway.

Jetstream was founded by CTO Serge Shats, CEO Tom Critser and President Rich Petersen, each of whom had been at FlashSoft Software, which was acquired by SanDisk in 2012.

http://www.jetstreamsoft.com

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Riverbed's Jerry Kennelly steps down

Jerry M. Kennelly, who has served as CEO of Riverbed Technology since co-founding the company in 2002, is retiring.

Paul Mountford, who currently is Chief Sales Officer at Riverbed, will take over as CEO. Mountford joined Riverbed four years ago. Previously, he was CEO of Sentillian, a New York-based web intelligence startup focused on monitoring publicly shared content. Mountford's resume also includes 16 years at Cisco including running its Enterprise line of business.

“I’m extremely proud of what our team has built at Riverbed the last 16 years, growing from a start-up to a billion-dollar company serving 30,000 customers and every Forbes Global 100 company,” said Kennelly. “Riverbed is experiencing significant market momentum in today’s digital world, and I’ve never been more confident about the future of our company and opportunities ahead. After 40+ years in the tech industry, and with Riverbed in a strong position, the time is right for me to retire and hand the reins over to a proven leader in Paul Mountford. Paul has the experience, leadership capabilities, customer-focus, and passion to lead Riverbed through the next phase of growth while continuing to surpass our customers’ expectations.”

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Cloudera posts quarterly revenue of $103M, up 42% yoy

Cloudera reported revenue was $103.5 million for its fourth quarter and fiscal year 2018, ended January 31, 2018, an increase of 42% from the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017. Subscription revenue was $84.3 million, an increase of 50% from the year-ago period.

GAAP loss from operations for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018 was $45.7 million, compared to a GAAP loss from operations of $61.0 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017. Non-GAAP loss from operations for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018 was $16.6 million, compared to a non-GAAP loss from operations of $33.4 million in the year-ago period.

"It was a year of considerable accomplishment for Cloudera and our team. In our first few quarters as a public company, we introduced six major product offerings, completed a strategic acquisition, and delivered significant technological innovations -- with the open source community and also proprietary to our products," said Tom Reilly, chief executive officer at Cloudera. "Most enterprises are just embarking on their digital transformation journeys. In a rapidly evolving and disruptive market, we believe the investments we've made have us well-positioned to lead them on that journey."

Some highlights

• Subscription revenue was up 50% year-over-year to $84.3 million
• Non-GAAP subscription gross margin for the quarter was 86%, more than 200 basis points higher than the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017
• Dollar-based net expansion rate was 136% for the quarter
• International revenue grew 66% year-over-year
• 32 net new Global 8000 customers added

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