IBM to adopt Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform for all its software

IBM will extend its private cloud platforms (IBM Cloud Private and IBM Cloud Private for Data) and its middleware offerings to Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform as Red Hat Certified Containers.
The agreement builds on IBM’s recent move to re-engineer its entire software portfolio with containers, including WebSphere, MQ Series and Db2.

The companies said there is growing consensus that container technologies are the best way to move applications across multiple IT footprints, from existing data centers to the public cloud and vice versa.

Under their agreement, enterprise customers will be able to more easily adopt a hybrid cloud strategy with IBM Cloud Private and Red Hat OpenShift serving as the common foundation. This will enable the IBM Cloud Private container platform to provide a single view of all enterprise data.


“With IBM’s recent move to containerize its middleware, today’s landmark partnership between IBM and Red Hat provides customers with more choice and flexibility. Our common vision for hybrid cloud using container architectures allows millions of enterprises – from banks, to airlines, to government organizations - to access leading technology from both companies without having to choose between public and private cloud,” stated Arvind Krishna, Senior Vice president, IBM Hybrid Cloud.

“Today’s enterprises need a succinct roadmap for digital transformation as well as confidence in deployment consistency across every IT footprint. By extending our long-standing collaboration with IBM, we’re bringing together two leading enterprise application platforms in Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and IBM Cloud Private and adding the power of IBM’s software and cloud solutions. Together, we’re providing customers with a supported, consistent offering across their computing environments,” said Paul Cormier, President, Products and Technologies, Red Hat.

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Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes to extend across Azure and on-prem

Microsoft and Red Hat announced an expanded alliance to enable enterprises to run container-based applications across Microsoft Azure and on-premises using the Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes platform.

Red Hat OpenShift on Azure is a fully-managed service that provides the flexibility to reely move applications between on-premises environments and Azure with a consistent platform.

The companies said they can enable applications to connect faster, and with enhanced security, between Azure and on-premises OpenShift clusters with hybrid networking. From the containers, enterprises will be able to access other Microsoft Azure services like Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Machine Learning, and Azure SQL DB.

A preview of Red Hat OpenShift on Azure is expected in the coming months. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Azure and Azure Stack are currently available.

“Microsoft and Red Hat are aligned in our vision to deliver simplicity, choice and flexibility to enterprise developers building cloud-native applications. Today, we’re combining both companies’ leadership in Kubernetes, hybrid cloud and enterprise operating systems to simplify the complex process of container management, with an industry-first solution on Azure,” stated Scott Guthrie, executive vice president, Cloud and Enterprise Group, Microsoft.

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Intel Capital announces 12 start-up bets in AI, Cloud, IoT and Silicon

Intel Capital announced investments totalling $72 million in a dozen start-up companies focused in AI, cloud, IoT and silicon technologies.

This week the company is hosting an Intel Capital Global Summit in Palm Desert, California to bring together startup entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and tech industry executives.

The 12 startups joining Intel Capital’s portfolio are:

Artificial Intelligence

Avaamo (Los Altos, California) is a deep learning software company that specializes in conversational interfaces to solve specific, high-impact problems in the enterprise. Avaamo is building fundamental AI technology across a broad area of neural networks, speech synthesis and deep learning to make conversational computing for the enterprise a reality. http://www.avaamo.com/

Fictiv (San Francisco, California) is democratizing access to manufacturing, transforming how hardware teams design, develop and deliver physical products. Its virtual manufacturing platform pairs intelligent workflow and collaboration software with Fictiv’s global network of highly vetted manufacturers. From prototype to production, Fictiv helps hardware teams work efficiently and bring products to market faster. https://www.fictiv.com/

Gamalon (Cambridge, Massachusetts) is leading the next wave in machine learning with an AI platform that teaches computers actual ideas. Gamalon’s Idea Learning technology provides accurate, editable and explainable processing of customer messages and other free-form data. Gamalon’s system learns faster, is easily extendable to specific domains, is completely auditable, and understands complexity and nuance. It can be used to structure free-form text such as surveys, chat transcripts, trouble tickets and more. https://gamalon.com/

Reconova (Xiamen, China) is a leading AI company providing cutting-edge visual perception solutions. Dedicated to the research of innovative computer vision and machine learning technologies, Reconova possesses a significant amount of core technologies in those fields. The company has achieved scale production and application across the smart retail, smart home and intelligent security segments. http://www.reconova.com/en/index.html

Syntiant (Irvine, California) is an AI semiconductor company that is accelerating the transition of machine learning from the cloud to edge devices. The company’s neural decision processors merge deep learning with semiconductor design to produce highly efficient ultralow-power analog neural computation for always-on applications in battery-powered devices, including mobile phones, wearable devices, smart sensors and drones. https://www.syntiant.com/

Cloud and IoT

Alauda (Beijing, China) is a container-based cloud services provider empowering enterprise IT with its enterprise platform-as-a-service offering and other strategic services. It delivers cloud-native capabilities and DevOps best practices to help enterprises modernize application architecture, maximize developer productivity and achieve operational excellence. Alauda serves organizations undergoing digital transformation across a number of industries, including financial services, manufacturing, aviation, energy and automotive. http://www.alauda.cn/?lang=EN

CloudGenix (San Jose, California) is a software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) leader, transforming legacy hardware WANs into a software-based, application-defined fabric. Using CloudGenix software, customers deploy cloud, unified communications and data center applications to remote offices over broadband networks with high performance and security. CloudGenix customers experience up to 70 percent WAN costs savings, an improved user experience for their applications, and more than 10x improvements in application and network uptime. https://www.cloudgenix.com/

Espressif Systems (Shanghai, China) is a multinational, fabless semiconductor company that leverages wireless computing to create high-performance IoT solutions that are more intelligent, versatile and cost-effective. The company’s all-in-one system-on-chips (SoCs) provide dual-mode connectivity (Wi-Fi+BT/BLE) to a wide range of IoT products – including tablets, cameras, wearables and smart home devices – at competitive prices. https://www.espressif.com/

VenueNext (Santa Clara, California) transforms the way guests experience every kind of venue, from arenas and concert halls to hotels and hospitals. Its smart-venue platform connects a facility’s siloed operational systems to give guests seamless access to services via their smartphones, and provides real-time analytics and insights that transform business outcomes. A sample of customers include Levi’s Stadium, Yankee Stadium, U.S. Bank Stadium, Amway Center, Churchill Downs and St. Luke’s Health Systems. http://www.venuenext.com/#welcome

Silicon

Lyncean Technologies (Fremont, California) was founded in 2001 to develop the Compact Light Source (CLS), a miniature synchrotron X-ray source. Enabling a reduction in scale by a factor of 200, the CLS shrinks a machine capable of synchrotron quality experiments from stadium-sized to room-sized. Lyncean’s newest development is a novel EUV source based on coherent photon generation in a compact electron storage ring, specifically designed for high-volume manufacturing semiconductor lithography. http://lynceantech.com/

Movellus (San Jose, California) develops semiconductor technologies that enable digital tools to automatically create and implement functionality previously achievable only with custom analog design. Using digital design, Movellus improves the efficiency of creating and laying out analog circuits for SoCs – resulting in faster design time, faster time to yield, smaller die size and lower failure rates. Movellus’ customers include semiconductor and systems companies in the AI, networking and FPGA segments. https://www.movellus.com/

SiFive (San Mateo, California) is the leading provider of market-ready processor core IP based on the RISC-V instruction set architecture. Founded by the inventors of RISC-V and led by a team of industry veterans, SiFive helps system-on-chip designers reduce time to market and increase cost savings by enabling system designers to produce customized, open-architecture processor cores. https://www.sifive.com/

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Google Cloud Platform to open region in Zurich

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is building a new region in Zürich, Switzerland. The facility is expected to be online in the first half of 2019.

This will be GCP's sixth region in Europe, joining our future region in Finland, and existing regions in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, he United Kingdom, and another facility under development in Finland. With Switzerlan, GCP will have 20 regions in service or announced.

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NeoPhotonics posts revenue of $68.6 million, 100G and up now at 86% of sales

NeoPhotonics reported Q1 revenue of $68.6 million, down 4% year-over-year and 11% quarter-over-quarter. The gross margin was 13.4%, compared to 20.4% in the prior quarter. There was a GAAP net loss of $18.2 million, compared to a net loss of $14.3 million in the prior quarter. Non-GAAP net loss amounted to $14.6 million, compared to a net loss of $11.7 million in the prior quarter.

“Continuing our focus on 100G and above High Speed Products, which reached the highest proportion of revenue in our history at 86% in the quarter, we introduced and demonstrated new products for 400G and 600G coherent and datacenter applications. During the quarter we saw strength in metro and DCI deployments, driven by North America, and we have accelerating demand for these segments going into the remainder of the year,” said Tim Jenks, NeoPhotonics Chairman and CEO. “At the same time, while demand in China had stabilized, the recent regulatory and trade actions have introduced new uncertainty in that region, we continue to monitor and adjust plans accordingly.”

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Twilio's cloud communications hits Q1 revenue of $129M, up 48% yoy

Twilio reported revenue of $129.1 million for the first quarter of 2018, up 48% from the first quarter of 2017 and 12% sequentially from the fourth quarter of 2017. AAP loss from operations of $24.3 million for the first quarter of 2018, compared with GAAP loss from operations of $14.8 million for the first quarter of 2017. Non-GAAP loss from operations of $4.7 million for the first quarter of 2018, compared with non-GAAP loss from operations of $3.7 million for the first quarter of 2017.

Twilio had 53,985 active customer accounts as of March 31, 2018, compared to 40,696 active customer accounts as of March 31, 2017.

"We are honored that a growing list of companies around the world are placing their trust in Twilio. Our first quarter results exhibited broad-based strength across multiple areas of our business, especially with continued expansion with existing customers,” said Jeff Lawson, Twilio’s Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. “Our continued devotion to innovation was highlighted by the launch of Twilio Flex - the first fully programmable cloud contact center application platform.”

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With its acquired product lines, Extreme hits revenue of $262 million

Extreme Networks reported revenue of $262.0 million for its fiscal third quarter ended March 31, 2018. GAAP gross margin for the third fiscal quarter was 54.6%, a decrease of 90 basis points year-over-year, and non-GAAP gross margin was 57.9% year-over-year, an increase of 70 basis points year-over-year.  GAAP net loss for the third fiscal quarter was $13.6 million, or $0.12 per basic share, a decrease of $8.6 million and $0.07 per basic share, respectively, year-over-year. Non-GAAP net income was $19.0 million, or $0.16 per diluted share,

"We made significant progress continuing to build the 'new' Extreme in the third fiscal quarter with year-over-year revenue growth and non-GAAP gross margin improvement, hitting all of our critical milestones associated with the systems integration of our newly acquired assets," stated Ed Meyercord, President and CEO of Extreme Networks.

"We achieved organic growth of 8% in core Extreme revenue, driven by strength in our wireless business, and 10% sequential growth in our acquired Campus Fabric revenue. Given strong demand, we built our order backlog by over $7M during the quarter. We expect improvement in our gross margins in our last fiscal quarter of 2018 as we continue to approach our 60% target, in addition to significant sequential and year-over-year quarterly revenue growth."

Extreme's recent acquisitions include Avaya's networking business and Brocade Communications Systems' data center switching, routing, and analytics businesses.

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Sckipio raises $10 million for its Gfast chipset

Sckipio Technologies raised $10 million in new funding for its Gfast chipsets.

The new funding round was MegaChips. Intel Capital, Pitango Venture Partners, Genesis Partners, Gemini Israel Ventures, Amiti Ventures, Aviv Ventures, CIRTech Fund and Axess Ventures also invested in the round.

This brings total funding in Sckipio Technologies to date.

“We see a tremendous global opportunity for Gfast and see Sckipio as the leading player,” said Akira Takata, MegaChips president and CEO. “Of equal importance, MegaChips has a long history working with Sckipio executives and believes strongly in the company’s team, technology, vision and execution.”

“The Sckipio team has incredible technological foresight and knows how to bring true innovations to the market,” said David Baum, Sckipio CEO. “The new investment will fund R&D at the level required to be a continual leader in the Gfast market.”

Sckipio hits 4 Gbps aggregate with G.fast

Tuesday, October 24, 2017  Sckipio  No Comments

Sckipio has demonstrated over 3.1Gbps of download and 900Mbps of upload on production silicon using Gfast bonding running at 212Mhz on two bonded pairs of CAT-3 wiring (regular copper telephone wires).

The demonstration, which is being conducted at the Broadband World Forum in Berlin, Oct. 24-26, was developed in partnership with software company Civica. The demonstration uses Sckipio’s SCK23000 chipsets, Civica WanStaX software and the Microsemi WinPath network processor.

“Sckipio is pushing Gfast to astonishing speeds with production silicon,” said David Baum, Co-founder and CEO of Sckipio. “No other Gfast solution delivers end-to-end 212a profile bonding.”

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ThoughtSpot raises $145 million for its enterprise AI-driven analytics

ThoughtSpot, a start-up based in Palo Alto, California, announced $145 million in Series D funding for its work in search and AI-driven analytics for the enterprise.

The round included existing investors Lightspeed Ventures, Future Fund, Khosla Ventures, and General Catalyst participated, alongside new participants Sapphire Ventures, and other global investors. Since its founding in 2012, ThoughtSpot has raised $306 million in total funding.

“In the few short years since founding ThoughtSpot, we have disrupted the analytics market and seen global enterprises adopt our search and AI-driven analytics due to its simplicity for business people and enterprise-grade scale and governance for today’s CIOs and CDOs,” said Ajeet Singh, founder and CEO, ThoughtSpot. “We see a world where your analytics platform serves up insights to you before you can even articulate a question. With the new funding, we’ll continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible with self-service analytics for our customers, partners, and the industry at large.”

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