Project Airship aims for fully containerized clouds - OpenStack on Kubernetes

AT&T is working with SKT, Intel and the OpenStack Foundation to launch Project Airship, a new open infrastructure project that will offer a unified, declarative, fully containerized, and cloud-native platform. The idea is to let cloud operators manage sites at every stage from creation through minor and major updates, including configuration changes and OpenStack upgrades.

AT&T said the project builds on the foundation laid by the OpenStack-Helm project launched in 2017. In a blog posting, Amy Wheelus, vice president of Cloud and Domain 2.0 Platform Integration, says the initial focus is "to introduce OpenStack on Kubernetes (OOK) and the lifecycle management of the resulting cloud, with the scale, speed, resiliency, flexibility, and operational predictability demanded of network clouds."

She states that AT&T will use Airship as the foundation of its network cloud running over its 5G core, which will support the launch of 5G services in 12 cities later this year.  Airship will also be used by Akraino Edge Stack, which is a new Linux Foundation project for creating an open source software stack supporting high-availability cloud services optimized for edge computing systems and applications.

"We are pleased to bring continued innovation with Airship, extending the work we started in 2016 with the OpenStack and Kubernetes communities to create a continuum for modern and open infrastructure. Airship will bring new network edge capabilities to these stacks and Intel is committed to working with this project and the many other upstream projects to continue our focus of upstream first development and accelerating the industry," stated Imad Sousou, corporate vice president and general manager of the Open Source Technology Center at Intel.

http://airshipit.org

AT&T seeds Akraino project for carrier-scale edge computing

Tuesday, February 20, 2018  Akraino, Linux  No Comments

The Linux Foundation will host a new Akraino project to create an open source software stack supporting high-availability cloud services optimized for edge computing systems and applications.

To seed the project, AT&T is contributing code designed for carrier-scale edge computing applications running in virtual machines and containers.

“This project will bring the extensive work AT&T has already done to create low-latency, carrier-grade technology for the edge that address latency and reliability needs,” said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of The Linux Foundation. “Akraino complements LF Networking projects like ONAP in automating services from edge to core. We’re pleased to welcome it to The Linux Foundation and invite the participation of others as we work together to form Akraino and establish its governance.”

“Akraino, coupled with ONAP and OpenStack, will help to accelerate progress towards development of next-generation, network-based edge services, fueling a new ecosystem of applications for 5G and IoT,” said Mazin Gilbert, Vice President of Advanced Technology at AT&T Labs.

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MTS activates Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) in Russia

MTS, the leading communications service provider in Russia and the CIS, deployed Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) technology at a shopping center in Ufa City, Russia.

The service activation took place in the Planeta shopping center in Ufa on May 17 following a series of tests conducted on a live MTS network using a commercial smartphone.

The new LAA network in Ufa aggregates a 20 MHz band in the 1800 MHz licensed LTE spectrum (4x4 MIMO, 256-QAM) and three 20 MHz bands (2x2 MIMO, 256-QAM) in the 5 GHz unlicensed spectrum. The installation is built on Ericsson’s ERS indoor small cell stations using 1800 (2212) and LAA (2205) broadband radio modules, while Motorola Moto Z2 Force smartphone powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Mobile Platform was used as a smartphone.

The Snapdragon 835 integrates X16 LTE modem, the first commercial modem supporting the LAA technology. The configuration yielded downlink speeds of 979 Mbps.

This marks the first commercial LAA rollout in the region. Qualcomm is also listed as a technology partner.

Andrey Ushatsky, Vice President, Technology and IT, MTS, says: "With the launch of the commercial high-speed LAA-network in cooperation with Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies, MTS again confirms its status of a technological leader. This is the first LAA network in Russia and Eastern Europe and an important milestone on the way to 5G. LAA will allow us to build gigabit LTE networks quickly and cost-effectively in places with active traffic consumption, where operators do not always have enough available frequencies in the licensed spectrum.”

Yulia Klebanova, Vice President of Business Development, Qualcomm Europe, Inc., says: "We are happy to see Gigabit LTE network services becoming available to the subscribers of MTS. Gigabit LTE can help operators increase network throughput and achieve higher spectral efficiency, providing incredible network speeds to users of mobile devices powered by the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ Gigabit LTE modems with LAA support, including Snapdragon 835 and 845 Mobile Platforms.”

Sebastian Tolstoy, Head of Ericsson Russia, says: “LAA gives service providers access to new spectrum, increasing network capacity and supporting both higher peak rates and higher-than-average speed rates. This commercial LAA rollout marks another important milestone in our strategic cooperation with MTS. Earlier we achieved peak throughput data rates of 25 Gbps at our joint 5G trial. The next step is to prepare for a new demonstration of enhanced 5G capabilities during the football tournament in Russia this year.”

• In 2017, MTS selected Ericsson to upgrade its network with Ericsson Radio System and core network solutions and to prepare for 5G and IoT

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Interxion opens second data center in Marseille

Interxion officially opened the first phase of MRS2, Interxion’s second data center in Marseille, which has become the Mediterranean capital for telecoms, cloud and digital exchanges. Its geographical position as the landing point for 13 submarine telecommunications cables is a significant advantage.

The new facility will help meet the growing demand from international connectivity and content providers, and cloud platforms wanting to use Marseille as a hub to deliver their services and applications to Europe and further afield to Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

MRS2 is located in re-furbished, former naval workshops at the Marseille Fos Port. It will be built in three phases which will offer customers 4,400 sqm of equippable space with over 7MW of available power. The first phase, which is now completed, consists of 700 sqm of equipable space, while the second will offer 1,900 sqm from the second quarter of 2019. The capital expenditure associated with the construction of MRS2 as a whole is expected to be approximately €76 million.

Together with MRS1, the new data center allows a campus configuration, giving customers diversity of routes to ensure the resilience of their networks, as well as capacity for further expansion.

“Opening MRS2 is an important second step for Interxion in developing Marseille as a digital hub,” said David Ruberg, Interxion CEO. “This investment in the heart of the Mediterranean will help us to respond to the growing demand of our customers who wish to expand to Marseille to develop their activity in Europe and to reach emerging markets in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.”

For Fabrice Coquio, Managing Director of Interxion France, “MRS2 is the continuation of what we started with MRS1 when Interxion acquired the facility in 2014. I am proud and honoured today to open this new data center, which is particularly notable due to its position within the grounds of Marseille Fos Port, forming, together with MRS1, the Interxion’s Marseille Campus. The number of telecom providers in Marseille is growing with the arrival of cloud and digital media platforms, confirming Marseille not only as a connectivity hub but as a content hub.”

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Oracle to acquire DataScience for centralized model development

Oracle agreed to acquire DataScience.com, whose platform centralizes data science tools, projects and infrastructure in a fully-governed workspace. Financial terms were not disclosed.

DataScience, which is based in Culver City, California, helps enterprises to organize work, easily access data and computing resources, and execute end-to-end model development workflows.

Oracle said it will use DataScience to provide customers with a single data science platform that leverages Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and the breadth of Oracle's integrated SaaS and PaaS offerings to help them realize the full potential of machine learning.

“Every organization is now exploring data science and machine learning as a key way to proactively develop competitive advantage, but the lack of comprehensive tooling and integrated machine learning capabilities can cause these projects to fall short,” said Amit Zavery, Executive Vice President of Oracle Cloud Platform, Oracle. “With the combination of Oracle and DataScience.com, customers will be able to harness a single data science platform to more effectively leverage machine learning and big data for predictive analysis and improved business results.”

“Data science requires a comprehensive platform to simplify operations and deliver value at scale,” said Ian Swanson, CEO of DataScience.com. “With DataScience.com, customers leverage a robust, easy-to-use platform that removes barriers to deploying valuable machine learning models in production. We are extremely enthusiastic about joining forces with Oracle’s leading cloud platform so customers can realize the benefits of their investments in data science.”

The founders of DataScience include Ian Swanson (previously founder and CEO of Sometrics, a virtual currency monetization platform acquired by American Express); Colin Schmidt (previously served vice president of engineering at online student loan management service Tuition.io, and as engineering lead at Sometrics); and Jonathan Beckhardt (previously led product management and analytics at Tuition.io and developed big data strategy at American Express).

Investors in Datascience included TenOneTen, Greycroft, Crosscut Ventures, and Pelion Venture Partners.

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Gigalight 100G optical modules pass cloud provider testing

Gigalight announced that its 100G series optical transceiver modules have passed the connectivity test of multiple cloud service providers.

The Gigalight 100G series products include 100G QSFP28 SR4 multi-mode VCSEL optical modules and 100G QSFP28 CWDM4 single-mode WDM optical modules.

The company notes that it ships a large number of 10G multimode and 10G single-mode optical modules and 40G multimode SR4 optical modules to the world.

In the field of 40G single-mode optical modules, Gigalight's main customers include global TIE1 equipment vendors. For 100G, the company says cloud service providers have directly verified its modules since the end of 2017.

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Koo Bon-moo, chairman of LG Corporation, passes away

Koo Bon-moo, the chairman of LG Corporation, the fourth largest industrial group in Korea, has passed away. He was 73 and had been ill for about a year. Koo served as chairman since 1995. Under his helm, the global sales of appliances, displays, smartphones and batteries skyrocketed. The company changed its brand identity from Lucky Goldstar to LG. It also divested its semiconductor business (now SK Hynix), and it established a telecom division. 

Koo Kwang-mo (40), a senior official in LG Electronics and the adopted son of Koo Bon-moo, will take over the role of chairman. The Koo family and its charitable foundation are believed to control about 47% of the corporation.

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