AWS goes live with Neptune graph database

AWS announced general availability of Amazon Neptune, a fully-managed graph database service.

Amazon Neptune efficiently stores and navigates highly connected data, allowing developers to create sophisticated, interactive graph applications that can query billions of relationships with millisecond latency.

Amazon Neptune is highly available and durable, automatically replicating six copies of data across three Availability Zones and continuously backing up data to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Amazon Neptune is designed to offer greater than 99.99 percent availability and automatically detects and recovers from most database failures in less than 30 seconds. Amazon Neptune also provides advanced security capabilities, including network security through Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), and encryption at rest using AWS Key Management Service (KMS).

“Amazon Neptune is a key part of the toolkit we use to continually expand Alexa’s knowledge graph for our tens of millions of Alexa customers—it’s just Day 1 and we’re excited to continue our work with the AWS team to deliver even better experiences for our customers,” said David Hardcastle, Director of Amazon Alexa, Amazon.

https://aws.amazon.com/neptune

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AT&T expects ruling on Time Warner merger on June 12

AT&T expects a ruling on June 12 in the suit lawsuit brought against AT&T and Time Warner by the U.S. Department of Justice. If the court rules in its favor, AT&T is ready to close on the merger. The company anticipates annualized cost synergies of $1.5 billion by the end of the third year after close.

Speaking at this week's Cowen Technology, Media and Telecom Conference,  John Stephens, senior vice president and chief financial officer of AT&T, also stated:

• AT&T expects to expand its video offerings to better address each customer segment and grow its total video subscriber base.
• This includes AT&T’s top-of-the-line services DIRECTV and U-verse and OTT service DIRECTV NOW. 
• Following the close of the Time Warner deal, AT&T plans to introduce AT&T Watch, a skinny package without local programming or sports-only channels. 
• By the end of the year, the company also expects to launch a premium streaming experience that will compete with traditional linear TV products for in-home use. The product will be app-based with a small device that connects to customers’ TVs and home broadband. 
• Advertising is a significant part of the company’s video strategy and noted the vast ad inventory AT&T will have across its platforms following the Time Warner acquisition. 
• The FirstNet nationwide public safety broadband network for America’s first responders is off to a strong start. AT&T expects FirstNet capital spending of $2 billion this year.
• AT&T plans to reach 500 markets with 5G Evolution technology by the end of 2018. With 5G Evolution, the company is seeing speeds at two times of standard LTE in many areas.

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Facebook plans next data center in Utah

Facebook will build one of its hyperscale data centers in Eagle Mountain, Utah.

The 970,000 square foot Eagle Mountain Data Center will be powered by 100% renewable energy.

Facebook said the Eagle Moutain project represents an investment of more than $750 million.

The data center will use outside air to cool its servers.

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LF Networking adds global carriers as members

The LF Networking Fund (LFN), which facilitates collaboration and operational excellence across open networking projects, is gaining traction with global telecom service providers. New members include Sprint, KT, KDDI, SK Telecom, Swisscom, and Telecom Italia.

Addiiontal members include AT&T,  Bell Canada, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Comcast, KT, KDDI, Orange, PCCW Global, Reliance Jio, SK Telecom, Turk Telecom, Verizon, Vodafone and others.

THe LF Networkin Fund said telecom service providers are increasingly developing solutions and deploying LFN projects within their networks, with ONAP, OPNFV and ODL  as critical components to enable SDN/NFV, 5G, big data, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) network services.

"I am delighted to see expanded membership and support from even more of the world's leading telecom service providers," said Arpit Joshipura, general manager of Networking and Orchestration, The Linux Foundation. "As LFN now enables over 65 percent of the global mobile subscribers, we can better see the impact of open source on the networking ecosystem, signaling a broader industry trend toward innovation, harmonization and accelerated deployment."

"As a leading telecom company, we put great importance in network automation that utilizes open source to cope with maintenance and management of both virtualized and existing network complexly," said Yoshiaki Uchida, senior managing executive officer, Director of KDDI. "We are eager to continue to work with the ONAP community to further progress network management for the 5G era."

"5G technology is expected to dynamically provide various high-quality applications and services through virtualization-based open source technology. By joining LFN,  KT will actively participate in the open source ecosystem, which is set to lead standardization and development of next-generation 5G networks," said Dr. Hongbeom Jeon, head of KT Infra Lab. "As a result, we will collectively pioneer the new era of smart and cost-effective 5G platforms."

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IDC: Worldwide server market surges 39% yoy in Q1

Vendor revenue in the worldwide server market increased 38.6%, year over year to $18.8 billion during the first quarter of 2018 (1Q18), according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker. Worldwide server shipments increased 20.7% year over year to 2.7 million units in 1Q18.

IDC said the growth is driven by a market-wide enterprise refresh cycle, strong demand from cloud service providers, increased use of servers as the core building blocks for software-defined infrastructure, broad demand for newer CPUs such as Intel's Purely platform, and growing deployments of next-generation workloads.

"Hyperscale growth continued to drive server volume demand in the first quarter," said Sanjay Medvitz, senior research analyst, Servers and Storage at IDC. "While various OEMs are finding success in this space, ODMs remain the primary beneficiary from the quickly growing hyperscale server demand, now accounting for roughly a quarter of overall server market revenue and shipments."

Some key findings cited by IDC:

• Revenue in the worldwide server market increased 38.6% year over year to $18.8 billion while shipments grew 20.7% to 2.7 million units during the first quarter of 2018.
• 1Q18 marks the third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.
• Average selling prices (ASPs) increased during the quarter due to richer configurations and increased component costs. The increased ASPs also contributed to revenue growth.
• Volume server revenue increased by 40.9% to $15.9 billion, while midrange server revenue grew 34% to $1.7 billion. High-end systems grew 20.1% to $1.2 billion.
• Dell Inc. and HPE/New H3C Group were statistically tied for first in the worldwide server market with 19.1%, and 18.6% market shares respectively in 1Q18. 
• Dell was the fastest growing server vendor among the top 5 companies, growing revenue 50.6% year over year to $3.6 billion and gaining 1.5 points of revenue share year over year on a strong performance in all major geographic regions. 
• HPE/New H3C Group revenue increased 22.6% year over year in 1Q18 to $3.5 billion. HPE's share and year-over-year growth rate include revenues from the H3C joint venture in China that began in May of 2016; thus, the reported HPE/New H3C Group combines server revenue for both companies globally. 
• Lenovo, IBM, and Cisco were all statistically tied for the third position in the market with respective shares of 5.8%, 5.3%, and 5.2%. 
• The ODM Direct group of vendors grew revenue by 57.1% (year over year) to $4.6 billion. 
• Dell Inc. led the worldwide server market in terms of unit shipments, accounting for 20.6% of all units shipped during the quarter.

https://www.idc.com/tracker/showproductinfo.jsp?prod_id=7

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ExteNet Systems to acquire Hudson Fiber Network

ExteNet Systems, a private developer, owner and operator of distributed networks across the United States, agreed to acquire Hudson Fiber Network (HFN). Financial terms were not disclosed.

Hudson Fiber Network (HFN) is a data transport provider which has a significant metro fiber network in the greater New York City area and operates a national wide-area network with key international points of presence.


"We are pleased to announce our intention to acquire Hudson Fiber Network to accelerate growth of ExteNet’s Optical Network Solutions business,” said Ross Manire, President and CEO of ExteNet Systems. “We have served the northeast region, including New York City, for many years with our fiber, small cell and indoor network solutions. We plan to leverage the core competencies of both companies to offer our customers an expanded portfolio of carrier and enterprise solution offerings and rapidly expand into other major markets by leveraging ExteNet’s extensive fiber plant.”

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OFS expands fiber portfolio

OFS has expanded its AccuTube+ Rollable Ribbon Cable family to include cables with 432, 576 and 864 fiber counts featuring rollable ribbon technology in a ribbon-in-loose-tube cable design.

This expanded product line of 100% gel-free cables will offer both single jacket/all-dielectric and light armor constructions.

OFS said rollable ribbon fiber optic cables can help users achieve significant time and cost savings using mass fusion splicing while also doubling their fiber density in a given duct size compared to traditional flat ribbon cable designs.

Each OFS rollable ribbon features 12 individual optical fibers that are partially bonded to each other at predetermined points. These ribbons can be "rolled" into a flexible and compact bundle that offers the added benefit of improved fiber routing and handling in closure preparation.

The AccuTube+ Rollable Ribbon Cable product line also features cables with 1728 fibers in both single jacket and light armor designs and 3456 fibers in a single jacket construction. All of these cables meet or exceed the requirements of Telcordia GR-20 issue 4.

http://www.ofsoptics.com

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Masergy expands global bandwidth-on-demand to SD-WAN

Masergy announced the extension of their Intelligent Service Control with Global Bandwidth on Demand for Managed SD-WAN.

The Global Bandwidth on Demand feature is built into Masergy’s Intelligent Service Control (ISC) customer portal enabling customers to instantly ramp up or reduce Managed SD-WAN bandwidth by location. Enterprise IT managers typically use this feature to accommodate data back-up, multi-site video conferences, disaster recovery measures or other business requirements that use atypical bandwidth at high speeds. As with the private network, Masergy Global Bandwidth on Demand for public links can also be calendarized, so users can pre-select times throughout the week to increase bandwidth and ensure uptime for scheduled analytics projects or data backups. The customer is billed incrementally only for the specific spike of bandwidth usage.

“The one certainty today in enterprise information technology is rapid change,” said Chris MacFarland, CEO, Masergy. “As the complexity of the enterprise application environment increases, IT professionals are turning to software-defined hybrid networks to deliver superior user application experiences. This enhancement gives IT professionals complete control of their global hybrid networks, regardless of the access methodology, by extending our patented service control capabilities to our fully integrated Managed SD-WAN solution.”

“Enterprises are increasingly turning to service providers who deliver the flexibility of hybrid WAN architectures that leverage both public internet and private MPLS links," said Mike Sapien, VP and Chief Analyst at Ovum. “Masergy designs global network solutions based on their customer's users, application needs and each location's risk tolerance. With its latest innovation, the Masergy Global Bandwidth on Demand solution provides the ability to not only increase public network bandwidth dynamically in real time or at predetermined times, but also provides customers reliable business continuity if either private or public networks fail.”

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