Monday, June 25, 2018

Telefónica publishes Digital Manifesto for democracies

Telefónica published the second edition of its Digital Manifesto, which defines the fundamentals that should guide public policy in democracies of the digital era to ensure that the benefits of digitalisation reach everyone in a rapidly changing technological, political and social environment.

Its Digital Manifesto revolves around five main principles to guide the debate on a New Digital Deal:

  1. Digitalisation must be an inclusive process in which we can all participate. Billions of people around the world are still not connected, and without connectivity there is no digitalisation. To achieve this, the deployment of broadband should be a priority for public administrations. 
  2. Social and fiscal policies must adapt to the current digital companies. Governments must adopt the necessary policies to ensure that citizens are ready to navigate in the new digital environment. It is very important that they also implement a clear tax system that obliges global digital service platforms to pay the corresponding local taxes and contribute fairly to the development of the countries in which they operate.
  3. Users must have transparent knowledge of their data and have control over how and when to use them. This is the only way to earn their trust and to exploit all the potential of data as the promoter of positive social change in areas such as health, education, transport and climate change. To achieve this trust, it is necessary to guarantee the security and privacy of the data. 
  4. For the sustainability of the internet, global platforms of digital services that are responsible and committed to social development are needed. In this regard, governments and regulators must ensure the application of existing values and laws. In turn, data have become a great competitive asset, and this should be considered by the authorities in the supervision of the markets to avoid positions of dominance and to prevent large global internet platforms from becoming the de facto guardians of users' digital experience. To guarantee its sustainability, it is also necessary to ensure the ethical use of artificial intelligence and algorithms, especially by these large platforms. 
  5. The modernization of social policy and the rights of citizens in the digital world are required as well. To this end, Telefónica advocates for a Digital Bill of Rights created with people in mind, that also protect its values and fundamental rights in the digital world. 


"We need a new regulatory paradigm that applies the same rules to the same services and that guarantees that all companies have the same opportunities to innovate. The authorities must intervene with agility when necessary to guarantee fair competition and the rights of users", underlined Pablo de Carvajal, Group General Council, Public Affairs, Regulation and Responsible Business, at the presentation of the manifesto. The presentation event was closed by Ignacio Moreno, member of the Board of Directors of Telefónica SA and chairman of its Regulation and Institutional Affairs Committee.

https://www.telefonica.com/es/web/public-policy/manifiesto-digital

AT&T sells data centers to Brookfield for $1.1 billion

AT&T will sell its data center colocation operations and assets to Brookfield Infrastructure and its institutional partners for $1.1 billion. This includes 18 Internet Data Centers (IDCs) in the United States and 13 outside the United States.

Brookfield is establishing a wholly-owned company to own and operate the assets. Customer contracts, employees supporting the colocation operations, fixed assets, leased and owned facilities will transfer to Brookfield. The colocation data center operations serve a diversified customer base of more than 1,000 companies.

AT&T said it will continue to deliver network services to its customers at the IDCs. Funds from the sale will be used to pay down debt. AT&T will become an active sales channel for the Brookfield business and will be the anchor tenant of the colocation operations.

Brookfied intends to appoint Tim Caulfield as CEO of the business. Caulfield is currently CEO of ANTARA Group, an IT management consultancy focused on the Internet-as-a-Service segment with extensive experience in data center services.

AT&T noted that will continue to offer customers access to colocation services at more than 350 data centers — including transferred IDCs — around the world as part of AT&T’s colocation ecosystem program.

AT&T's ongoing services to businesses include:

  • Data Center Connectivity – Ethernet, Internet and VPN.
  • AT&T NetBond for Cloud – a scalable, predictable and highly secure connection to the cloud.
  • AT&T FlexWare – Simplifies delivering and deploying software-based functions like routers and firewalls using SDN and NFV. It streamlines network infrastructure and has the potential to lower businesses’ capital investments.
  • Cloud and Data Center Consulting – consultation and design around data center, cloud and network migrations.
http://about.att.com/story/att_brookfield_infrastructure.html


  • Brookfield's investments include one of the largest portfolios of office properties in the world, an infrastructure business spanning utilities, transport, energy, communications infrastructure and sustainable resources, and one of the largest pure-play renewable power businesses with more than 200 hydroelectric facilities. 

  • In 2017, Verizon sold its 29 data centers and their operations to Equinix in a deal valued at $3.6 billion in cash. This includes 29 data centers are located across 15 cities in North and Latin America and over 1,000 customers.

AT&T to acquire AppNexus for its digital ad platform

AT&T agreed to acquire AppNexus, which operates a leading global advertising marketplace and provides enterprise products for digital advertising, Media reports valued the deal at $1.6 billion.

AppNexus, which is based in New York City,  claims to have over 34,000 publishers and 177,000 brands in its marketplace, with 11.4 billion impressions transacted daily. This translates into 6 million queries processed per second, and 250 TB of data processed daily.

AppNexus will become a part of AT&T advertising & analytics, led by Brian Lesser, CEO.  which operates a leading global advertising marketplace and provides enterprise products for digital advertising – serving publishers, a
“Ad tech unites real-time analytics and technology with our premium TV and video content,” said Lesser. “So, we went out and found the strongest player in the space. AppNexus has scale of infrastructure, advanced technology and diverse talent. The combination of AT&T advertising & analytics and AppNexus will help deliver a world-class advertising platform that provides brands and publishers a new and innovative way to reach consumers in the marketplace today.”

“Innovation is core to the heritage of both AT&T and AppNexus, and we have an exciting opportunity to chart the future course of advertising together,” said Brian O’Kelley, CEO, AppNexus. “Combining AT&T’s incredible assets with our technology, we will help brands and marketers power new advertising experiences for consumers. It’s what the market is asking for, and together we’re poised to deliver it.”

CoreSite launches Open Cloud Exchange powered by Ciena Blue Planet

CoreSite will be launching an enhanced Open Cloud Exchange platform next month based Ciena’s Blue Planet Multi-Domain Service Orchestrator (MDSO), which is an open and vendor-agnostic software solution that rapidly creates, deploys, and automates the end-to-end provisioning of network services spanning the WAN, data center, and cloud.

The enhanced CoreSite Open Cloud Exchange platform will provide customers with improved functionality and additional features, including support for single port connections to Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute, enhanced capacity management capabilities, support for 100Gbps connections, and robust API functionality.

CoreSite says its Open Cloud Exchange is its fastest-growing interconnection product, providing customers with direct access to leading public and private cloud providers, along with network and solution providers, including AWS Direct Connect, Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute, Alibaba Cloud, Faction and PacketFabric. It is available across all 8 of CoreSite’s markets.

“Innovative data center providers like CoreSite understand the benefit of leveraging advanced software solutions to not only reduce network complexity and costs, but to help accelerate service delivery and provide a best-in-class customer experience. Ciena’s Blue Planet solution accomplishes these goals by providing software control and intelligent automation capabilities that will enable CoreSite’s network providers to truly adapt to rapidly changing IT environments,” said Kailem Anderson, Vice President of Software and Services at Ciena.

"We are excited to work with Ciena’s world-class development team to create for our customers an exceptional Open Cloud Exchange upgrade to provide our customers innovative ways to efficiently and effectively customize and optimize their network architecture,” said Brian Warren, Senior Vice President of Product and Engineering at CoreSite. “This new platform will provide our customers with the ability to quickly adapt to new demands, while maintaining full self-service control of network transformation.”

Ribbon to acquire Edgewater Networks

Ribbon Communications agreed to acquire Edgewater Networks, a privately-held company based in San Jose, California that specializs in Network Edge Orchestration for the small and medium enterprise (SME) and Unified Communications (UC) market. 

Under the deal, Ribbon will pay Edgewater Networks shareholders an aggregate of $110 million, subject to customary post-closing net working capital and debt adjustments, comprised of: $50 million of cash, $30 million of deferred cash payments, and $30 million of Ribbon common stock to be issued at the time of closing, not to exceed 5.2 million shares.

Edgewater Networks, which was founded in 2002 and currently has about 80 employees, says it has more than 635,000 actively deployed edge devices and more than 20 million connected endpoints.

It product portfolio includes a hybrid network edge orchestration solution; a family of EdgeMarc IP-to-IP Session Border Controllers, EdgeMarc Multi-Service Gateways, and EdgeProtect Unified Communication platforms; an EdgeView Service Control Center (SCC) that provides visibility to all voice and data traffic and real-time alerts/alarms for remote troubleshooting and management; and an Edgewater SD-WAN solution.

Edgewater's revenue was $64 million in 2017 and $50 million in 2016, primarily derived from sales within the U.S.  Over the past four years, Edgewater Networks has recorded annual double-digit sequential revenue growth. Adjusted EBITDA was $4 million in 2017, a 98% increase compared to $2 million in 2016.

Ribbon said the acquisition will make it the market share leader for enterprise Session Border Controllers (SBCs) and Network Edge Orchestration.  The combined portfolio is expected to further strengthen the new Ribbon Protect UC security offering with voice and data intelligence from the enterprise edge and customer premises.

“This transaction demonstrates how we are delivering on our strategic objectives and extending our market reach,” said Fritz Hobbs, President and Chief Executive Officer of Ribbon Communications.  “The combination of Ribbon Communications and Edgewater Networks creates a best-in-breed, complete platform that extends our leadership position in the SBC, cloud UC, security and analytics markets.”

“The customer footprint of our combined organization is unmatched in the marketplace,” said David Norman, Chief Executive Officer of Edgewater Networks.  “The combination of Ribbon and Edgewater Networks will allow us to better serve customers globally and accelerate our pace of innovation in the UC and SD-WAN markets.”

Huawei presents its CloudOptiX for optical transport transformation

At the Huawei Optical Innovation Forum held this week in Nice, France, Huawei presented its CloudOptiX cloud transport network vision, which calls for more extensive use of optical fiber at the access layer for broadband services and the uses the chain WDM/OTN transmission mode at the transport layer.

Huawei's CloudOptiX is aimed at this evolution of transport networks towards next-generation all-optical networks.

Alex Duan, Vice President of Huawei's Transmission Network Product Line, said, "Experience is king in the intelligence era. Optical networks need to evolve towards experience-drive networks. The four major continuous technological innovations of Huawei's CloudOptiX solution enable 400G high-performance ultra-broadband pipes, simplified and highly-reliable all-optical switching network architecture, and new OTN technologies that support lower latency, smaller granularities, and more connections. Coupled with the efficient and intelligent O&M enabled by the brain of optical networks, the solution builds the next-generation ultra-broadband, simplified, and intelligent optical networks for operators to improve service experience and achieve business success."

Some highlights:

  • Huawei proposes to upgrade CloudOptiX from 100G to 400G. 
  • Huawei's proprietary CMS algorithm supports the evolution to 400G and beyond while maximizing the performance potential of optical components, maintaining a distance 20% further than the industry average. 
  • Huawei has launched a unique 200G CFP high-performance compact optical module, which is half the size of the industry average and has a power consumption that is 45% lower than the industry average.
  • In optical transport, Huawei's next step is to deploy WDM devices at the network edge to transform "pipes" to "service bearer networks" through end-to-end OTN. 
  • On the backbone layer, all-optical network 2.0 uses optical cross-connect backbone nodes to break the ceiling of cross-connect capacity in the electrical domain. 

http://www.huawei.com/en/press-events/news/2018/6/Huawei-CloudOptiX-All-optical-Network

Cisco Live 2018 Multi Tenant EVPN Automation with Apstra

One of Apstra's new features is support for automation of EVPN on top of your data center fabrics. To learn more, check out this video with Carly Stoughton recorded live at Cisco Live 2018 in Orlando.




Orange Fab launches Fab Connect(ai)

Orange Fab, which is an Orange Silicon Valley initiative for connecting startups to corporations for proof-of-concept projects, distribution, or investment opportunities, is kicking off an accelerator program called Fab Connect(ai) focused on artificial intelligence.

Fab Connect(ai) will run in partnership with a group of top-tier investors led by Cathay Innovation, Iris Capital, Michelin Ventures, Total Energy Ventures and Homebrew. It is being launched in collaboration with prominent partners, including Google Cloud’s Startup Program, NVIDIA’s Inception Program, Microsoft IoT & AI Insider Labs, LAB IX Flex Ventures, Publicis Groupe, Groupe Seb, Michelin, Valeo, Ping An Technology and Lumi.

Startups that participate in Fab Connect(ai) will have access to a network of seed-stage investors and corporations providing technical resources and real-world business challenges.

“Fab Connect(ai) is one of the first accelerator programs to align capital with global growth opportunities sustained by such a network of partners,” noted Georges Nahon, CEO of Orange Silicon Valley, the home of Orange Fab. “Our goal with Fab Connect(ai) is to identify the most promising startups in AI & IoT, a domain of growing importance for Orange and our Fab Force members.”

“Fab Connect(ai) is the only global initiative designed to empower AI with the benefits of smart connectivity, from a collaborative and global perspective, and with an extensive network of influential partners,” said Denis Barrier, co-founder and CEO of Cathay Innovation. “As a global venture capital fund deeply committed in the fourth industrial revolution, Cathay Innovation believes that this approach can be helpful for the rise of a Super AI able to foster the next wave of digital transformation.”

http://www.orangefab.com/connect

Source Photonics highlights the Evolutionary Phase of 100G Optical Transmission at the 2018 NGON and DCI Conference

Source Photonics will be presenting a talk about the next evolutionary phase of 100G optical transmission at the Next Generation Optical Networking (NGON) and Data Centre Interconnect (DCI) conference in Nice, France on June 26-28, 2018.

Supriyo Dey, Source Photonics’ Senior Director of Product Management, will discuss the current and future trends of innovative optical technology solutions on June 27, at 5:30 pm, CEST. He will explore how high-speed transceivers will need to evolve to meet the requirements of cloud data centers, 5G and edge networks.

http://www.sourcephotonics.com