AT&T offers a Cisco-powered NFV solution for enterprises

AT&T has begun offering the Cisco 5000 Series Enterprise Network Compute System (ENCS) as part of its Edge Solutions portfolio.

The Cisco ENCS supports virtual network functions – including routing, switching, firewall, and WAN optimization – and can be dynamically upgraded.

Cisco ENCS with AT&T will provide these functions on a single piece of AT&T-managed Cisco hardware with Cisco software. Multiple configurations are available, along with a library of virtual network functions.

AT&T said this NFV solution is available to customers who prefer a Cisco-based infrastructure.

"No business has the same network needs, and our expanded relationship with Cisco is helping us support more businesses that need managed services," said Josh Goodell, vice president, Edge Solutions, AT&T Business. "As companies continue to transform their businesses to digital models, having more choices becomes more important than ever."

https://www.business.att.com/solutions/Portfolio/network-services/

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AWS lands Major League Baseball and 21st Century Fox

Major League Baseball (MLB) has chosen AWS as its official provider for machine learning, artificial intelligence, and deep learning workloads. Specifically, MLB will use AWS machine learning services to continue development of Statcast—the tracking technology that runs on AWS to analyze player performance for every game—and develop new technologies to support MLB Clubs.

AWS said it's cloud-based machine learning services will enable MLB to eliminate the manual, time-intensive processes associated with record keeping and statistics, such as scorekeeping, capturing game notes, and classifying pitches.

“Incorporating machine learning into our systems and practices is a great way to take understanding of the game to a whole new level for our fans and the 30 clubs,” said Jason Gaedtke, Chief Technology Officer at Major League Baseball. “We chose AWS because of their strength, depth, and proven expertise in delivering machine learning services and are looking forward to working with the Amazon ML Solutions Lab on a number of exciting projects, including detecting and automating key events, as well as creating new opportunities to share never-before-seen metrics.

AWS also announced that 21st Century Fox has selected it for the vast majority of its key platforms and workloads. The media company is also leveraging AWS’s machine learning and data analytics services to create a consistent set of digital media capabilities across its brands. the companies said 21st Century Fox has already reduced its data center needs by 50 percent and moved over 30 million assets—approximately 10 petabytes of content—to Amazon Glacier and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Continuing this transformation, 21st Century Fox will use AWS as the primary platform to deliver over 90,000 titles on demand for key brands such as FOX, FX, National Geographic, 20th Century Fox Television, 20th Century Fox Film, and FOX Sports. 21st Century Fox has also. implemented a company-wide approach to data collection, processing, and instrumentation using AWS’s technologies.

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AppLovin raises $400 million for mobile game discovery

AppLovin, a start-up based in Palo Alto, California, announced a $400 million investment from KKR, a leading global investment firm, to accelerate its global mobile game discovery business

AppLovin said the partnership with KKR advances its goal of giving app developers of all sizes the ability to finance, market, and grow their businesses.  KKR is making the investment primarily from its KKR Americas XII Fund.

Mobile gaming projected to be a $70.3 billion industry in 2018, growing over 25% year-over-year according to Global Games Market Report.

AppLovin currently reaches over 300 million daily active users and drives over one billion installs for gaming companies annually.

“We’re honored to be partnering with KKR, one of the best investment firms in the world," said Adam Foroughi, CEO and co-founder of AppLovin. “This investment will further fuel the growth of our product and our investment in Lion Studios. KKR’s expertise will be invaluable as we continue to scale our company globally and help more app developers meet and exceed their business goals.”

• AppLovin was founded in 2012.  In 2018, the company launched its own mobile gaming division, Lion Studios, which has already published multiple chart-topping games. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto with offices in San Francisco, New York, Dublin, Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul, and Berlin.

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Keysight Joins 5G Device Forerunner Initiative

Keysight Technologies is joining the 5G Device Forerunner Initiative project, which was created earlier this year to accelerate the commercial availability of 5G devices.  More than 20 key chipset, component, and end solution providers are in the ecosystem.

Keysight said it is supplying its suite of 5G NR network emulation solutions to companies involved in the 5G trials to perform device characterization, design validation and conformance verification.

"We are pleased to extend our close collaboration with China Mobile in support of a connected ecosystem to realize the full potential of 5G across a wide range of applications and devices", says Satish Dhanasekaran, senior vice president of Keysight Technologies, and president of the Communications Solutions Group. "Keysight brings industry-leading 5G expertise and 5G test solutions to the project, supporting China Mobile’s strategic goals of promoting 5G development towards 5G’s commercialization in 2020."

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REFLEX launches 800G acceleration card based on Intel FPGA

Paris-based Reflex CES introduced a 800 GbE accelerator card powered by Intel's S GX FPGA. The board comes in different variants where clients can choose from different memory or FPGA densities.

This board features the largest Stratix 10 GX device with 2800 KLE and is designed for processing intensive and various data a Stratixalgorithms thanks to its unique mix of memory capabilities of DDR4 and QDR2+ modules. REFLEX CES has adopted the disruptive QSFP-DD technology for the optical interfaces, delivering up to 800GbE in total. This is combined with a huge storage capability using 3 SlimSAS interfaces at the rear of the board. The hardware is delivered with a custom passive heat-sink.

http://reflexces.com

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Red Hat Ansible Engine adds multicloud automation

The latest Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.6 release features new capabilities for automating across hybrid and multicloud environments, along with simplified connections to network APIs and updates for Ansible deployments overseeing Windows environments.

This includes updated modules covering Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. The public cloud modules add capabilities designed to match the latest functionality available in the respective cloud environments. Additionally, an improved AWS EC2 Instance module can provide a more streamlined user experience when provisioning new and managing existing EC2-backed instances. Red Hat has also extended support for VMware vSphere-deployed infrastructure, including VMware Cloud on AWS, enabling users to use automation across the hybrid cloud including legacy infrastructure.

http://www.redhat.com

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Verodin raises $21 million for cyber security instrumentation

Verodin, a start-up based in Tysons, Virginia, announced $21 million in Series B funding for its Security Instrumentation Platform (SIP), which continuously executes tests and analyzes the results to proactively alert on drift from a known-good security baseline The system validates and optimizes control configuration, and provide evidence demonstrating if the controls purchased and deployed are actually delivering the desired business outcomes.

The new funding was led by TenEleven Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP). Capital One Growth Ventures, Citi Ventures and all existing investors participated in the round.

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Dell'Oro: Rising shipments of campus Ethernet switches

Ethernet campus switches with enhanced software and hardware capabilities will fuel market growth through 2022, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group. Power over Ethernet (PoE) port shipments are expected to rise to nearly 850 million total ports over the next five years.

“The Ethernet campus switch market is about to undergo a major upgrade cycle that will drive sustained growth over the next five years,” said Sameh Boujelbene, Senior Director at Dell’Oro Group. “The campus switch installed base is ripe for refresh, not only because it’s an aging infrastructure, but also due to the lack of support of new capabilities needed to enable the digital transformation. New campus switches are expected to provide additional features such as automation, security, analytics and network visibility. We also expect a higher portion of campus switch ports to support PoE due to increased demand from PoE enabled devices such as WLAN, security cameras and PoE lighting,” added Boujelbene.

Key topics covered by the Ethernet Switch – Layer 2+3 5-Year Report:

• How will extended switching software capabilities affect the Ethernet Switch market?
• When will 2.5 Gbps shipments surpass 5.0 Gbps and what is the expected price point for both speeds?
• The impact of the move towards subscription-based sales models in campus switching.

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Thailand's dtac deploys 4G TDD with Nokia

dtac is deploying the first commercial 4G TDD network in Thailand using the 2300 MHz spectrum band operated in cooperation with TOT. The network is being deployed in the Northeast, North and South of Thailand, including major provinces such as Khon Kaen, Chiang Mai, and Phuket.

dtac is using the Nokia AirScale platform, including AirScale radios, AirScale System Modules, AirScale Active Antennas and NetAct. The upgrade leverages 3CC Carrier Aggregation, 256 QAM and 4x4 MIMO.

Sébastien Laurent, head of Nokia Thailand, said: "Nokia is honored and thankful for being selected by dtac to deliver our award-winning Radio Access Network solutions in three regions of Thailand. Our teams strive to deliver solutions and services providing faster mobile broadband experience to dtac's customers, as well as pave way for network evolution to 5G."

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