IBM bets $34 billion on Red Hat as its pathway to multi-cloud

IBM agreed to acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat for $190.00 per share in cash, representing a total enterprise value of approximately $34 billion.

IBM and Red Hat said that as a combined company tthey will be strongly positioned to address the migration of all businesses to multi-cloud environments in an open and secure way. They estimate that 80% of business workloads have yet to move to the cloud. The merger will draw on their shared leadership in key technologies, such as Linux, containers, Kubernetes, multi-cloud management, and cloud management and automation

IBM  was an early supporter of Linux, collaborating with Red Hat to help develop and grow enterprise-grade Linux and more recently to bring enterprise Kubernetes and hybrid cloud solutions to customers.

IBM said it will remain committed to Red Hat’s open governance, open source contributions, participation in the open source community and development model, and fostering its widespread developer ecosystem. It also promises to build and enhance Red Hat partnerships, including those with major cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba and more, in addition to the IBM Cloud.

“The acquisition of Red Hat is a game-changer. It changes everything about the cloud market,” said Ginni Rometty, IBM Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. “IBM will become the world’s #1 hybrid cloud provider, offering companies the only open cloud solution that will unlock the full value of the cloud for their businesses.

“Open source is the default choice for modern IT solutions, and I’m incredibly proud of the role Red Hat has played in making that a reality in the enterprise,” said Jim Whitehurst, President and CEO, Red Hat. “Joining forces with IBM will provide us with a greater level of scale, resources and capabilities to accelerate the impact of open source as the basis for digital transformation and bring Red Hat to an even wider audience – all while preserving our unique culture and unwavering commitment to open source innovation.”

https://www.redhat.com

Red Hat continues to grow at double digit clip - up 14% in Q2

Wednesday, September 19, 2018  Red Hat  

Red Hat reported revenue of $823 million, up 14% in USD year-over-year, for its second quarter of fiscal year 2019 ended August 31, 2018. GAAP operating income for the quarter was $135 million. Non-GAAP operating income for the second quarter was $197 million, up 3% year-over-year. For the second quarter, GAAP operating margin was 16.4% and non-GAAP operating margin was 23.9%.

“Our second quarter results were consistent with our guidance and we drove 20% growth in total backlog to $3.3 billion,” said Eric Shander, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Red Hat. “

• Subscription revenue from Infrastructure-related offerings for the quarter was $527 million, an increase of 8% in USD year-over-year, or 8% measured in constant currency. 
• Subscription revenue from Application Development-related and other emerging technology offerings for the quarter was $196 million, an increase of 31% in USD year-over-year, or 31% measured in constant currency.

Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13 containerizes all OpenStack services

Monday, May 21, 2018  Redhat  

Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13, the newest version of Red Hat’s cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution provides the capability to containerize all OpenStack services, including networking and storage, for the first time in a Red Hat OpenStack offering.

Some key features of Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13:

• Red Hat Ceph Storage for massively scalable, integrated storage, which enables organizations to more quickly provision hundreds of virtual machines from a single snapshot and build a fully-supported storage solution.
• Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform helps Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13 serve as an extensible platform for cloud-native workloads, providing a single architecture that brings the power of Linux containers on Kubernetes orchestration to scalable OpenStack infrastructure.
• Fast Forward upgrades -- gives customers the option to stay on a faster upgrade path and receive new features from the upstream community every six months, or remain on a supported release for a longer period of time. 
• Integration of security related projects such as OpenStack Barbican, providing tenant level lifecycle management of secrets, such as passwords, security certificates and keys. With the introduction of Barbican, encryption related use cases are now available, such as Cinder encrypted volume support, Glance image signing and Swift object encryption. 
• Increased TLS coverage for internal communication flows for services such as VNC, OpenDaylight and Redis. The introduction of these features can enable customers to better comply with security standards such as FedRAMP, SecNumCloud, and other industry specific risk management frameworks.

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

Tuesday, May 08, 2018  Containers, IBM, Red Hat  

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.

Read More

5G Americas details 3GPP Release 14, 15, 16

5G Americas, which is an industry trade association, published a 271-page whitepaper detailing the extensive standards work by 3GPP in the development of 5G wireless technology.

Some highlights of Wireless Technology Evolution: Transition from 4G to 5G

3GPP Release 14, which was frozen by mid-2017, produced LTE-Advanced Pro features. It also focused on the study items towards 5G mobile wireless technology and architecture including Cellular Vehicle to Everything (C-V2X) communications.

3GPP Release 15, the first phase of normative specifications for 5G, provided specifications for a wider range of spectrum bands, from below 6 GHz to millimeter (mm) Wave bands up to 100 GHz enabled by a New Radio (NR) access technology.  3GPP Rel-15 Non-Standalone 5G New Radio (NSA 5G NR) specifications were completed in December 2017. The 5G NSA specifications have an LTE anchor for the control plane communications with a 5G NR cell to boost user data. The Rel-15 Standalone 5G NR specification will work without any reliance on LTE and those specifications were completed in June 2018 along with specifications of the new core network. The new core network specified in Rel-15 will provide interaction with the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) 4G system with orchestration, virtualization, a clearly separate control and user plane, and signaling architecture. Network slicing and Service Level Agreement (SLA) for groups of devices of new vertical industries and services will be provided for by the 5G core specification.

3GPP Release 16 definition of work study items was completed on schedule in July 2018. Release 16, described as phase 2 of 5G, will primarily address any outstanding issues in Rel-15, expansion of 5G NR based on C-V2X capabilities, Industrial Internet of Things (IoT), enhancements to Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC), and 5G in operation in unlicensed spectrum and above 52.6 GHz. 5G efficiency improvements in Rel-16 will include enhancements to 5G Self-Organizing Networks (SON) and Big Data capabilities, MIMO enhancements, improved power consumption, support for device capabilities exchange, and a study of support for non-orthogonal multiple-access (NOMA). The Release 16 standards will be completed before the end of 2019 to target the ITU IMT-2020 submission.

Michael Recchione, Principle Engineer, Mobility CTO Group, Cisco and leader of the 5G Americas working group, explained, "We are looking upon a newly defined era in mobile technology. 3GPP Release 15 marks the start of that new 5G era, the new horizon technology enablers for the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles and ultra-reliable low latency communications that will enable connectivity previously unimaginable."

The full 271-page whitepaper is here:
http://www.5gamericas.org/files/8015/4024/0611/3GPP_Rel_14-16_10.22-final_for_upload.pdf

Read More

AT&T previews NETGEAR Nighthawk 5G Mobile Hotspot over mmWave

AT&T took another step toward 5G with completion of the first millimeter wave mobile 5G browsing session.

The test used NETGEAR Nighthawk 5G Mobile Hotspot and was occurred in Waco, Texas over network infrastructure from Ericsson. This is the first standards-based mobile 5G device in the world able to access a live millimeter wave 5G network.

“This proves we are well on our way to the promise of mobile 5G for consumers,” stated David Christopher, president, AT&T Mobility and Entertainment.

AT&T plans to launch 5G in at least 12 cities this year and 19 cities in early 2019.

http://att.com/5Gnews

Read More

Broadcom confirms mass production of 12.8 Tbps Tomahawk 3 Switch

Broadcom's StrataXGS Tomahawk 3 switch series is now in mass production.

The Tomahawk 3 series supports high-density, line-rate 400GbE, 200GbE, 100GbE, and 50GbE interconnect for massive scale-out of software-defined cloud data centers. The Tomahawk 3 switch series features multiple devices at 12.8Tbps, 8.0 Tbps, and 6.4 Tbps based on the industry’s most performant 50G PAM4 / 25G NRZ SerDes technology. All devices in the series have completed extensive functional, performance, and reliability testing and have been qualified for volume production.

“We are delighted and humbled by the widespread adoption of Tomahawk 3 based switching solutions in cloud infrastructure,” said Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager, Switch Products at Broadcom. “Our engineering team has executed to the demands of the largest cloud operators globally, including the most rigorous system and network-level qualification requirements – both in our labs and in customer testbeds. Network operators are able to immediately deploy Tomahawk 3 based fabrics, at scale, and with confidence.”

Read More

Broadcom intros first full-duplex G.fast

Broadcom introduced the first full-duplex modem implementation based on G.fast.

Broadcom said the innovation builds on the advantages of G.fast for high-density residential environments. Full-duplex utilizes the entire frequency spectrum of G.fast simultaneously in both the downstream and upstream communication paths, effectively doubling the simplex capacity of G.fast. Depending on the nature of an operator’s copper plant, this will result in either a doubling of the peak bandwidth, or the maximum distance from the distribution point to the customer premise, as compared with the existing G.fast standard.

Broadcom’s full-duplex implementation is available today on the production-released BCM65400 device family. 

Broadcom is working with the next-generation G.mgfast initiative within the ITU to bring a fully-standardized full-duplex solution to the broadband market, pending completion and ratification of the new standard.

“We are excited to pioneer another innovative copper solution, one that effectively doubles the performance of current G.fast,” said Greg Fischer, senior vice president and general manager, Broadband Carrier Access, Broadcom. “Full-duplex technology will provide telecom operators with yet another option to leverage the investment in their existing copper networks, with a competitive, minimal capex multi-gigabit broadband service for many years to come.”

Read More

Samsung demos 5G in India

Samsung will participate in India’s first large-scale 5G trial, scheduled to take place in the first quarter of 2019, in collaboration with the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).

Samsung is showcasing 5G at this week's India Mobile Congress 2018 in New Delhi. Demos include 5G home broadband services, Smart Cities and Smart Agriculture. Samsung’s 5G Skyship, which was developed in partnership with Korea Telecom, will be flying over the exhibition center to demonstrate first response use cases.

Samsung notes that it built the world’s largest greenfield and the most advanced 4G LTE networks nationwide by partnering with Reliance Jio, covering 99% of the Indian population, equivalent to 1.3 billion people.

Read More

Nokia begins manufacturing 5G radios in Chennai

Nokia has started manufacturing 5G New Radios (NR) based on the 3GPP 5G New Radio Release 15 standard at its state-of-the-art plant in Chennai.

Nokia's Chennai facility, which is one of the largest telecom equipment manufacturing plant in the country, recently reached the 4 million unit annual production milestone of 2G, 3G and 4G units. It serves both domestic as well as global customers, shipping to over 100 countries.

Sanjay Malik, senior vice president and head of the India Market, at Nokia, said, "This is another big leap towards the 'Make in India' vision as our factory continues to contribute to the Indian economy and the country's growing profile as a manufacturing and engineering hub. Nokia was the first to leverage the skills and capabilities in India and start manufacturing telecom networks equipments in the country in 2008, and developthe local supply chain for various components. We are now pioneering 5G manufacturing in the country, making India and the world ready for 5G."

Read More

BSNL picks Nokia for Smart Pole project

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) selected Nokia to supply, install, commission and maintain the Smart Telecom Poles across India in all of BSNL's telecom circles.

The project envisions a transformation of India's cities through intelligent infrastructure.

Under the contract, Nokia will also integrate the poles with smart LED lighting systems, CCTV cameras, digital billboards and environmental sensors that provide strong revenue generation potential for the operator.

Read More

Huawei launches Intel Select Solution in NFVI

Huawei, which has deployed more than 380 NFVI projects, launched an Intel Select Solution in NFVI.

Intel Select Solutions for network functions virtualization infrastructure (NFVI) are workload-optimized network solutions designed to simplify the process of selecting and deploying the hardware and software needed for network workloads and applications.

Dan Rodriguez, vice president of Communications Infrastructure Division, Data Center Group, Intel said: "Intel® Select Solutions provide optimized, pre-integrated, and fully verified reference designs so that users can simplify and accelerate adoption and deployment of trusted solutions. Huawei's FusionSphere for NFVI solution enables end users to efficiently implement virtualized network functions and application deployment, achieving flexibility, reliability, performance and ease of maintenance at optimal cost while extracting the maximum benefit from the Intel® Xeon® Scalable platforms."

Read More