ONF and TIP collaborating on Open Optical Transport

The ONF and the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) agreed to collaborate on optical transport solutions that increase openness, SDN programmability, and disaggregation.

The collaboration combines the ONF's Open Disaggregated Transport Network (ODTN) project and TIP’s­­­ Open Optical & Packet Transport(OOPT) group. Both groups are leveraging open software and hardware, common APIs and community collaboration.

The groups said their existing work as highly synergistic, as the ONF (ODTN) has pursued a software-centric approach while TIP (OOPT) has pursued an open hardware agenda. 

ONF (ODTN) will continue to focus on the control plane with the development of an Open Source SDN controller (ONOS) and standardization of open APIs such as Transport API (TAPI). ONF has also developed the definition of the end-to-end Data Center interconnect (DCI) use-case according to ONF’s service provider needs through its ODTN Reference Design process.

In parallel, TIP (OOPT) members have introduced two white box transponder systems, Voyager and Cassini, based on open designs.  They have also developed TAI, the Transponder Abstraction Interface, and the GNPy open source optical planning tool.

https://www.opennetworking.org/odtn
https://oopt.telecominfraproject.com

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Microsoft releases Azure Data Box family

Microsoft announced general availability of its Azure Data Box Edge and the Azure Data Box Gateway for on-premise deployment.

Data Box Edge, which is described as an on-premises anchor point for Azure, is offered on a pay-as-you-go basis, just like any other Azure service and the hardware is included. This 1U rack-mountable appliance provides:

• Local Compute – Run containerized applications at your location. Use these to interact with your local systems or to pre-process your data before it transfers to Azure.
• Network Storage Gateway – Automatically transfer data between the local appliance and your Azure Storage account. Data Box Edge caches the hottest data locally and speaks file and object protocols to your on-premises applications.
• Azure Machine Learning utilizing an Intel Arria 10 FPGA - Use the on-board Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) to accelerate inferencing of your data, then transfer it to the cloud to re-train and improve your models. Learn more about the Azure Machine Learning announcement.
• Cloud managed – Easily order your device and manage these capabilities for your fleet from the cloud using the Azure Portal.
  

Data Box Gateway is also available as a standalone virtual appliance on a pay-as-you-go basis. It can be provisioned it in a hypervisor, using either Hyper-V or VMware, and managed through the Azure Portal. Server message block (SMB) or network file system (NFS) shares will be set up on the local network. Data landing on these shares will automatically upload to your Azure Storage account, supporting Block Blob, Page Blob, or Azure Files. We’ll handle the network retries and optimize network bandwidth for you. Multiple network interfaces mean the appliance can either sit on your local network or in a DMZ, giving your systems access to Azure Storage without having to open network connections to Azure.

In addition to Data Box Edge and Data Box Gateway, Azure announced three sizes of Data Box for offline data transfer:

Data Box – a ruggedized 100 TB transport appliance
Data Box Disk – a smaller, more nimble transport option with individual 8 TB disks and up to 40 TB per order
Data Box Heavy Preview - a bigger version of Data Box that can scale to 1 PB.

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Liquid Telecom picks Nokia for optical transport in East Africa

Liquid Telecom Kenya, part of the leading pan-African telecoms group Liquid Telecom, selected to upgrade their existing fiber network to support OTN/DWDM technology with an initial network capacity of 500G.

The deployment will use the Nokia 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS). The solution will initially be available on the following routes:

Nairobi - Mombasa: high-capacity interconnections from Nairobi datacenters to the submarine landing stations at Mombasa
Nairobi - Kampala: opens a new high-capacity route to Uganda, Rwanda and beyond
Nairobi - Namanga: opens a new high-capacity route to Tanzania
Nairobi - Ethiopia: opens a new high-capacity route to Ethiopia and gives the landlocked country an alternate route to the submarine connection in Djibouti

Ben Roberts, CTO, Liquid Telecom, said: "We believe that every individual on the African continent has the right to be connected. This is the vision that has been driving our network expansion across Africa. By teaming up with Nokia, we have been able to quickly adapt to the industry's rapid growth within the region and greater access to our high-speed fibre network and cloud services across East Africa. This comes at a time when more mobile operators are planning to increase their backbone bandwidth as they prepare for 5G which is driving the demand for high speed city to city internet links."

The deployment began in October 2018, and is expected to provide enhanced services to thousands of corporate customers and FTTH users, and has the potential to reach over 85 million mobile subscribers across Kenya and its neighboring countries.

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UK raises software engineering concerns in security evaluation of Huawei

The Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre (HCSEC) Oversight Board published a 46-page report in which it discusses significant technical issues "in Huawei’s engineering processes, leading to new risks in the UK telecommunications networks." The report also states that although Huawei continues to engage in the security review process, "no material progress has been made by Huawei in the remediation of the issues reported last year."

HCSEC, whose mission is to evaluate the security risks posed by using Huawei’s equipment in critical national infrastructure, is a facility in Banbury, Oxfordshire, belonging to Huawei Technologies and administered by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre.

Regarding the software engineering issues with potential impact on network security, the report states that the issue "is with Huawei’s underlying build process which provides no end-to-end integrity, no good configuration management, no lifecycle management of software components across versions, use of deprecated and out of support tool chains (some of which are non-deterministic) and poor hygiene in the build environments."

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/790270/HCSEC_OversightBoardReport-2019.pdf

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IDC: Cloud IT infrastructure Revenues dropped in 4Q18

Vendor revenue from sales of IT infrastructure products (server, enterprise storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud environments, including public and private cloud, grew 28.0% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2018 (4Q18), reaching $16.8 billion, according to a new repor from IDC.

IDC reported that annual spending (vendor revenue plus channel mark-up) on public and private cloud IT infrastructure totaled $66.1 billion in 2018, slightly higher (1.3%) than forecast in Q3 2018. IDC also raised its forecast for total spending on cloud IT infrastructure in 2019 to $70.1 billion – up 4.5% from last quarter's forecast – with year-over-year growth of 6.0%.

Some highlights from IDC:

• Quarterly spending on public cloud IT infrastructure was down 6.9% in Q418 compared to the previous quarter but it still almost doubled in the past two years reaching $11.9 billion in 4Q18 and growing 33.0% year over year, while spending on private cloud infrastructure grew 19.6% reaching $5.75 billion. 
• Public cloud represented 69.6% of cloud IT infrastructure spending in 2018.
• Spending on public cloud infrastructure growing at an annual rate of 50.2%. 
• Spending on private cloud grew 24.8% year over year in 2018.
• In 4Q18, quarterly vendor revenues from IT infrastructure product sales into cloud environments fell and once again were lower than revenues from sales into traditional IT environments, accounting for 48.3% of the total worldwide IT infrastructure vendor revenues, up from 42.4% a year ago but down from 50.9% last quarter. For the full year 2018, spending on cloud IT infrastructure remained just below the 50% mark at 48.4%. Spending on all three technology segments in cloud IT environments is forecast to deliver slower growth in 2019 than in previous years. Ethernet switches will be the fastest growing at 23.8%, while spending on storage platforms will grow 9.1%. Spending on compute platforms will stay at $35.0 billion but still slightly higher than expected in IDC's previous forecast.
• The rate of annual growth for the traditional (non-cloud) IT infrastructure segment slowed down from 3Q18 to below 1% but the segment grew 11.1% quarter over quarter. For the full year, worldwide spending on traditional non-cloud IT infrastructure grew by 12.2%, exactly as forecast, as the market has started going through a technology refresh cycle, which will wind down by 2019. By 2023, we expect that traditional non-cloud IT infrastructure will only represent 40.5% of total worldwide IT infrastructure spending (down from 51.6% in 2018). This share loss and the growing share of cloud environments in overall spending on IT infrastructure is common across all regions.

"The unprecedented growth of the infrastructure systems market in 2018 was shared across both cloud and non-cloud segments," said Kuba Stolarski, research director, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies at IDC. "As market participants prepare for a very difficult growth comparison in 2019, compounded by strong, cyclical, macroeconomic headwinds, cloud IT infrastructure will be the primary growth engine supporting overall market performance until the next cyclical refresh. With new on-premises public cloud stacks entering the picture, there is a distinct possibility of a significant surge in private cloud deployments over the next five years."

https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS44971119

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Marine survey completed for East Africa's DARE1 subsea cable

The marine survey for the Djibouti Africa Regional Express 1 (DARE1) submarine cable system is complete and the cable route has been finalized.

The DARE1 cable system will connect Djibouti (Djibouti), Bosaso (Somalia), Mogadishu (Somalia) and Mombasa (Kenya). The finalized route has a length of 4,747km. The stated design capacity is 36 Tbps. The project is led by Djibouti Telecom and Somtel.  Subcom is the contractor.

Manufacturing of the undersea cables and repeaters will begin in April 2019 and the system will be ready for commercial traffic in June 2020.

“We are excited about the completion of the marine survey and the additional landing point for DARE1. We believe this cable system is crucial for the development of the East African region and we are impressed by SubCom’s level of dedication and professional project management. We look forward to expanding DARE1 into other regions and connecting it with other cables to increase accessibility in Africa and across the globe,” said M Mohamed Assoweh Bouh, Djibouti Telecom Director General.

“We are pleased with the progress of the project and the diligence of all parties to mitigate risk and keep the project on schedule,” said Debra Brask, VP Project Management at SubCom. “We continue to focus on furthering connectivity in the East Africa region and are enthusiastic about building on our successful record there by working on projects such as the DARE1 cable system.”

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euNetworks acquires fiber network operator in Vienna

euNetworks Group has acquired 100% of the shares of Onstage Online GmbH (“Onstage”), a fibre network operator headquartered in Vienna, Austria.

Onstage, which was founded in 1995 by Robert Dornetshuber, operates a metro network consisting of several rings and running under the pavement and in the sewers in Vienna, Each backbone node is connected to at least two other network nodes, delivering true route diversity. The network directly connects to 16 data centres in the city.

euNetworks owns and operates deep fibre networks in 14 cities across Europe and also operates a highly differentiated long haul network that spans the region.

“The acquisition of Onstage adds further uniqueness to our fibre based infrastructure,” said Brady Rafuse, Chief Executive Officer of euNetworks. “Our long haul network connects into Vienna. The addition of Onstage to euNetworks adds to our metropolitan network portfolio and immediately delivers diversity and reach in this growing market. Vienna is an important internet hub, both for proximity to Germany and also as a hub for eastbound traffic to Asia and the Middle East. This is a highly complementary business to euNetworks and growing our presence in Austria was a logical next step in our development. The combined footprint will deliver immediate value to both existing customers and our new customers that we welcome from Onstage.”

“We are delighted that Onstage has been acquired by euNetworks,” said Robert Dornetshuber, Managing Director of Onstage. “We have a shared vision of the importance of fibre networks and how they should be developed. euNetworks’ bandwidth offering across Western Europe is certainly market leading and their approach to aligning network development and investment with customer needs is very welcome.”

http://www.eunetworks.com

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Aquantia gains ASIL B certification for its automotive networking silicon

Aquantia has achieved ASIL B certification on its Automotive connectivity products according to ISO 26262-5 and as determined by the Certification Body for Functional Safety of the SGS-TÜV Saar.

ASIL B compliance is a critical requirement for automotive OEMs, and their Tier 1 suppliers, when choosing technology partners to ensure a vehicle’s systems meet the necessary safety levels.

“Entering the Automotive arena is radically different than traditional networking markets. The levels of safety and security are of paramount importance,” said Amir Bar-Niv, Vice President of Marketing, Automotive at Aquantia Corp. “Our team has put significant effort into attaining this certification. I am pleased that we have achieved this significant milestone in delivering compliant, Multi-Gig networking technology for the first wave of autonomous vehicles that will come to market.”

Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL), specified under ISO 26262, is a risk classification hierarchy for defining safety requirements.

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