ETSI and Linux Foundation agree on Open Source collaboration

The Linux Foundation and ETSI signed a Memorandum of Understanding to bring open source and standards closer and foster synergies between them.  Areas of mutual interest include technologies concerning NFV, MANO, AI and edge computing.

The collaboration agreement is expected to enable faster information-sharing and deployment of open networking technologies. The organinzations will engage in collaborative activities, joint communication, promotion and events, as well as potential common initiatives related to interoperability and conformance testing.

“It’s encouraging to see how far the industry has come in such a short time,” said Arpit Joshipura, General Manager, Networking, Edge, and IoT, the Linux Foundation. “This agreement with ETSI signals it’s possible to reach a harmonization of collaborative activities across open source and standards for the networking industry. Working together results in less fragmentation, faster deployments, and more streamlined innovation.”

“We are eager to deepen our work with the open source communities at the Linux Foundation,” said Luis Jorge Romero, Director-General, ETSI. “Open Source has been part of our working methods and our technical groups, Open Source MANO being an example, for several years now. Further collaboration provides the standards community with a quick feedback loop on how our specifications are being implemented.”

https://portal.etsi.org/webapp/AgreementView/Mapping_tables/Mapping_LinuxFoundation.htm

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Slack reports 10 million daily active users, high level of engagement

In an S-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regarding an upcoming IPO, Slack Technologies reported that it now serves over 10 million users daily on a worldwide basis, of whom more than 50% are outside the U.S. The Slack messaging service is being used by over 600,000 organizations. It is delivering over 1 billion messages per week.

Some other details gleaned from Slack's S-1 prospectus:

• More than 88,000 Paid Customers, including more than 65 companies in the Fortune 100 and a total of 575 paid customers paying over $100,000 annually
• More than 500,000 organizations on the Free subscription plan
• Slack's annual revenue was $105.2 million, $220.5 million, and $400.6 million in fiscal years 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively, representing annual growth of 110% and 82%, respectively. The company incurred net losses of $146.9 million, $140.1 million, and $138.9 million in fiscal years 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively. 
• Users spend more than 50 million hours in active use of Slack in a typical week, on either a free or paid subscription plan.
• Over 1,500 third-party apps are now listed in the Slack App Directory. 
• Slack has more than 500,000 registered developers.
• Slack operates on AWS infrastructure.
• The company was founded as Tiny Spec Inc in 2009. The company changed its name to Slack publicly launched its service in 2014.
• Slack had 1,502 employees as of January 31, 2019.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1764925/000162828019004786/slacks-1.htm

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KPN to select a Western vendor for 5G core

Citing an urgency to further tighten security policies for its fixed and mobile network suppliers, KPN announced plans to select a "Western vendor" for the construction of its new 5G mobile core network.

KPN, which is committed to a multivendor procurement strategy, said it is currently reviewing all parts of its fixed and mobile network and assessing with which suppliers it can best achieve its network ambitions.

Nokia has already been named as a supplier for the fixed network.  For the modernization of the mobile radio and antenna network, KPN has signed a preliminary agreement to start preparations with Huawei

KPN also confirmed plans to roll out fiber to another 1 million Dutch households.

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Hurricane Electric adds POP at e-shelter in Frankfurt

Hurricane Electric activated a new point of presence (PoP) at e-shelter in Frankfurt, Germany.

e-shelter’s Datacenter Frankfurt 1 boasts a total of 54,000 sq. m. of space and is Europe’s largest individual data center site.

This PoP is Hurricane Electric’s fifth in Frankfurt and tenth in Germany and will provide organizations in Frankfurt with improved fault tolerance, load balancing and congestion management in the delivery of next generation IP connectivity services.

“As a main center of business and finance in Germany, Hurricane Electric is excited to provide e-shelter’s Frankfurt customers cost-effective connectivity options,” said Mike Leber, President of Hurricane Electric. “This new PoP is Hurricane Electric’s 71st in Europe and 185th around the globe and part of our global commitment to provide high-speed connectivity to users everywhere.”

Customers of e-shelter and those in and near Frankfurtcan connect to Hurricane Electric’s extensive IPv4 and IPv6 network through 100GE (100 Gigabit Ethernet), 10GE (10 Gigabit Ethernet) and GigE (1 Gigabit Ethernet) ports. Additionally, customers at the facility are able to exchange IP traffic with Hurricane Electric’s vast global network, which offers over 20,000 BGP sessions with over 7,500 different networks via more than 200 major exchange points and thousands of customer and private peering ports.

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Video: Ciena's Hugues Tournier on COBO's working groups

COBO's Data Center Networking Group has two workgroups: mechanical and electrical. Considering the OIF 400ZR and the IEEE, COBO selects the Class C Connector as explained by Hugues Tournier of Ciena.

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Pica8 intros Nymble Automation Framework for open switches

Pica8 introduced its new NymbleT automation framework add-on for its Linux-based network operating system (NOS) -- PICOS. 

Nymble utilizes the open-source Ansible AWX web user interface to run a large library of Ansible networking “Playbooks” for enterprise networking services. It can run as a containerized virtual machine in either a private or public cloud.  Nymble is also agentless, so requires no additional software to be loaded onto white box switches or servers.

Nymble uses English-language commands to perform functions such as activating dozens of switches at the push of a button to running inventory; turning up VLANs and MLAG; and performing health checks of all the PoE (Power-over-Ethernet) devices in an enterprise access network.

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Pica8 extends its NOS to more Dell EMC open switches

Pica8 has ported its Linux-based PICOS network operating system (NOS) to new Dell EMC open networking aggregation switches, including the Dell EMC Z9264F-ON, S5248F-ON, and S4128F-ON campus aggregation switches and the Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) PoE+ and 60-watt PoE N3024EP-ON access switch. This brings the total number of Pica8-supported Dell EMC open access and campus switches to twelve.

The S5248F-ON is the first open networking switch supported by Pica8 that is based on Broadcom’s latest Trident 3 switching silicon. PICOS enables the S5248F-ON to be deployed as a campus aggregation switch that collects and processes traffic from remote Dell EMC N3000 Series open networking access switches located in branch offices and/or retail stores.

The company also noted that the bundled Pica8 Nymble automation framework software that comes with PICOS can remotely activate, configure and manage the lifecycle of all deployed Dell EMC campus and access switches in a network at the push of a button. 

“PICOS is the only open networking Linux-based NOS in the market that has proven itself in commercial deployments in some of the largest enterprise campus/access networks out there,” said Jeff Paine, SVP of marketing at Pica8. “Pica8 has spent years developing the built-in enterprise feature set – and backward compatibility – and automation capabilities needed to simply step in and replace both legacy-vendor enterprise chassis switches and wiring-closet switch stacks with an intelligent, easy-to-deploy modern architectural alternative.  The economic savings windfall that automatically comes with the type of disaggregated networking hardware and software solutions that Pica8 and Dell EMC are bringing to market is simply the proverbial icing on the cake.”

http://www.pica8.com

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Big Switch Networks announces OEM agreement with Dell EMC

Big Switch Networks announced an OEM agreement under which Dell EMC will brand, market and sell Big Switch’s products under the Dell EMC brand.

Additionally, Big Switch and Dell EMC will work together to design Dell Ready Stack solutions.

Big Switch and Dell EMC have been collaborating for the past five years on open, cloud-style networking.

Big Switch’s Cloud-First Networking portfolio includes:

• Big Cloud Fabric - a VPC-based logical networking fabric, 
• Big Monitoring Fabric - a network visibility fabric
• Multi-Cloud Director - provides federated management of multi-site BCF and BMF deployments, across public, private or multi-cloud environments.

“Dell EMC and Big Switch continue to lead the open networking evolution with open, differentiated, best-in-class solutions that allow our customers to build powerful on-prem clouds,” said Douglas Murray, President and CEO, Big Switch Networks. “The OEM relationship is an acknowledgement of the tremendous demand Dell EMC and Big Switch are seeing with open networking data center switching, visibility and security solutions for on-prem cloud and multi-cloud environments.”

“For Dell EMC, this OEM agreement with Big Switch was the natural next step. Together we have experienced tremendous momentum during the past five years, delivering open networking to end users globally,” said Tom Burns, SVP & GM, Networking & Solutions, Dell EMC.

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