Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Trump declares national emergency to secure ICT supply chain

President Trump declared a national emergency over the security of the nation's communications infrastructure and signed an executive order aimed at mitigating "threats enabled by information and communications technologies or services designed, developed, manufactured, or supplied by persons owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of a foreign adversary."

The Secretary of Commerce is called upon to adopt rules and regulations within the next 150 days prohibiting transactions with entities deemed to pose a security risk to the United States.

The term “information and communications technology or services” is defined as "any hardware, software, or other product or service primarily intended to fulfill or enable the function of information or data processing, storage, retrieval, or communication by electronic means, including transmission, storage, and display."

The order does not mention any countries or companies specifically but could be interpreted to include any U.S. technology suppliers to major OEMs.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-securing-information-communications-technology-services-supply-chain/

U.S. Commerce Dept adds Huawei to control list

The U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security will add Huawei Technologies and its subsidiaries to its "Entity List" - potentially blocking the company from purchasing certain products from U.S. suppliers, according to The Washington Post and other news sources.

Wilbur Ross, U.S. Secretary of Commerce, stated that his team is "committed to ensuring that information and communication technology and services in the United States provide a safe and secure foundation for innovation and economic prosperity."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-signs-order-to-protect-us-networks-from-foreign-espionage-a-move-that-appears-to-target-china/2019/05/15/d982ec50-7727-11e9-bd25-c989555e7766_story.html?utm_term=.a5894fc41ef9

Cisco posts revenue of $13.0 billion, up 6%

Cisco reported third-quarter revenue of $13.0 billion, up 6% year over year. Net income (GAAP) was $3.0 billion or $0.69 per share, and non-GAAP net income of $3.5 billion or $0.78 per share. The result reflect the divestiture of Service Provider Video Software Solutions (SPVSS) business in October.

"Our strong performance in the quarter was across the business, reflecting our customers' confidence in our strategy, business model and market-leading portfolio," said Chuck Robbins, chairman and CEO of Cisco. "Technology is at the heart of our customers' strategies and we are building the technology to help them achieve their business objectives."

Q3 FY 2019 Highlights

  • Revenue -- Total revenue was $13.0 billion, up 6%, with product revenue up 7% and service revenue up 3%. 
  • Revenue by geographic segment was: Americas up 9%, EMEA up 5%, and APJC down 4%. 
  • Product revenue performance was broad based with growth in Security, up 21%, Applications, up 9%, and Infrastructure Platforms, up 5%.
  • Gross Margin --  On a GAAP basis, total gross margin, product gross margin, and service gross margin were 63.1%, 62.0%, and 66.3%, respectively, as compared with 62.3%, 61.0%, and 65.8%, respectively, in the third quarter of fiscal 2018.
  • Software subscriptions were 65% of total software revenue, up 9 points year-over-year.

LF Edge announces Project EVE Seed Code

LF Edge, an umbrella organization within the Linux Foundation that aims to establish an open, interoperable framework for edge computing independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system, announced Project Edge Virtualization Engine (EVE) seed code contributed by LF Edge founding member ZEDEDA.

With Project EVE, edge gateways and devices run a variety of edge workloads simultaneously, decoupling application management from the underlying hardware. Applications can be deployed in standard virtual machines (VM) or container environments and be managed through a standard set of APIs.

“With Project EVE, the goal is to create a single virtualization standard for edge devices for the industry to build around so that we can enjoy the benefits of cloud-native applications sooner rather than later,” said Said Ouissal, co-founder and CEO of ZEDEDA. “Imagine how much more impact we can achieve now that edge applications can be reliably managed and secured.”

Additionally, LF Edge welcomes new Associate and Liaison member organizations Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), the LIONS Center at the Pennsylvania State University, OTAinfo, and University of New Hampshire’s Interoperability Lab (UNH-IOL).

"We are excited to see the LF community continue to collaborate on building unified edge solutions,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager,  Networking, IoT and Edge Computing, the Linux Foundation. “We appreciate ZEDEDA’s leadership in helping us advance On-Prem Edge IoT with initiatives like Project EVE, and are eager to showcase the broad capabilities of LF Edge onsite in Santa Clara while welcoming our newest members."

Linux Foundation targets Unified Open Source Framework for the Edge

The Linux Foundation is unifying a number of its projects into a new umbrella organization to establish an open, interoperable framework for edge computing independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system. The goal is the formation of a software stack that brings the best of telecom, cloud, and enterprise (representing location, latency and mobility differentiation).

LF Edge is initially comprised of five projects: Akraino Edge Stack, EdgeX Foundry, and Open Glossary of Edge Computing, formerly stand-alone projects at The Linux Foundation. The initiative also includes a new project contributed by Samsung Electronics, which will create a hub for real-time data collected through smart home devices, and another project from ZEDEDA, which is contributing a new agnostic standard edge architecture.

“The market opportunity for LF Edge spans industrial, enterprise and consumer use cases in complex environments that cut across multiple edges and domains. We’re thrilled with the level of support backing us at launch, with 60 global organizations as founding members and new project contributions,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, the Linux Foundation. “This massive endorsement, combined with existing code and project contributions like Akraino from AT&T and EdgeX Foundry from Dell EMC, means LF Edge is well-positioned to transform edge and IoT application development.”

LF Edge is already supported by the following founding members: (Premier) Arm, AT&T, Baidu, Dell EMC, Dianomic Inc., Ericsson, HP Inc., HPE, Huawei, IBM, Intel, inwinStack, Juniper Networks, MobiledgeX, Netsia, Nokia Solutions, NTT, OSIsoft, Qualcomm Technologies, Radisys, Red Hat, Samsung Electronics, Seagate Technology, Tencent, WindRiver, Wipro, ZEDEDA; and (General) Advantech Co., Alleantia srl,  Beechwoods Software Inc., Canonical Group Limited, CertusNet, CloudPlugs Inc., Concept Reply, DATA AHEAD AG, Enigmedia, EpiSensor, Foghorn Systems Inc., ForgeRock US Inc., Foundries.io, Hangzhou EMQ Technologies Co. Ltd., IOTech Systems Ltd., IoTium, KMC, Linaro, Mainflux, Mocana, NetFoundry, Packet, Pluribus Networks, RackN, Redis Labs, VaporIO, Vitro Technology Corp., Volterra Inc., Wanxiang Group; and (Associate) Automotive Edge Computing Consortium (AECC), Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), Infrastructure Masons, Inc., and Project Haystack.

More about LF Edge projects:

  • Akraino Edge Stack -- creating an open source software stack that supports high-availability cloud services optimized for edge computing systems and applications;
  • EdgeX Foundry -- focused on building a common open framework for IoT edge computing.
  • Home Edge Project -- seed code contributed by Samsung Electronics, is a new project that concentrates on driving and enabling a robust, reliable, and intelligent home edge computing framework, platform and ecosystem running on a variety of devices in our daily lives.
  • Open Glossary of Edge Computing -- provides a concise collection of terms related to the field of edge computing.
  • Project EVE (Edge Virtualization Engine) -- contributed by ZEDEDA, will create an open and agnostic standard edge architecture that accommodates complex and diverse on- and off-prem hardware, network and application selections.

Alibaba's cloud division hits US$1.151 billion in quarterly revenue

Alibaba Group reported that its cloud computing division generated revenue of RMB 7.726 billion (US$1.151 billion) during the March quarter, up 76% over the same period last year. Adjusted EBITA margin for the division was (2%). Adjusted EBITA was a loss of RMB 164 million (US$24 million).

The company said growth in cloud computing was primarily driven by an increase in average spending per customer.

Cloud computing now represents 8% of Alibaba Group's overall revenues.

For all of 2019, Alibaba Group reported an 84% growth in revenue for cloud computing for a total of RMB 24.702 billion (US$3.681 billion), with an Adjusted EBITA Margin of (5%).

https://www.alibabagroup.com/en/ir/presentations/pre190515.pdf



IDC: Worldwide semiconductor revenue to dip 7.2% in 2019

International Data Corporation (IDC) is predicting that worldwide semiconductor revenue will decline to $440 billion in 2019, down 7.2% from $474 billion in 2018. This follows three consecutive years of growth, with year-over-year growth of 13.2% in 2018.

Other key findings from IDC's Semiconductor Application Forecaster (excluding memory) include:

  • While the computing industry experienced strong growth in 2017 and 2018, the SAF forecasts semiconductor revenue for the computing industry segment to decline 5.1% this year but will show a positive CAGR of 1.3% for the 2018-2023 forecast period. Two bright spots for the computing segment are x86 servers and SSDs, growing with an 11.3% and 9.8% CAGR respectively for 2018-2023.
  • Semiconductor revenue for the mobile wireless communications segment will grow 1.8% year over year this year with a CAGR of 4.8% for 2018-2023. Semiconductor revenue for 4G mobile phones will experience a slowdown as 5G phones begin to ramp up in 2020, becoming mainstream by the middle of the next decade. RF subsystem in mobile devices will continue to drive the majority of the revenue growth as the subsystem continues to support more complexity, additional antennas, and the increase in bands on every phone.
  • The consumer semiconductor segment will grow at a 6.4% CAGR for 2018-2023 as consumer IoT devices and home automation continue to gain traction and scale. Connected devices will continue to drive more sensors and processing at the edge.

"The current market downturn is being driven by a broad weakness in demand specifically centered in China and an ingestion of excess inventories in some of the major markets including automotive, mobile phones, and cloud infrastructure," said Mario Morales, program vice president, Semiconductors at IDC. "We expect the market to bottom by end of the third quarter this year as we work through inventories and demand begins to gradually return. Cloud infrastructure investment, 5G mobile devices, WiFi 6 adoption, Smart NICs, automotive sensors, powertrain technologies, AI training accelerators, and edge inference SoCs will be instrumental in our growth expectations for 2020 and beyond."

https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS45075919

MediaTek completes standalone 5G call on 2.6GHz with Ericsson

Ericsson and MediaTek completed a 5G standalone end-to-end call on the 2.6GHz band based on 3GPP’s 5G December 2018 specifications.

The test was completed in April in a lab in Ottawa, Canada, connected a MediaTek chipset with an Ericsson Radio System radio AIR 6488 5G using 5G NR commercial software and dual-mode 5G Cloud Core solution. The call was fully compliant with 3GPP’s Release 15 specifications for 5G from December 2018, providing maturity and better support for 5G SA commercial live network launches.

Per Narvinger, Head of Product Area Networks, Ericsson, says: “We continue to promote interoperability so we can build a strong 5G ecosystem, and have reached an important milestone with MediaTek. As non-standalone 5G is maturing, we are also paving the way for standalone 5G to deliver on the full promises of 5G.”

Clearfield expands its operations and R&D in North America

Clearfield announced the expansion of its manufacturing warehouse space and R&D facilities to keep up with increasing demand for its products created by wireless and FTTx roll outs.

This growth takes place at the company’s headquarters in Minneapolis and its manufacturing facility in Tijuana, Mexico.

“We’re reaching the tipping point for fiber-based services where the commercial and market opportunities for both the residential and business markets cannot tolerate delay,” said Cheri Beranek, Clearfield president and CEO. “Network operators need products and partners that can help them lower the operational and capital costs of deploying fiber and Clearfield is committed to be that partner as our recent expansions demonstrate.”

http://www.SeeClearfield.com