NTT restructures as a new global technology services provider

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT Corporation) is restructuring and integrating 28 of its subsidiary companies, including NTT Communications, Dimension Data and NTT Security, into one US $11 billion business to be called NTT Ltd.

NTT Ltd., which is headquartered in London, will be a global technology services provider employing around 40,000 people in offices across 70+ countries and regions. The new company's portfolio and mission include:

• Clients access to a more comprehensive range and greater depth of skills across multiple technologies and capabilities
• Global technology and managed services that are world leading in scale and depth
• Improved ability to deliver more in-depth industry solutions
• World-class managed services platforms with the ability to deliver local customizations to meet clients’ needs in each market.
• Increased investment in innovation and R&D.

President and CEO for NTT Corporation, Jun Sawada said, “I’m delighted to announce that we launched NTT Ltd. today. When we combine the new capabilities of NTT Ltd. along with NTT DATA, we create a top five global technology and business solutions provider with US$20 billion revenues outside of Japan. Going forward, we will accelerate our execution as one NTT in order to contribute to a smarter and better world through digital transformation.

“We are also excited to confirm that our global headquarters for NTT Ltd will be in London and that our commitment to the UK remains extremely strong. We considered several locations as the headquarters for NTT Ltd and made a deliberate decision to choose London. It has many benefits, including a stable economy, wealth of skills and talent, diversity in population and thinking, strong infrastructure, schools and housing for global talent moving to the city. In short, it’s a great city to live and work in, and we’re excited that we are making it the home for our new business”.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May said, “Britain has a long standing and proud reputation as a global tech leader and it’s fantastic that NTT Ltd. has chosen London for its global headquarters. A key part of our modern Industrial Strategy is to put the UK at the forefront of the tech and data revolution, and they will join many other world-leading companies who call Britain home”.

https://hello.global.ntt/en-us

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Equinix partners with Singapore's GIC on xScale Data Centers in Europe

Equinix has formed a joint venture with GIC, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, to develop and operate xScaleTM data centers in Europe. The joint venture is initially valued at over $1 billion.

Equinix said initial facilities in the joint venture will serve the unique core workload deployment needs of a targeted group of hyperscale companies, including the world's largest cloud service providers. The facilities will be located on or proximate to some of Equinix's existing IBX campuses.xScale data centers will be managed and staffed by Equinix while ensuring seamless connectivity to the Equinix global platform, providing a consistent experience for the hyperscale companies.

Equinix cites two ways in which the new xScale data centers will provide hyperscale companies a differentiated value proposition from existing wholesale data center operators in two key areas:
xScale data centers will offer access to Equinix's comprehensive suite of interconnection and edge services. These services will tie into the hyperscale companies' existing access points at Equinix, thereby increasing the speed of connectivity to their existing and future enterprise customers.
xScale data centers will be engineered to meet the technical and operational requirements and price points of core hyperscale workload deployments. This enables hyperscale companies to consolidate core and access point deployments into one global provider to streamline and simplify their rapid growth.

Equinix has been working for years with hyperscale operators, including Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Google Cloud. Currently, global deployments from the top hyperscale companies exceed $500 million in annual revenue at Equinix, with interconnection-rich retail deployments representing the most rapid growth segment of their deployments.

Under the deal, GIC will own an 80% equity interest in the joint venture and Equinix will own the remaining 20% equity interest. Equinix will sell both its London LD10 (retaining part of that business under a lease back) and Paris PA8 IBX data centers and the associated leases, as well as certain other development interests, to the joint venture. A significant portion of London LD10 and Paris PA8 are already leased.

The cmpanies envision additional new xScale data centers in Amsterdam, Frankfurt (two sites) and London. These initial six facilities, when fully built out, will provide approximately 155 megawatts (MW) of power capacity.

Charles Meyers, President and CEO, Equinix, said "It has been a long journey to reach this point, but we are tremendously excited to announce the formation of our first xScale data centers joint venture. Partnering with a world-class investment partner like GIC will provide the opportunity to make significant capital investments in order to capture targeted large-footprint deployments while continuing to optimize our capital structure. The JV structure will enable us to extend our cloud leadership while providing significant value to a critical set of hyperscale customers. We look forward to launching similar JVs in other operating regions and believe that these efforts will continue to further differentiate Equinix as the trusted center of a cloud-first world."

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ETSI enhances NFV to support 5G

ETSI announce a number of resource management and orchestration enhacements to its NFV specifications for supporting 5G networks.

Specifically, new NFV Release 3 features that closely relate to 5G include:

• Support for network slicing in NFV
• Management over multi-administrative domains, and 
• Multi-site network connectivity. 

“As a founding partner in 3GPP, ETSI has a major role to play in contributing and aligning specifications and requirements.” says Cristina Badulescu, ETSI ISG NFV Vice-Chair.

ETSI and 3GPP collaboration has been key throughout the specification work of ETSI NFV Release 2 and 3, to ensure interoperability between management systems - covering upper orchestration and management layers, such as network management or application management. The 3GPP-defined management system interacts with ETSI NFV Management and Orchestration (MANO) system to realize the resource management for virtualized Core Network (CN), virtualized Radio Access Network (RAN) and network slicing.

More specifically, in the NFV Release 3, an external touchpoint between the NFV’s Network Service and network slicing was defined - in which the Network Service becomes a composite element of the 3GPP SA5 network slice subnet construct - enabling market implementations to easily combine the 3GPP SA5 Network Resource Model (NRM) with the ETSI NFV Information Model.

http://www.etsi.org

ETSI and Linux Foundation agree on Open Source collaboration

Sunday, April 28, 2019    

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...

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Lean NFV proposes a Key-Value Store to simplify deployments

Sunday, April 07, 2019    

A new industry initiative known as Lean NFV is aiming to simplify the process of onboarding virtualized network functions (VNFs). Six years after the publication of the first Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) specification, proponents of Lean NFV argue that the technology has failed to live up to its promises largely due to complexity and inefficiency in the deployment model. The topic was addressed in a keynote at last week's Open Networking...

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OPNFV Verification Program adds VNF testing

Wednesday, April 03, 2019  NFV, ONS  

LF Networking (LFN) is expanding its OPNFV Verification Program (OVP) to include Virtual Network Function (VNF) compliance testing. The expanded OVP, created in conjunction with the ONAP testing community, now includes publicly-available VNF compliance test tooling based on requirements developed within ONAP, as well as a Verified Labs Program and the induction of the University of New Hampshire-Interoperability Lab (UNH-IOL) as the first OPNFV...

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ETSI Multi-access Edge Computing phase 2 specs released

Sunday, March 24, 2019  ETSI, MEC, Standards  

The ETSI Multi-access Edge Computing group (MEC ISG) released the first set of its Phase 2 specifications, including ETSI GS MEC 002 which includes new requirements for Phase 2, ETSI GS MEC 003 dealing with architecture and framework, and  ETSI GS MEC 009 giving general principles for service APIs. The updated specs focus on the integration of NFV integration. The specification also describes example use cases and their technical benefits,...

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Samsung and SK Telecom test 5G standalone commercialization

Samsung Electronics and SK Telecom completed Korea’s first interoperability assessment between 5G Standalone (SA) Core and other commercial network systems over a 5G network, marking the final stage for verifying the validity of 5G SA data transmission and signifying that the SA system is ready to be launched for commercial service.

The 5G SA Core, jointly developed by Samsung Electronics and SK Telecom supports network slicing and function modularization based on 3GPP standards. It also offers additional functions that operators have been using since LTE, include billing, subscriber management and operational convenience system.

The companies also noted their use of data parallel processing technology for performing QoS and transmission control simultaneously; data acceleration technology for classifying and distributing similar traffic types; and path pptimization technology which automatically delivers data traffic to Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) platform.

“The fundamental structure of 5G SA is built on a completely new configuration, successfully delivering the most optimized 5G service to customers and enterprises across numerous industries,” said Jaeho Jeon, Executive Vice President and Head of R&D, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “Maintaining Korea’s leadership in network innovations through continuous investments in next-generation technologies is important to Samsung and SK Telecom, and the companies will continue to collaborate on developing and commercializing 5G SA.”

https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-electronics-and-sk-telecom-advance-in-bringing-korea-closer-to-5g-standalone-commercialization

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TrapX raises $18 million for cyber deception technology

TrapX Security, a start-up based in San Jose, California, closed an $18 million financing round for its cyber deception technology.

The funding round was led by Ibex Investors. Existing TrapX investors, such as BRM, Opus Capital, Intel Capital, Liberty Technology Venture Capital, and Strategic Cyber Ventures also participated in the round.

TrapX's deception technology has a unique approach to threat detection as a “right data” problem, rather than a “big data” problem allowing security teams to change the economics of cyber-attacks. The company was founded in 2012.

Last month, TrapX announced the release of the latest enhancements to the company’s DeceptionGrid platform, which allows its customers to launch a virtual army of artificial users to expose cyber attackers. The company has also formed a cyber-deception user community called DeceptionNet to share deception strategies, new types of traps (decoys), and third-party connectors to greatly enhance the effectiveness of deception.

http://www.trapx.com

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Applied Materials acquires Kokusai for batch wafer processing

Applied Materials agreed to acquire Kokusai Electric Corporation for $2.2 billion in cash from global investment firm KKR.

Kokusai Electric specializes in batch processing systems and services for memory, foundry and logic customers.

Applied said these systems complement its portfolio of single-wafer processing systems.

Following the close of the transaction, Kokusai Electric will operate as a business unit of Applied’s Semiconductor Products Group and continue to be based in Tokyo, with technology and manufacturing centers in Toyama, Japan and Cheonan, Korea. The acquisition is expected to be immediately accretive to Applied’s non-GAAP earnings per share at close.

“The opportunity to combine with Applied Materials will be very attractive for Kokusai Electric’s customers and employees alike,” said Fumiyuki Kanai, president and CEO of Kokusai Electric. “We are excited about the opportunity to integrate Kokusai Electric’s experienced team with Applied’s global development, customer support and services capabilities. We believe the combination will accelerate our ability to bring exciting new technologies to customers.”

http://www.appliedmaterials.com

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VIAVI supplies 5G equipment validation for Samsung

Samsung Electronics has selected the VIAVI TM500 Network Tester and TeraVM 5G Core Emulator to validate 5G network equipment performance. The partnership marks the first wrap-around testing of 5G stand-alone (SA) base station equipment, and emulating real-world conditions enables end-to-end test of the radio access network (RAN), thereby ensuring performance and reliability in the field.

Viavi's TM500 is a scalable test system for validating network performance as experienced by end users. The solution is in use with almost every base station manufacturer in the industry. Recently released industry-first features include uplink MIMO on two layers; downlink 8CC CA; MIMO support; 4CC uplink and downlink carrier aggregation at 120 kHz and 240 kHz; millimeter wave support; and support for large numbers of UEs on 5G in both Non-Standalone (NSA) and Standalone (SA) modes. In addition to the industry-leading capabilities of the TM500 and TeraVM solutions, VIAVI is known for its long-standing reliability built from years of successful experience and knowledge, technology roadmap and robust local support.

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Sarah Armstrong appointed Director of Internet Society Foundation

The Internet Society announced today that it has appointed Sarah Armstrong as Executive Director of the Internet Society Foundation.

The Internet Society Foundation is a newly formed, non-profit organization that works with the Internet Society in support of a shared vision between the two organizations that the Internet is for everyone. The Foundation will focus on funding initiatives that promote the development of the Internet as a global technical infrastructure and that demonstrate the positive difference the Internet can make in enriching people’s lives around the world.

Most resently, Armstrong worked with Abt Associates where she was responsible for strategy, operations, and program management for the communications, marketing, and business development functions. Before joining Abt, she worked as Director of Outreach and Communications in Juba, South Sudan for the United States Agency for International Development. She has also been a consultant to domestic and international non-profits and has directed successful programs for a wide range of organizations including AARP and the American Red Cross.

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