The Next-Gen Central Office (NGCO) builds on cloud architecture

The Next Generation Central Office (NGCO) is now a reality in the production networks of leading carriers. NGCO adopts cloud principles of virtualization, containerization, and open standards to achieve the scalability, service agility and network resilience required for 5G.

Converge! Network Digest and AvidThink are pleased to present a miniseries of videos and whitepapers from top thought leaders across the industry, including  Qwilt, Intel, Ericsson, the Linux Foundation, Ethernity Networks, Google, the Cloud Native Foundation, Nokia and Red Hat.

A "2019 Next-Generation Central Office Report" from AvidThink is available for download. It covers the evolution in NGCO, recent trends, and key projects like CORD and VCO, as well as the role of the NGCO in new applications in edge computing and SD-WAN/vCPE.




https://nginfrastructure.com/

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NTT Ltd: Jason Goodall on creating the world's largest ICT provider

NTT Ltd launched on the 1st of July to bring together 28 brands from around the world like Dimension Data, NTT Communications, NTT Security as well as other NTT acquisitions made in the last 10 years.

Jason Goodall, the newly appointed CEO, talks about this new “40,000 employee startup” that brings together the multitude of assets operating in 57 countries.

NTT restructures as a new global technology services provider

Monday, July 01, 2019  NTT, UK  

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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Microsoft enters strategic partnership with ServiceNow

Microsoft and ServiceNow announced a broader strategic partnership intended to significantly enhance the integration and optimization of the companies’ products, platform and cloud capabilities.

In addition, ServiceNow will house its full SaaS experience on Azure in addition to its own private cloud.  ServiceNow will first be available through Azure Regions in Australia and Azure Government in the United States, followed by additional markets in the future.

“There is an enormous opportunity for customers — including in the public sector — to apply the power of the cloud to become more efficient and responsive,” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. “Our partnership combines ServiceNow’s expertise in digital workflows with Azure, our trusted cloud, so that customers can accelerate their digital transformation, while meeting their security and compliance needs.”

“Expanding our strategic global relationship with Microsoft enables ServiceNow to more fully leverage and integrate our platform and products with Microsoft’s leading enterprise technology and capabilities,” said John Donahoe, president and CEO of ServiceNow. “Together, ServiceNow and Microsoft will help our enterprise and government customers accelerate their digital transformation, creating great experiences and unlocking productivity.”

ServiceNow form strategic partnership with Google Cloud

Monday, May 06, 2019  Google Cloud  

ServiceNow and Google Cloud announced a strategic partnership for delivering native support for ServiceNow’s IT Operations Management (ITOM) in Google Cloud Platform. The partnership will also deliver real-time language translation in ServiceNow’s IT Service Management  (ITSM) solution leveraging Google Cloud’s artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities.

This partnership aims to make the Now Platform truly multi-cloud with the ability to support customers wherever their workloads reside - on-premises and across the major cloud vendors.

The companies said they are also working on additional AI and ML capabilities around document, speech and image understanding.

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Google's Cloud TPU v3 Pods set AI training records

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) has set three new performance records in the latest round of the MLPerf benchmark competition.

All three record-setting results ran on Cloud TPU v3 Pods, which are optimized for machine learning. Each of the winning runs used less than two minutes of compute time.

Google says it is the first public cloud provider to outperform on-premise systems when running large-scale, industry-standard ML training workloads of Transformer, Single Shot Detector (SSD), and ResNet-50.

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/cloud-tpu-pods-break-ai-training-records

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Zayo provides private wavelength network in NYC

Zayo has been selected by a healthcare provider to supply a private wavelength network (W-PDN) connecting multiple locations in New York City (NYC).

The solution leverages Zayo’s New York metro fiber footprint that spans more than 2,200 route miles. Zayo’s footprint in the region connects more than 1,000 buildings, 50 data centers and includes key ultra-low latency (ULL) routes. Zayo operates three zColo data centers in NYC, with more than 100,000 critical square feet.

“Zayo’s solution will provide the capacity and scalability that the customer requires for their mission-critical operations,” said Brad Kilbey, senior vice president of East Region at Zayo. “Zayo’s high-capacity fiber network and connectivity solutions are well positioned to enable healthcare organizations to meet the demands of this changing healthcare landscape.”

http://www.zayo.com

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Caixing: ZTE Seeks to Cash Out of Shenzhen Property Project

ZTE reached a new agreement with property developer China Vanke Co. Ltd. regarding its Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base project. According to Caixing, a Chinese business journal, ZTE has granted more operational rights to Vanke in exchange for 3.54 billion yuan (US $510 million), which is the amount that ZTE paid in 2017 to acquire the land.

https://www.caixinglobal.com/2019-07-13/zte-seeks-to-cash-out-of-shenzhen-property-project-101439242.html

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Orange enters mobile access sharing in Belgium

Orange has entered into a mobile access network sharing with Proximus (formerly Belgacom).

Mobile access network sharing between Proximus and Orange Belgium will allow a faster and more comprehensive 5G roll-out in Belgium, covering also the 2G, 3G and 4G technologies. The shared network will improve coverage, with the consolidated number of mobile sites expected to be about 20% higher compared to each operator’s current stand-alone radio access network.

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Addendum: Promoter members of QSFP-DD MSA

Our earlier report on the two newly updated specs from the QSFP-DD MSA listed "contributor” companies to the MSA, but left out its main members.  These include: Broadcom, Brocade, Cisco, Corning, Finisar, FIT, Huawei, Intel, Juniper, Lumentum, Luxtera, Mellanox, Molex, Oclaro (now a part of Lumentum) and TE Connectivity.

QSFP-DD MSA Group updates two specs

Thursday, July 11, 2019  QSFP-DD  

The Quad Small Form Factor Pluggable Double Density (QSFP-DD) Multi Source Agreement (MSA) released two updated specifications: Common Management Interface 4.0 and Hardware Specification 5.0.

QSFP-DD is an 8-lane data center module form factor. Systems designed for QSFP-DD modules can be backward compatible with existing QSFP form factors and provide maximum flexibility for end users, network platform designers, and integrators.

The updated Common Management Interface Specification (CMIS) revision 4.0 can be used as a common interface by other 2, 4, 8 and 16 lane form factors, in addition to QSFP-DD. Other notable features include firmware upgrade, diagnostic capabilities, improved State Machine support as well as support for WDM / Coherent modules.

The updated hardware specification revision 5.0 for QSFP-DD. This update supports up to 20 watts with improved thermal management. It includes new optical connectors; SN and MDC, a label area specification, improved latching definition and enhanced Pulse Per Second (ePPS) pin.

“Through strategic collaborations with our MSA companies, we continue to test the interoperability of multiple vendors’ modules, connectors, cages and DAC cables to assure a robust ecosystem,” said Scott Sommers, founding member and MSA co-chair. “We remain committed to developing and providing next-generation designs that evolve with the changing technology landscape.’’


“As the industry continues to converge on QSFP-DD, we believe the economies of scale will manifest and allow 400GbE to reach its full potential,” said Mark Nowell, founding member and MSA co-chair. “We are excited to share new updates and grow the previous thermal and high-speed signal integrity validation previously shared by the MSA.”

Contributors include Acacia, ACON, Alibaba, Amphenol, Applied Optoelectronics, APRESIA Systems, Celestica, Ciena, ColorChip, Credo, Dell EMC, Delta Products, Dust Photonics, Eoptolink, Fourte, Fujitsu Optical Components, Genesis, H3C, Hisense Broadband, Hitachi Metals, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, InnoLight, Innovium, Inphi, JPC, Kaiam, Keysight Technologies , LEONI, Lorom, Luxshare-ICT, MACOM, Marvell, MaxLinear, MultiLane, NeoPhotonics, Nokia, Panduit, PHY-SI, Ranovus, Samtec, SENKO, Semtech, Sicoya, Siemon, Skorpios Technologies, Source Photonics, Spectra7 Microsystems, Spirent, Sumitomo Electric, US Conec, Xilinx and Yamaichi Electronics.

The QSFP-DD MSA specifications are available for free download at the QSFP-DD MSA website

http://www.qsfp-dd.com

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