Masergy touts Intelligent Service Control for SD-WAN, UCaaS

Masergy is highlighting the next evolution of its Intelligent Service Control (ISC) portal that offers a holistic view of clients’ global SD-WAN and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) applications while enabling the ability to manage, secure, and optimize their network environments in real-time.

Masergy’s new ISC portal simplifies and unifies network and application management with real-time visibility, analytics and service control purpose-built for the multi-cloud enterprise.

The ISC portal delivers:

• A single pane of glass delivers unified views of analytics for the customer’s global networks, UCaaS, WAN edge devices, and application performance.
• Customizable dashboard views allow the customer to feature the information they need with views of top applications, security threats, network services, network usage, and open support tickets.
• Real-time bandwidth controls provide the ability to modify port bandwidth globally across both public and private connections.
• End-to-end visibility of application performance help customers make faster, more informed decisions about bandwidth allocation and service improvement.
• Comprehensive self-service features empower the customer to control the network with site and contact management capabilities, ticket tracking, alarm notifications, invoicing, device reports, change history, and escalations.

“When it comes to accelerating the pace of IT and building a multi-cloud environment, unified network visibility is everything--global enterprises need a single source of truth for information about their cloud application performance,” said Masergy’s Chief Digital Officer Terry Traina.

Read More

Zayo plans new Salt Lake City to Denver route

Zayo is building a new long haul fiber network between Salt Lake City to Denver. Construction started last quarter and is anticipated to be completed in 2021.

The build will span more than 500 route miles along Interstate 70, a key transportation and commerce corridor. The route, which will be primarily underground, offers unique connectivity and diversity between Salt Lake City and Denver. Zayo’s existing route connects the two cities through Wyoming and into Utah.

The route will tie together two high-growth western markets and states. Colorado is among the nation’s fastest growing states with a diverse base of business and industry. Its economic growth has been driven by technology, aerospace, healthcare and

“This flagship route will provide diversity that no other provider can offer,” said Dennis Kyle, senior vice president of Mountain Region at Zayo. “With many Silicon Valley companies relocating their offices to Salt Lake City and Denver, Zayo is well positioned to provide them with high-capacity fiber infrastructure to fuel their growth and innovation.”

Read More

Deutsche Telekom reports solid financials

Deutsche Telekom's net revenue rose by 3.2% in organic terms in the first six months of 2019 to 39.2 billion euros, while adjusted EBITDA was up by 3.7% to 12.2 billion euros, and free cash flow by 9.0% to 3.1 billion euros.  There was a jump in reported net profit in the second quarter to 0.9 billion euros, up 90.7% compared to the prior-year level.

“We remain reliable,” said Tim Höttges, CEO of Deutsche Telekom. “Our business performed well in all areas again in the first half of 2019. That puts us in a position to deliver the results we promised.”


Some operational highlights

Germany – Between April and June, German mobile market service revenues increased by 2.4 percent against the prior-year period, thereby continuing the strong trend of the first three months of the reporting year. The average mobile data used per month by branded contract customers exceeded 3 gigabytes for the first time. Customers with an LTE rate plan and LTE-enabled smartphone used six times as much data as other customers.
In the fixed network, growth in fiber-optic-based lines (FTTH, FTTC/vectoring) continued. At 13.4 million lines, the number was up 22 percent on the prior-year figure. 521,000 lines were added in the second quarter. 83 thousand new customers opted for converged product under the name MagentaEINS.
Revenue in the Germany operating segment amounted to 5.4 billion euros in the second quarter, up by 1.2 percent against the prior-year period. Growth in adjusted EBITDA AL was even more substantial, up by 2.4 percent to 2.2 billion euros, leading to a margin of 40.0 percent compared with 39.5 percent in the second quarter of the prior year.
United States – T-Mobile US set new records again in the second quarter of 2019. Total revenue increased by 5.1 percent year-on-year to 11.0 billion U.S. dollars, while service revenues rose by 6.9 percent to 8.3 billion U.S. dollars.
Adjusted EBITDA AL increased by 6.0 percent to 3.2 billion U.S. dollars. The company accelerated its customer growth again with 1.8 million net customer additions in the second quarter, bringing the total customer count to 83.1 million at the end of June. T-Mobile US had a reason to celebrate: It recorded more than one million net customer additions in a quarter for the 25th time in a row. Of the total customer growth, 710,000 were branded phone postpaid net customer additions. In the United States, T-Mobile US remains far and away the fastest growing company on the market. The record low churn rate of 0.78 percent made a significant contribution to this. In the prior year, this figure had been 17 basis points higher.
Europe – Telekom's European national companies reported that the encouraging trends of last year continued steadily. Following the launch of converged products comprising fixed-network and mobile communications (FMC) in Austria and Poland in the second quarter, these offers are now available in all ten countries.  This segment continued to develop very well, with 330,000 new FMC customers. The number of customers thus increased by 53 percent compared with the end of June 2018, passing the 4 million mark for the first time. The companies again recorded strong development in the number of mobile contract customers, with 300,000 net additions, and broadband lines, with an increase of 63,000.
Systems Solutions – T-Systems managed to increase order entry compared with the prior-year period to 1.9 billion euros, 2.4 percent higher than between April and June 2018. Successes included wins in the area of the connected car.

https://www.telekom.com/en/media/media-information/archive/second-quarter-report-2019-578396

Read More

Fujitsu SD-WAN-as-a-Service complies with MEF 70 SD-WAN

Fujitsu Network Communications announced that its SD-WAN-as-a-Service (SD-WANaaS) offering complies with the recently published MEF SD-WAN Service Attributes and Services standard (MEF 70), which defines the fundamental capabilities, terminology, architectural constructs, and application classification criteria for application-aware, policy-driven, over-the-top (OTT) virtual network services. As an incubator of MEF’s SD-WAN work and an SD-WAN service provider, Fujitsu made significant contributions to the new MEF 70 SD-WAN service standard to ensure that it addresses practical, real-world customer requirements and use cases.

“We designed our SD-WAN-as-a-Service to comply with the MEF 70 standard, which Fujitsu co-developed, leveraging our expertise in designing, deploying and operating software-defined, OTT virtual network services,” said Ralph Santitoro, head of SDN/NFV/SD-WAN Services at Fujitsu Network Communications, Inc. “We anticipate the new MEF SD-WAN service standard will accelerate adoption of this transformational technology by eliminating market confusion and defining a service that can operate over any type of underlay network from any service provider.”

As applications increasingly migrate to multiple clouds and virtual private clouds, enterprises and government agencies are turning to SD-WAN as a critical digital service that enables and accelerates their multi-cloud deployments. Communication service providers (CSPs), managed service providers (MSPs), digital service provider (DSPs) and broadband providers are realizing the transformative nature of SD-WAN to facilitate their customers’ digital transformation while creating new revenue streams.

Resellers and subscribers can rest assured that Fujitsu SD-WANaaS conforms with the MEF 70 standard, supporting the SD-WAN user network interface (UNI), physical SD-WAN Edges and virtual SD-WAN Edges in private and virtual private clouds, tunnel virtual connections (TVC), application classification and policy criteria requirements.

https://www.fujitsu.com/us/about/resources/news/press-releases/2019/fnc-20190807.html

Read More

Interxion sees continued favourable demand for European data center services

Interxion, a leading European provider of carrier and cloud-neutral colocation data centre services, reported Q2 revenue of €158.5 million, up 14% from the same period last year. Net income increased by €8.0 million to €8.6 million (2Q 2018: €0.6 million). Diluted earnings per share increased by €0.11 to €0.12 (2Q 2018: €0.01). Capital expenditure, including intangible assets(2), were €123.5 million (2Q 2018: €120.5 million).

Some operating highlights:

• Equipped space increased by 6,500 square metres (“sqm”) during the quarter to 154,800 sqm metres.
• Revenue generating space increased by 2,600 sqm during the quarter to 121,600 sqm.
• Utilisation rate at the end of the quarter was 79%.

During the second quarter, Interxion completed the following capacity additions:

• 2,000 sqm in Vienna;
• 1,300 sqm in Madrid;
• 1,100 sqm in Marseille;
• 800 sqm in Stockholm;
• 600 sqm in London;
• 400 sqm in Paris; and
• 300 sqm in Dusseldorf.

“As reflected in the solid second quarter results, Interxion continues to experience favourable demand, driven primarily by the cloud and content platform providers,” said David Ruberg, Interxion’s Chief Executive Officer. “In response to customer demand and orders, we are announcing today incremental investments in Frankfurt, Paris, Marseille and Stockholm. Our recent equity issuance and credit rating upgrade support our ongoing expansion activity, with a focus on sustaining our attractive returns."

https://investors.interxion.com/investor-relations

Read More

Infinera posts revenue of $296 million, cites new Tier-1 wins

Infinera reported GAAP revenue of $296.3 million for its second quarter ended June 29, 2019 compared to $292.7 million in the first quarter of 2019 and $208.2 million in the second quarter of 2018. GAAP gross margin for the quarter was 20.7% compared to 22.7% in the first quarter of 2019 and 40.5% in the second quarter of 2018. GAAP operating margin for the quarter was (36.6)% compared to (38.2)% in the first quarter of 2019 and (10.4)% in the second quarter of 2018. There was a GAAP net loss for the quarter was $113.7 million, or $(0.64) per share, compared to a net loss of $121.6 million, or $(0.69) per share, in the first quarter of 2019, and net loss of $21.9 million, or  $(0.14) per share, in the second quarter of 2018.

“During the quarter, we significantly enhanced the longer-term position of the New Infinera with strong customer traction led by bookings from several new Tier-1 wins and the initial ramp of a new internet content provider,” said Tom Fallon, Infinera CEO. “Continued progress on our integration program, which we expect to largely complete in the fourth quarter of 2019, is enabling synergies to track ahead of prior commitments. Based on this foundation, we expect to return to non-GAAP profitability and positive cash flow in the fourth quarter of 2019.”

https://www.infinera.com/press-release/Infinera-Corporation-Reports-Second-Quarter-2019-Financial-Results

Read More

AMD debuts 2nd Gen EPYC processor, Google and Twitter deploy

AMD unveiled its 2nd Gen EPYC processors for data center servers and boasting up to 64 “Zen 2” cores in leading-edge 7nm process technology. The new processors claim up to 83% better Java application performance, up to 43% better SAP SD 2 Tier performance than the competition and provide world record performance on Real Time Analytics with Hadoop.

For modern cloud and virtualization workloads, 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors deliver world record virtualization8 performance that redefines datacenter economics.

“Today, we set a new standard for the modern data center with the launch of our 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors that deliver record-setting performance and significantly lower total cost of ownership across a broad set of workloads,” said Dr. Lisa Su, president and CEO, AMD. “Adoption of our new leadership server processors is accelerating with multiple new enterprise, cloud and HPC customers choosing EPYC processors to meet their most demanding server computing needs.

Google has deployed 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors in its internal infrastructure production data centers and in late 2019 will support new general-purpose machines powered by 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors on Google Cloud Compute Engine. Twitter will deploy 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors across its data centers later this year.  Microsoft announced the preview of new Azure virtual machines for general purpose applications, as well as limited previews of cloud-based remote desktops and HPC workloads based on 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors.

https://www.amd.com/en/processors/epyc-7002-series

Read More

HPE claims virtualization performance boost with 2nd Gen AMD EPYC

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) reported record performance for servers equipped with the 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor.

announced today that it shattered 37 world records, establishing undisputed performance and efficiency leadership with

The new HPE ProLiant DL325 and HPE ProLiant DL385 servers equipped with the 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor improved previous virtualization performance records by as much as 321 percent1 and power efficiency records by 28 percent.

“Customers today are looking for workload-optimized systems that create new experiences, new opportunities and new value,” said Justin Hotard, senior vice president and general manager, Volume Global Business Unit, HPE. “Building on the innovation of the HPE ProLiant family, the new HPE ProLiant DL325 and HPE ProLiant DL385 with 2nd Gen AMD EPYC™ processors unlock new levels of workload optimization, security and automation, providing our customers with a clear and fast path to positive business outcomes.”

HPE said its ProLiant DL385 with two 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors crushed the previous virtualization world record with 61 percent better performance3 at a 29 percent better price-performance ratio. In a similar fashion for database virtualization, the HPE ProLiant DL325 delivered an astounding 321 percent performance boost over the previous record holder, providing a significant agility advantage in database provisioning and maintenance for cloud, big data and IoT environments.

Read More

Mellanox combines Ethernet and InfiniBand with AMD EPYC 7002

Mellanox Technologies has optimized its Ethernet and InfiniBand ConnectX smart adapters for the new AMD EPYC 7002 Series processor-based compute and storage infrastructures.

The 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors, which supports PCI Express 4.0, offers four times peak FLOPS per-socket performance over the AMD EPYC 7001 series processor. The large number of PCI Express 4.0 lanes enables direct connectivity to 24 NVMe storage drives plus Mellanox ConnectX 100 and 200 gigabit per second adapters and achieve full I/O throughout.

“The combination of Mellanox 25, 50, 100 and 200 Gigabit Ethernet and HDR 200 Gigabit InfiniBand adapters, and PCI Express 4.0 support in the second-generation AMD EPYC processor, provides high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, cloud and enterprise data centers the high data bandwidth they need for the most compute and storage demanding applications,” said Michael Kagan, Chief Technology Officer at Mellanox Technologies. “By leveraging our smart acceleration engines for In-Network Computing, virtualization, storage and security, our partners and customers can maximize the performance capabilities of the new second generation EPYC™ processors-based platforms.”

“Driven by AMD’s history of datacenter innovation, including 7nm process technology, the first x86 supplier to support PCIe 4.0, and embedded security features, the second generation AMD EPYC Processors set a new standard for the modern datacenter,” said Scott Aylor, corporate vice president and general manager, Datacenter Solutions Group at AMD. “We’re excited and thankful to have our partners, like Mellanox, supporting the launch of the second generation AMD EPYC processor. Working together we can enable our customers to transform their data center operations and deliver the breakthrough performance they need.”

Read More