10/16/19 ~ Converge! Network Digest

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Pensado emerges from stealth, led by "MPLS" team from Cisco

Wednesday, October 16, 2019 Edge, Start-ups

Pensando Systems, a start-up based in San Jose, California, emerged from stealth to unveil its first product -- a software-defined edge services platform that was developed in collaboration with the world’s largest cloud, enterprise, storage, and telecommunications companies.

Pensando ("thinking" in Spanish) is led by Cisco’s legendary “MPLS” team — Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain, Luca Cafiero, Soni Jiandani and Randy Pond. Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Lightspeed Venture Partners led a Series C round to raise up to $145 million in funding. This will bring the total amount raised to $278 million after an earlier founder-led series A round of $71 million, and a customer-led series B round of $62 million. Cited customers, investors, and partners including HPE, Goldman Sachs, NetApp, and Equinix.

The Pensando platform is a custom programmable processor optimized to execute a software stack delivering cloud, compute, networking, storage and security services wherever data is located, all managed via its Venice Centralized Policy and Services Controller. The platform delivers highly programmable software-defined cloud, compute, networking, storage, and security services wherever data is located.

The platform promises an improved security posture through distributed network protection and east-west security. It offloads networking and security functions at wire speed to dedicated accelerators, and it is designed to scale to > 1000 tenants per server and >1M routes.

The company claims its capability means that cloud providers can now gain a technological advantage over the current market leader, Amazon Web Services Nitro, delivering 5-9x improvements in productivity, performance, and scale when compared to current architectures with no risk of lock-in.

The portfolio includes:

Naples 100 and Naples 25 cards for installation in standard servers. The Naples Distributed Services Card (DSC) delivers high-performance cloud, compute, networking, storage and security functions.
Venice Centralized Policy and Services Controller - Centrally-managed enterprise-grade security and visibility at every level of the stack enables seamless distribution of all infrastructure services policies to active Naples nodes. In addition, Venice handles lifecycle management such as deploying in-service software upgrades to Naples nodes and delivers always-on telemetry, deep end-to-end observability, and operational simplicity across the environment.

“In less than 3 years we’ve assembled a best in class engineering team that are experts in building systems for the cloud, compute, networking, storage and security markets” said Prem Jain, CEO of Pensando Systems. “As a customer and partner first company we are focused on accelerating all aspects of our business as we go to market with a great ecosystem and a breakthrough platform.”

Pensando also announced that Mark Potter, chief technology officer of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and Barry Eggers, a partner of Lightspeed Venture Partners, joined the board of directors, with John Chambers, CEO of JC2 Ventures, leading as chairman.

“It gives me great pleasure to welcome two new members to the Pensando board,” said John Chambers, Chairman of the Pensando Board of Directors. “I look forward to working closely with Mark and Barry as we focus on accelerating our operations and go-to-market activities.”

http://pensando.io

Huawei cites 24% annual growth rate, sixty 5G contracts, strong smartphone sales

Wednesday, October 16, 2019 Huawei

Huawei announced CNY610.8 billion (US$85.676 billion) in revenue for the first 9 months of 2019, an increase of 24.4% year-on-year.

The company said its net profit margin in this period was 8.7%. In a series of announcements from its headquarters in Shenzhen and corporate events in Europe, Huawei described its 5G business as robust,saying the company continues "to boost the efficiency and quality of its operations." Huawei states that increased operational and organizational stability has solidified the company's performance in the first three quarters of 2019.

Some highlight from the Huawei announcements:

In the carrier business, commercial deployment of 5G networks around the world has sped up.
The production and supply of Huawei's optical transmission, data communications, and IT products grew steadily.
By the end of Q3 2019, more than 700 cities, 228 Fortune Global 500 companies, and 58 Fortune Global 100 companies had selected Huawei as their partner for digital transformation.
In Q3, Huawei announced its computing strategy and released Atlas 900, the world's fastest AI training cluster.
Other innovative products the company has launched include the HUAWEI CLOUD Ascend AI cluster services, 112 new services powered by Kunpeng and Ascend processors, and Industrial Intelligent Twins.
Huawei's smartphone shipments in the first three quarters of 2019 exceeded 185 million units, representing a year-on-year increase of 26%.
The company also saw rapid growth in other new businesses like PCs, tablets, wearables, and smart audio products.
The Huawei Mobile Services ecosystem has also developed rapidly, covering more than 170 countries and regions.
It has attracted over 1.07 million registered developers worldwide.

Speaking at Huawei's 10th annual Global Mobile Broadband Forum 2019 in Switzerland, Ryan Ding, Huawei Executive Director of the Board and President of Carrier BG, said Huawei has large-scale 5G rollouts underway worldwide.

Some key points from the speech:

Huawei has won more than 60 5G contracts (In February at MWC 2019 in Barcelona, Huawei cited 50 5G contracts)
Huawei has now shipped over 400,000 5G active antenna units (AAUs).
China is now on course to build 600 to 800 thousand 5G base stations by the end of 2020.
The theme of this year's event was "5G, Gear Up"

At the end of his speech, Ding told the attendees that "the best way to predict the future is to create it" and called upon carriers, regulators, vertical industry players, equipment vendors, and systems integrators to work together to build a thriving 5G industry.

http://www.bizconfstreaming.cn/webcast/huawei20191006.html

FCC votes 3-2 to approve T-Mobile-Sprint merger

Wednesday, October 16, 2019 FCC

FCC Commissioners voted 3-2 along party lines to approve the T-Mobile-Sprint merger.

In August, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai circulated a draft order with his fellow commissioners urging approval of the T-Mobile + Sprint deal subject to conditions imposed by the Department of Justice.

Voting in opposition to the merger, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel stated: "We’ve all seen what happens when markets become more concentrated after a merger like this one. In the airline industry, it brought us baggage fees and smaller seats. In the pharmaceutical industry, it led to a handful of drug companies raising the prices of lifesaving medications. There’s no reason to think this time will be different. Overwhelming evidence demonstrates that the T-Mobile-Sprint merger will reduce competition, raise prices, lower quality, and slow innovation."

A coalition of 16 state attorneys general, including California and New York, have filed a lawsuit to block the proposed merger of telecommunications companies T-Mobile and Sprint. The states argue that the merger would lead to higher prices and fewer choices for consumers, particularly low-income subscribers of the companies’ services.

IBM reports cloud revenue of $20.0 billion over the last 12 months

Wednesday, October 16, 2019 IBM

IBM reported Q3 revenue of $18.0 billion, down 3.9 percent (down 0.6 percent adjusting for divested businesses and currency), with GAAP EPS from continuing operations of $1.87. Red Hat's Q3 revenues were up 19 percent (up 20 percent adjusting for currency), normalized for historical comparability.

“In the third quarter, as we continued to help clients with their digital reinventions, we grew revenue in our Cloud & Cognitive Software segment and in Global Business Services," said Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer. "Our results demonstrate that clients see IBM and Red Hat as a powerful combination and they trust us to provide them with the open hybrid cloud technology, innovation and industry expertise to help them shift their mission-critical workloads to the cloud.”

Some highlights by segments:

Cloud & Cognitive Software (includes cloud and data platforms which includes Red Hat; cognitive applications; and transaction processing platforms) — revenues of $5.3 billion, up 6.4 percent (up 7.8 percent adjusting for currency), led by security, IoT, data and AI platforms and hybrid cloud; cloud and data platforms, up 17 percent (up 19 percent adjusting for currency); cognitive applications, up 4 percent (up 6 percent adjusting for currency); transaction processing platforms, down 5 percent (down 4 percent adjusting for currency).
Global Business Services (includes consulting, application management and global process services) — revenues of $4.1 billion, up 1.0 percent (up 2.2 percent adjusting for currency), led by growth in consulting, up 4 percent (up 5 percent adjusting for currency); gross profit margin increased 110 basis points.
Global Technology Services (includes infrastructure and cloud services and technology support services) — revenues of $6.7 billion, down 5.6 percent (down 4.1 percent adjusting for currency).
Systems (includes systems hardware and operating systems software) — revenues of $1.5 billion, down 14.7 percent (down 13.8 percent adjusting for currency), reflecting the end of the IBM z14 product cycle and shipping of the new IBM z15 in the last week of September; gross profit margin expansion in Power and Storage.
Global Financing (includes financing and used equipment sales) — revenues of $343 million, down 11.7 percent (down 10.7 percent adjusting for currency); revenue reflects the wind-down of OEM commercial financing; gross profit margin expansion.

https://www.ibm.com/investor/att/pdf/IBM-3Q19-Earnings-Charts.pdf

IBM completed its acquisition of Red Hat on July 9, 2019.

toob selects ADTRAN for fibre rollout in the UK

Wednesday, October 16, 2019 ADTRAN, UK

toob, a full fibre broadband provider in the UK, is working with ADTRAN on the rollout of its gigabit-capable fibre network. The goal is to deliver gigabit speeds to more than 100,000 premises by the end of 2021, with initial deployments across the South of England.

ADTRAN provided toob with full turnkey support that included the delivery, installation and commissioning of toob’s core, transport and access network. The deployment includes the ADTRAN TA5000 gigabit services platform,.

“The UK’s digital infrastructure is uncompetitive at present with only 8% of premises being able to access a full fibre connection. At toob we are committed to bringing the benefits of full fibre to all sectors of society in the communities in which we operate,” said toob CEO Nick Parbutt. “We are executing quickly to pass 100,000 premises by the end of 2021 on our way to passing more than 1 million premises over the next decade. ADTRAN has matched our ambitious pace with delivering our network into Southampton in a matter of months, and I look forward to developing a stronger partnership over the coming years.”

“Gigabit broadband has quickly transitioned from a luxury service to a requirement—businesses and consumers require those high-bandwidth connections to learn, work and play,” said ADTRAN VP of EMEA Sales Stuart Broome. “We are committed to helping broadband providers, like toob, build and expand their best networks in order to bring the benefits of gigabit services to every community they serve.”

PacketLight gains FIPS 140-2 Level 2 compliance for fiber encryption

Wednesday, October 16, 2019 Encryption, Packetlight

PacketLight Network, which offers a suite of 1U metro and long haul CWDM/DWDM and OTN solutions, has received Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 Level 2 validation for its Layer-1 encryption solutions, awarded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

PacketLight said its solution suite comes embedded with Layer-1 encryption solutions to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of data, based on GCM-AES-256 encryption standards, supporting Diffie-Hellman (DH) key exchange up to every 1-minute. In addition, the solutions support multiple protocols including 10G/40G/100G Ethernet, 8G/16G/32G Fibre Channel, OTU2/OTU2e/OTU3/OTU4 and STM-64/OC-192

“We are excited to see our carrier-grade DWDM and OTN solutions recognized by NIST for their exemplary end-to-end encryption across the fiber,” said Koby Reshef, CEO of PacketLight Networks. “This certification empowers us to provide our leading optical transport and encryption solutions to any organization or industry, both commercial and government, for next generation secured optical network applications or as alien wavelength solutions over existing 3rd party network.”

http://www.packetlight.com

STACK buys Tier III data center campus in Ohio

Wednesday, October 16, 2019 Data Centers, Stack

STACK INFRASTRUCTURE has acquired a purpose-built, Tier III data center in New Albany, Ohio. The acquired campus offers 17 acres for future data center development.

The STACK campus is positioned within the Golden Triangle, a geographic area linking Northern Virginia, Northern New Jersey, and Chicago, where the majority of data transmission in the U.S. occurs, resulting in robust fiber optic and electrical infrastructure. New Albany and the surrounding area represent a premier emerging market for cloud and enterprise data centers based on their competitive power costs, advantageous tax climate, skilled labor pool, and low risk of natural disasters.

“We’re very excited to expand our footprint into this strategic market as it gains momentum in the data center world,” commented Brian Cox, Chief Executive Officer of STACK. “A location of choice for many data center, cloud, and enterprise entities, New Albany and the Golden Triangle offer a highly valuable range of benefits for STACK’s current and future clients. As we have considered expansion options, this market has remained a priority due to its unique combination of reliable power, robust data fiber networks, proximity to more than half of the U.S. population and the resulting lower latency.”

http://www.stackinfra.com

STACK expands data center in Portland

Wednesday, September 04, 2019 Data Centers, Stack

STACK INFRASTRUCTURE announced a major expansion of its data center in Hillsboro, Oregon. The near-term campus additions will provide more than 60MW of additional critical capacity and, when combined with STACK’s established Hillsboro facilities, bring the company’s total capacity in Hillsboro to nearly 100MW. STACK developed its first data center here in 2012. “STACK has a rich heritage in Hillsboro, where we’ve built some of our most important...

STACK issues $850 million in bonds for its data center ambitions

Monday, February 11, 2019 Data Centers, Funding, Stack

STACK Infrastructure, the new data center company that combines facilities from Infomart Data Centers and IPI Partners, announced the issuance of $850 million of securitized notes (rated investment grade at A- by Standard & Poor’s). STACK said it is committed to being the data center industry leader in building and delivering flexible critical infrastructure solutions that meet and support the complex requirements of enterprise and hyperscale...

Mavenir intros virtualized 4G/5G OpenRAN

Wednesday, October 16, 2019 Mavenir

Mavenir introduced its fully virtualized 4G/5G OpenRAN solution.

Mavenir’s OpenRAN enables multisource Remote Radio Units (RRUs) to interwork with the virtualized Cloud Base Band software over ethernet Fronthaul (FH), using the O-RAN open interface overcoming the traditional constraints of the proprietary walled garden specifications used by the other traditional equipment vendors.

Key capabilities include:

Support for O-RAN 7.2 Radio Architecture with Open Interfaces
Support for 3GPP Split 2 Architecture with Open Interfaces
Scalability and independence from proprietary hardware, faster time to market of new features
Ability to centralize the baseband Distributed Unit (DU) and Central Unit (CU) resources
Enable dynamic scaling of capacity growth, operational & maintenance cost savings and simplicity

“We are continuing our tradition of leading the virtualization of key network applications. With the experience of being the first to successfully launch virtualized VoLTE, VoWiFi, IMS core, RCS, SBC, EPC, as well as virtualized Security Gateway, Home NodeB Gateway, etc over the last 10 years, we are now ready to bring vRAN technology to market,” said Pardeep Kohli, President, and CEO of Mavenir.

Comcast Business extends into Canada with iTel Networks

Wednesday, October 16, 2019 Canada, Comcast

Comcast Business signed an access agreement with iTel Networks Inc., a leading Canadian network service provider, to deliver managed broadband services to U.S.-based enterprise customers with a presence in Canada.

Specifically, Comcast Business will leverage iTel Networks’ vendor relationships to expand Comcast Business’ footprint and support its U.S.-based Enterprise Solutions customers’ locations throughout Canada with its Managed Broadband offering.

“Our Enterprise Solutions team has uncovered a wealth of opportunities for Comcast Business to deliver services outside the U.S. Many of our existing enterprise customers and prospects have locations outside the United States; in particular, in Canada,” said Glenn Katz, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Comcast Business Enterprise Solutions. “We’re excited to announce that we are leveraging this exciting new relationship with iTel Networks to serve our Managed Broadband enterprise customers’ Canadian locations.”

https://business.comcast.com/

Bharti Airtel picks Ericsson’s 5G-ready Cloud Packet Core

Wednesday, October 16, 2019 5G, Ericsson

Bharti Airtel has selected Ericsson to deploy its 5G-ready Cloud Packet Core in Airtel’s Pan India core network. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Ericsson Cloud Packet Core is built on its virtual Evolved Packet Core (EPC) applications. Ericsson’s NFVI solution enables operators to deploy virtual telecom, Operations Support Systems (OSS), Business Support Systems (BSS), Information Technology and media applications.

Randeep Sekhon, CTO, Bharti Airtel, says: “The Indian telecom market is witnessing massive surge in data usage. To address this demand and evolving consumption patterns, we are investing in innovative technologies and solutions to enable a superlative data experience for our customers in India. Ericsson is one of our key network partners and this deployment will help us enhance our packet core network which will not just scale up data capacity, but also make us edge cloud ready.”

Nunzio Mirtillo, Head of Ericsson South East Asia, Oceania and India, Ericsson, says: “Ericsson has been leading the virtual Evolved Packet Core market for several years now and our solutions in this area are gaining traction around the world. The technologies and solutions that we are providing Airtel are a key part of Ericsson’s 5G Core offering. The deployment of these technologies will help Airtel in meeting the rapidly evolving demands of customers and also enable swift deployment of new use cases and innovative services for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and Internet of Things (IoT).”

Blue Danube announces coherent Massive MIMO

Wednesday, October 16, 2019 Blue Danube

Blue Danube Systems announced its first Coherent Massive MIMO solution for TDD networks.

Blue Danube said its approach to Massive MIMO starts by assuring RF array coherency which, in conjunction with digital processing, uniquely enables the definition, placement and dynamic coordination of high precision beams. These beams can be software controlled to direct RF energy towards high user-density areas, while minimizing adjacent sector interference, to improve overall network performance. Blue Danube’s FDD systems have been deployed by five operators worldwide and have been in commercial network operation in North America since 2016 serving thousands of users and carrying hundreds of gigabytes of data traffic daily.

With the addition of support for 3.5 GHz (3GPP Band 42, Band 43, Band 48) and 2.5 GHz (3GPP Band 38, Band 40, Band 41), network operators around the world can realize the benefits of true 3D beamforming and Massive MIMO in sub-6 GHz TDD spectrum. Blue Danube is partnering with leading CBRS equipment vendors to deliver an end to end beamforming solution in Q1’2020.

Coherent architecture will offer a significant performance boost for upcoming TDD networks as well, including 5G and CBRS deployments, and could be the key to making ORAN networks more competitive.”

“Our unique approach to Massive MIMO and 3D beamforming allows us to seamlessly design systems regardless of the radio air-interface,” said Blue Danube CEO, Mark Pinto. “In fact, we intentionally targeted the FDD market first since it accounted for 85% of the worldwide deployments and successfully delivered the industry’s first commercial Massive MIMO solution in 2016. The rest of the industry has focused on TDD solutions to take advantage of channel reciprocity to simplify design, but they continue to struggle to deliver a robust system with realizable gains and at economical price points. We are confident of filling that gap for network operators by offering a complete sub-6 GHz product portfolio.”

http://www.bluedanube.com

FCC authorizes $61m for rural broadband