NTT contributes NOS for Disaggregated Coherent Transponders to TIP

NTT Electronics has contributed its Goldstone Network Operating Software for disaggregated coherent transponders to the Telecom Infra Project’s NOS Software Project, which is hosted by the Open Optical and Packet Transport project group.

Goldstone utilizes many existing open source components which have been developed in Open Compute Project and Telecom Infra Project, including Open Network Linux, SONiC, Switch Abstraction Interface, and Transponder Abstraction Interface. ONL is used as the base operating system and provides a wide range of open network device support. On top of ONL, Kubernetes is employed to enable containerized application management, which realizes flexible and modular software composition. SONiC/SAI is deployed as a fleet of containers when the target hardware comprises Ethernet switch ASIC, whereas TAI is used when the target hardware has coherent transponder components.

NTT said its Goldstone NOS leverages a modular architecture, enabling it to be extended to support networking devices, which don’t have an Ethernet ASIC, but may include conventional transponders, ROADMs or amplifiers in the future.

Goldstone was originally started as a prototype NOS for Edgecore’s Cassini Platform. The work has led to a production deployment by mixi in Japan, and more than five industry partners are evaluating Goldstone on the Cassini platform. It is also being incorporated in Wistron’s Galileo platform.

“As the first operator who deployed Goldstone in production, mixi welcomes the contribution of Goldstone by NTT Electronics to foster more collaboration among the open networking industry. Goldstone brought us huge flexibility and control over our DCI connectivity which is critical for our services” Tatsuma Murase, CTO, mixi, Inc.

“Edgecore is pleased to be working with NTT Electronics and the broader industry community to enable disaggregated solutions with open packet transponders that will provide broader optical technology choices for network operators.” George Tchaparian, President and CEO, Edgecore Networks.

NTT Electronics' portfolio includes coherent optics and digital signal processors (DSPs)
https://www.ntt-electronics.com/en/

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ADVA ships disaggregated cell site gateway for TIP

ADVA announced the commercial readiness of its disaggregated cell site gateway (DCSG) solution at this week's Telecom Infra Project (TIP) Summit.

The integrated white box is powered by ADVA’s Ensemble Activator network operating system (NOS) and has been engineered to TIP’s white box gateway specifications.. ADVA provides installation, commissioning and monitoring services for rapid network deployment.

“This is a landmark moment for mobile networks. Now that MNOs can leverage our DCSG solution as a simple and complete answer for evolving their infrastructure to 5G, the shackles are off. We’re empowering them to roll out widespread small cell networks in a way that’s simple, affordable and future-proof. Our technology and complete service bundle make the transition easy so that MNOs are free to focus instead on the business opportunities that 5G offers,” said Eli Angel, VP, product line management, Ethernet access, ADVA. “This TIP demo also highlights the value of openness and disaggregation in mobile networks. By enabling software to be separated from hardware, we’re giving operators the freedom to select the ideal technology combination for their needs and harness the latest and greatest innovation.”

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Google Cloud’s new Network Intelligence Center adds monitoring

Google Cloud introduced a Network Intelligence Center that provides network monitoring, verification, and optimization across the cloud and on-prem data centers. The idea is to provide enterprises with proactive network operations that can predict and heal network failures, driven by AI/ML recommendations and remediation.

GCP's Network Intelligence Center offers four modules: Connectivity Tests and Network Topology, both in beta; Performance Dashboard and Firewall Metrics & Insights in alpha; with several other modules to follow.

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/networking/announcing-network-intelligence-center

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Cisco posts revenue of $13.2 billion, up 2% yoy

Cisco reported revenue of $13.2 billion for the first quarter of its FY20, up 2% year-over-year, with product revenue up 1% and service revenue up 4%.  On a GAAP basis, total gross margin, product gross margin, and service gross margin were each 64.3%, as compared with 62.3%, 61.6%, and 64.6%, respectively, in the first quarter of fiscal 2019. GAAP operating income was $3.6 billion, down 6%, with GAAP operating margin of 27.2%. Non-GAAP operating
income was $4.4 billion, up 6%, with non-GAAP operating margin at 33.6%.

"We delivered a solid quarter against a challenging macro environment," said Chuck Robbins, chairman and CEO of Cisco. "We're focused on continuing to drive innovation, transform our business and exceed our customers' expectations."

Revenue by geographic segment was: Americas up 4%, EMEA up 4%, and APJC down 8%. Product revenue was led by growth in Security, up 22% and Applications, up 6%. Infrastructure Platforms was down 1%.

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New AWS Data Exchange offers 3rd-party data sources

Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced a new service to help AWS customers find, subscribe to, and use third-party data in the cloud.

AWS Data Exchange provides access to qualified data providers including category-leading brands such as Reuters, who curate data from over 2.2 million unique news stories per year in multiple languages; Change Healthcare, who process and anonymize more than 14 billion healthcare transactions and $1 trillion in claims annually; Dun & Bradstreet, who maintain a database of more than 330 million global business records; and Foursquare, whose location data is derived from 220 million unique consumers and includes more than 60 million global commercial venues.

For qualified data providers, AWS Data Exchange makes it easy to reach the millions of AWS customers migrating to the cloud by removing the need to build and maintain infrastructure for data storage, delivery, billing, and entitling.

“Customers have asked us for an easier way to find, subscribe to, and integrate diverse data sets into the applications, analytics, and machine-learning models they’re running on AWS. Unfortunately, the way customers exchange data hasn’t evolved much in the last 20 years”

https://aws.amazon.com/data-exchange/

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NTT Research partners with leading U.S. universities

NTT Research's Physics and Informatics (PHI) Lab has reached joint research agreements with six universities, one government agency, and one private company.

The PHI Lab, which is focused on a new computing paradigm created in the interdisciplinary field between quantum physics, neuroscience, and optical technology, has struck five-year agreements with California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Cornell University, University of Michigan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, Stanford University, Swinburne University of Technology, and quantum computing software company 1QBit.

“Having launched only four months ago, we are excited to have reached agreements with eight of the world’s top research organizations with interests and expertise in the three fields crucial to our mission: quantum-to-classical crossover physics, neural networks, and optical parametric oscillators,” said NTT Research PHI Lab Director Yamamoto. “Over the next five years, we believe our collaboration will uncover novel principles and technologies that advance information processing beyond the current state of the art.”

“These agreements reflect our belief that a new computing model requires teamwork, in the broadest and best sense of that word,” said Kazuhiro Gomi, President and CEO, NTT Research. “They also represent our respect for the talent and expertise of our primary investigator collaborators and the promise of their research teams.”

Summaries of the eight agreements follow:

• Caltech – Primary goal: to develop a scalable architecture for efficient quantum simulation of many-body systems using optical parametric oscillator (OPO) networks. PI: Alireza Marandi, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics.
• Cornell – Primary goal: to develop a quantum neural network (QNN) based on error detection and error correction feedback. PI: Peter McMahon, Assistant Professor of Applied and Engineering Physics.
• Michigan – Primary goal: to perform theoretical studies of topological states in nonlinear optics and synthetic topological matter. PI: Franco Nori, Affiliated Faculty, Department of Physics.
• MIT – Primary goal: to develop the photonic accelerators for deep learning and the superconducting coherent Ising machines (CIMs) for optimization. PIs: Dirk Englund, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; and Will Oliver, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Professor of the Practice of Physics.
• NASA Ames Research Center – Primary goal: to perform benchmark studies of CIMs vs. modern heuristics on various optimization problems. PI: Eleanor Rieffel, Lead, Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
• Stanford – Primary goal: to develop novel optical and superconducting devices for studying the quantum-to-classical crossover physics and critical phenomena in the quantum neural network. PI: Hideo Mabuchi, Professor of Applied Physics; and co-PIs: Martin Fejer, Professor of Applied Physics; Benjamin Lev, Associate Professor of Applied Physics and of Physics; Surya Ganguli, Associate Professor of Applied Physics; and Amir Safavi-Naeini, Assistant Professor of Applied Physics.
• Swinburne – Primary goal: to develop and implement the theoretical models for CIMs. PIs: Peter Drummond, Distinguished Professor and Science Director, Centre for Quantum and Optical Science (CQOS); and Margaret Reid, Professor of Physics, School of Science, CQOS, and Department of Physics and Astronomy.
• 1QBit – Primary goal: to perform research in design and analysis of a stack of algorithms that bridge commercially viable applications to the forms of computation natively done by CIMs, with a multitude of applications in operations research and artificial intelligence. PI: Pooya Ronagh, Head of Hardware Innovation 

Innovative Optical and Wireless Network Forum launched by NTT

Wednesday, October 30, 2019    

NTT, Intel and Sony are joining forces to create a new Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN) Global Forum, which aims to accelerate the adoption of new communications infrastructure. The goal is to will bring together an all-photonic network including silicon photonics, edge computing, and distributed connected computing, along with wireless access.. IOWN will develop new technologies, frameworks, specifications and reference designs, in...

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Rakuten Mobile joins TIP

Rakuten Mobile, Japan’s newest mobile operator, has joined the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) community and will contribute their 4G and 5G expertise and reference designs for disaggregated solutions to the TIP ecosystem.

Initially, Rakuten Mobile, the world’s first end-to-end fully virtualized, cloud-native mobile network, will participate in the OpenRAN and OpenRAN 5G NR project groups to drive innovation for the TIP community. These initiatives are designed to support the rapid development and deployment of far more efficient and cost-effective 4G and 5G mobile network infrastructure.

“We are pleased to welcome Rakuten Mobile to the TIP community, which is significantly expanding the scope and value of disaggregation to the industry,” said Attilio Zani, Executive Director, Telecom Infra Project. “We look forward to collaborating on 4G and 5G market-ready solutions with Rakuten to make telecom networks far more open and efficient.”

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Dell offers pay-per-use model for on-premises infrastructure

Dell Technologies wil offer its PowerOne on-prem infrastructure on as an on-demand service with flexible consumption plans beginning later this month.

Dell Technologies on Demand promises hybrid cloud agility with the control and performance of on-premises infrastructure. Customer can choose between several flexible pay-per-use options, along with global support, deployment, and managed services.

The company's PowerEdge server portfolio also now available with a processor-based usage measurement option for compute at the core.

“The multi-cloud world is here and will only grow, which means customers need on-demand and consistent infrastructure that yield predictable outcomes across all of their clouds, data centers and edge locations,” said Jeff Clarke, vice chairman, Dell Technologies. “Dell Technologies On Demand makes it possible for organizations to plan, deploy and manage their entire IT footprint.They can choose how they consume and pay for IT solutions that meet their needs with the freedom and flexibility to evolve as their needs change over time.”eek c

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Dell EMC PowerOne aims for autonomous infrastructure

Dell Technologies introduced "PowerOne: autonomous infrastructure that integrates its PowerEdge compute, PowerMax storage, PowerSwitch networking and VMware virtualization into a single system that features a built-in intelligence engine to automate thousands of manual steps over its lifecycle.

The automation engine takes advantage of a Kubernetes microservices architecture and uses Ansible workflows to assist users by automating the component configuration and provisioning, delivering a customer-managed datacenter-as-a-service.

Dell said a key innovation with its PowerOne infrastructure is a single system-level application programming interface (API) that gives users the control to create business objective-specific pools of resources. This API can be tied into existing tools, such as service portals, to deliver programmable versus manual IT operations. This is known as Infrastructure as Code - virtually eliminating the need to log in to individual component management systems. With PowerOne, organizations can create

“PowerOne autonomous infrastructure automates IT so customers can focus less on managing technology and more on benefiting from it,” said Jeff Boudreau, president, Dell Technologies Infrastructure Solutions Group. “As we look to the future, PowerOne offers a tremendous leap forward. It helps customers focus on unleashing the power of data, allowing IT teams to innovate and achieve business goals faster."

PowerOne components include:

• PowerOne Controller: This onboard appliance is the automation engine. It uses a Kubernetes microservices architecture and Ansible workflows to automate the configuration, provisioning and lifecycle management of the components.
• PowerEdge MX:  This modular server’s no-mid-plane design enables PowerEdge MX to support multiple generations of technology releases, such as microprocessors, new storage types and new connectivity innovation, well into the future. PowerOne automates this kinetic infrastructure, assigning resources as required to deliver a truly dynamic compute experience that scales according to need.
• PowerSwitch: Dell EMC switches power some of the largest web-scale environments in the world and offer users a choice of operating systems to best fit their requirements. PowerOne reduces complexity by abstracting and automating the switch hardware so that the virtual network is automatically provisioned for VMware workloads.
• PowerMax: dubbed the world’s fastest storage array. PowerOne automates storage provisioning and zoning and dynamically expands new cluster groups when it detects new resources.
• PowerProtect: To safeguard the data’s value, PowerOne also can benefit from the full PowerProtect data protection portfolio to address ever-changing growth and governance requirements. This offers cloud-enabled protection storage, integrated appliances and software-defined solutions.

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Nokia supplies GPON to Spectranet in Nigeria

Spectranet, Nigeria’s largest Internet Service Provider, will bring high-speed access to customers in Lagos and Abuja by deploying Nokia's GPON solution as part of an extensive FTTH rollout. The deployment includes the Nokia 7362 ISAM DF-16GW and the Nokia 7368 ISAM ONTs.

Spectranet has been providing wireless broadband services in Nigeria since 2013 using LTE.

Ajay Awasthi, Chief Executive Officer at Spectranet, said: “In today’s digital economy, our customers increasingly seek high-speed internet access to use applications like streaming ultra HD videos and online gaming. With Nokia’s GPON solution, we will be able to offer customers new ultra-broadband services that create a superior customer experience in the home and office.”

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