Nokia puts its cloud-native software on AWS

Nokia's Common Software Foundation platform is now available on Amazon Web Services (AWS), giving communication service providers (CSPs) an additional deployment choice and faster time to service when rolling out new 5G or digital services.

“Interest in AWS from the CSP market segment beyond IT workloads is growing rapidly,” said Matt Garman, Vice President of AWS Compute Services, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “We are delighted to be working with Nokia and helping them leverage the power of AWS for their network infrastructure solutions and business and operational support applications.”

Nokia already offers several applications on AWS, including customer experience, service fulfillment, and orchestration solutions. Through this engineering collaboration, Nokia will prioritize 5G solutions including mobile core, network & service orchestration, and device management & operational support systems suites. Additionally, all new Nokia Software cloud-native network functions and applications moving forward will be available on AWS upon release.

“Our Common Software Foundation continues to drive commercial value forward for our customers including choice of deployment options. CSF now enables all our cloud-native network functions and applications on AWS,” said Bhaskar Gorti, President of Nokia Software. “And when we combine Nokia pre-engineered solutions with AWS deployment, CSPs will be able to commission a new 5G mobile core or provision a new service offering with the click of a button – meaningfully changing CSP economics and operational time frames.”

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U.S. Depart of Commerce Extends Huawei temporary general license

The U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) will extend for 90 days the Temporary General License (TGL) authorizing specific, limited engagements in transactions involving the export, reexport, and transfer of items – under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) – to Huawei and its non-U.S. affiliates which are subject to the Entity List.

 “The Temporary General License extension will allow carriers to continue to service customers in some of the most remote areas of the United States who would otherwise be left in the dark,” said Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. “The Department will continue to rigorously monitor sensitive technology exports to ensure that our innovations are not harnessed by those who would threaten our national security.”

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HPE intros Kubernetes for Bare-Metal and Edge to Cloud Deployments

HPE introduced an enterprise-grade Kubernetes-based container platform designed for both cloud-native applications and monolithic applications with persistent storage.

The new HPE Container Platform can run on bare-metal or virtualized infrastructure, on any public cloud, and at the edge. It leverages technology from HPE’s acquisitions of BlueData and MapR, together with open source Kubernetes.

HPE said it designed the new platform to address large-scale enterprise Kubernetes deployments across a wide range of use cases, from machine learning and edge analytics to CI/CD pipelines and application modernization.

“Application development is migrating to containers, and Kubernetes is the de facto standard for container orchestration,” said Kumar Sreekanti, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Hybrid IT at HPE. “We’re combining our expertise and intellectual property from recent acquisitions together with open source Kubernetes to deliver an unmatched enterprise-class container platform. Our container-first approach will provide enterprises with a faster and lower cost path to application modernization, optimized for bare-metal and extensible to any infrastructure from edge to cloud.”

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Austria's conova deploys ADVA OLS for DCI

conova, one of Austria’s leading IT service providers, has deployed the ADVA FSP 3000 open line system (OLS) with ConnectGuard Optical encryption for secure, high-capacity transport between data centers.

The fully redundant infrastructure supports 100Gbps Carrier Ethernet as well as 32Gbps Gen 6 Fibre Channel, a key requirement for the most advanced enterprise storage services. ADVA said its ALM fiber assurance technology, the new DCI network also enables rapid repair times and improves performance. The infrastructure is protected by ConnectGuard Optical for network encryption at the lowest network layer. The network is assured by the ADVA ALM fiber monitoring solution, which provides real-time information on fiber integrity for fast failure detection and short repair cycles. As the first platform on the market to achieve mainframe qualification for Gen 6 Fibre Channel transport, the ADVA FSP 3000 enables conova to make the leap to 32Gbps Fibre Channel and maximize the performance of flash-enhanced data storage in its facilities.

“In recent years, we’ve grown rapidly as our customers’ businesses have expanded. ADVA’s technology enables us to meet new levels of demand for high-security, high-availability cloud and storage services in a way that also supports further growth in the future. With the ability to transport the most advanced low-latency 32Gbit/s Fibre Channel services, our new network also empowers us to realize the full value of our state-of-the-art data centers,” said Stefan Kaltenbrunner, CSO, conova. “Our new fully redundant network is key to our mission of delivering the optimal IT infrastructure for every business. It helps us provide our customers with fast access to their mission-critical data around the clock as well as the peace of mind that comes from knowing that it’s safe and secure.”

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Nokia and Hitachi Kokusai partner on private 5G

Nokia is collaborating with Hitachi Kokusai Electric on local 5G and private wireless LTE solutions for industrial and government customers. Spectrum for local 5G will be released in Japan at the end of 2019 for enterprise use.

As part of the collaboration, the Nokia Digital Automation Cloud platform with its secure, reliable and low-latency connectivity will be used for applications including video analytics, AI, machine learning and IoT, as well as drones, group communication, and AR/VR. It will also enable autonomous transport vehicles, such as trucks, trains, forklifts and straddle carriers, to increase productivity at factories, utilities, airports and ports.

Hitachi Kokusai Electric will share its expertise as a leader in driving the adoption of private LTE networks for industry use and disaster prevention in Japan. Nokia will lend its private LTE/4.9G and 5G wireless connectivity solutions, which have established a global marketplace footprint across energy, transportation, public sector, manufacturing and logistics.

Kaichiro Sakuma, Representative Director, President and Chief Executive Officer of Hitachi Kokusai Electric, commented: “Industrial grade private wireless networks will be very important for our industry customers, helping them to become more efficient, automating dangerous operations, and improving worker safety. Our collaboration with Nokia is helping to speed the delivery of these innovative capabilities to the Japanese market.”

John Harrington, Head of Nokia Japan, commented: “Partnerships such as this help us to better serve the increasing needs of local 5G and digitalization technology in Japan. Collaborating with partners with in-depth knowledge and expertise across industry segments is critical to the widespread adoption of digital automation and private wireless solutions in industrial settings. Thanks to our comprehensive end-to-end-portfolio, we are ideally placed to support Hitachi Kokusai Electric and its customers to benefit from secure, highly reliable, ultra-broadband wireless networking.”

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Harvard builds liquid-cooled supercomputer with Lenovo and Intel

Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Research Computing is building a supercomputing cluster using the latest Lenovo ThinkSystem SD650 NeXtScale servers with "Neptune" liquid cooling technology and 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Platinum 8268 processors.

Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences Research Computing (FASRC)'s newest and largest HPC cluster, which is named after the legendary American astronomer Annie Jump Cannon, is comprised of more than 30,000 2nd gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor cores. Lenovo’s Neptune liquid cooling technology uses the superior heat conducting efficiency of water versus air.

Though the Cannon storage system is spread across multiple locations, the primary compute is housed in the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center, a LEED Platinum-certified data center in Holyoke, MA. The Cannon cluster includes 670 Lenovo ThinkSystem SD650 servers featuring Lenovo Neptune™ direct-to-node water-cooling, and Intel Xeon Platinum 8268 processors consisting of 24 cores per socket and 48 cores per node. Each Cannon node is now several times faster than any previous cluster node, with jobs like geophysics models of the Earth performing 3-4 times faster than the previous system. In the first four weeks of production operation, Cannon completed over 4.2 million jobs utilizing over 21 million CPU hours.

“Science is all about iteration and repeatability. But iteration is a luxury that is not always possible in the field of university research because you are often working against the clock to meet a deadline,” said Scott Yockel, director of research computing at Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “With the increased compute performance and faster processing of the Cannon cluster, our researchers now have the opportunity to try something in their data experiment, fail, and try again. Allowing failure to be an option makes our researchers more competitive.”

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Nokia and VMware expand partnership for large-scale, multi-cloud

Nokia and VMware are expanding an existing partnership to support large-scale, multi-cloud operations by communications service providers (CSPs).

The companies will focus on the interoperability between Nokia software applications and VMware’s Telco Cloud, including VMware vCloud NFV. Nokia and VMware will also increase their investments in a deeper partnership with technology collaboration and advanced research & development to develop integrated solutions. As a result, CSPs will be able to more easily meet their business and use case objectives, using VMware cloud infrastructure that is engineered to work together with Nokia virtualized and containerized network functions.

Nokia and VMware have been working together to create seamless cloud redundancy by running Nokia’s applications, such as Nokia Service Management Platform, on VMware’s Telco Cloud platform and VMware HCX, an application mobility platform designed for simplifying application migration, workload rebalancing, and optimized disaster recovery across data centers and clouds. This will enable customers to embrace a multi-cloud strategy to unify network and IT environments and connect them to private enterprise clouds, edge clouds, and public clouds.

Nokia will continue to focus on the technical certification of Nokia VNFs and software applications on VMware vCloud NFV platform through a dedicated, on-site VMware Ready for NFV Certification Lab. The new lab includes performance characterization to enable CSPs to properly configure their technology environments for the best results. With the Certification Lab, Nokia and VMware will serve customers in an accelerated fashion, keeping pace with new features and releases and enabling better roadmap alignment between the two companies’ portfolios.

Several Nokia software applications, such as Nokia CloudBand Application Manager and Nokia Smart Plan Suite, along with virtual IMS, virtual packet core and session border controller are already certified for operations in VMware cloud environments.

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CenturyLink and Infinera delive terabit capacity to SC19

CenturyLink and Infinera are teaming up to deliver terabit capacity to this week’s SC19, the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis in Denver.

CenturyLink will deliver this capacity using the Infinera Groove G30 Compact Modular Platform running 2 x 600 Gbps metro wavelengths. The deployment will connect the Colorado Convention Center in Denver with wide-area networks in major U.S. cities, demonstrating CenturyLink’s rapid provisioning of 100-gigabit services.

“A scalable, agile, and low-latency infrastructure plays a critical role in addressing the demanding and ever-increasing connectivity requirements of high-performance computing and the global research and education community,” said Andrew Dugan, Chief Technology Officer at CenturyLink. “Delivering terabit-scale capacity for SCinet underscores our commitment to serving the needs of these customers in their pursuit of academic excellence.”

http://news.centurylink.com

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John Legere to step down as CEO of T-Mobile US

John Legere will step down as CEO of T-Mobile US when his contract expires on April 30, 2020. T-Mobile's Board of Directors named Mike Sievert as Chief Executive Officer.

Sievert currently serves as President, Chief Operating Officer and a Board Director.

“John Legere has had an enormously successful run as CEO. As the architect of the Un-carrier strategy and the company’s complete transformation, John has put T-Mobile US in an incredibly strong position. I have the highest respect for his performance as a manager and as a friend, I am very grateful to him for the time together,” said Tim Höttges, Deutsche Telekom CEO, and Chairman of the Board of T-Mobile US. “John taught everyone at T-Mobile that if you listen to customers and empower employees, you can change a culture – and by doing so – change a company and an entire industry. On behalf of the Board of Directors, I would like to thank John, and of course Mike, and all the employees for everything they have achieved over the past seven years. We have tremendous respect for John’s leadership and appreciate his incredible contributions to T-Mobile’s success. The Board is pleased that John will support this leadership transition while focusing on closing our pending acquisition of Sprint.”

“I hired Mike in 2012 and I have great confidence in him. I have mentored him as he took on increasingly broad responsibilities, and he is absolutely the right choice as T-Mobile’s next CEO,” said John Legere. “Mike is well prepared to lead T-Mobile into the future. He has a deep understanding of where T-Mobile has been and where it needs to go to remain the most innovative company in the industry. I am extremely proud of the culture and enthusiasm we have built around challenging the status quo and our ongoing commitment to putting customers first. Together, these attributes have distinguished T-Mobile in the marketplace and on Wall Street, giving us a powerful business advantage that is instilled throughout every level of T-Mobile. I am confident it will thrive under Mike’s leadership.”

“In the months ahead, my focus will be on ensuring a smooth leadership transition and continuing to work closely with the Board and Mike to complete the Sprint transaction,” added John Legere. “This merger will create the New T-Mobile – a company that is uniquely positioned to continue disrupting the wireless category – and beyond. This marks the beginning of a dynamic new chapter for T-Mobile.”

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