Verizon to offer 5G network edge computing with AWS Wavelength

Verizon will be the first carrier to offer the new AWS Wavelength service to provide developers the ability to deploy applications that require ultra-low latency to mobile devices using 5G.  The service targets latency-sensitive use cases like machine learning inference at the edge, autonomous industrial equipment, smart cars and cities, Internet of Things (IoT), and augmented and virtual reality. The idea is to position AWS compute and storage services at the edge of Verizon’s 5G network.

The companies are currently piloting AWS Wavelength on Verizon’s edge compute platform, 5G Edge, in Chicago for a select group of customers, including video game publisher Bethesda Softworks and the National Football League (NFL). Additional deployments are planned in other locations across the U.S. in 2020.

Verizon 5G Edge provides mobile edge computing and an efficient high-volume connection between users, devices, and applications. AWS Wavelength lets customers deploy the parts of an application that require ultra-low latency to the edge of the network and then seamlessly connect back to the full range of cloud services running in AWS.

AWS also listed Vodafone Business, KDDI, and SK Telecom as partners.

“We are first in the world to launch Mobile Edge Compute -- deeply integrating Verizon’s 5G Edge platform with Wavelength to allow developers to build new categories of applications and network cloud experiences built in ways we can’t even imagine yet,” said Hans Vestberg, CEO and Chairman of Verizon. “Bringing together the full capabilities of Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband and AWS, the world's leading cloud with the broadest and deepest services portfolio, we unlock the full potential of our 5G services for customers to create applications and solutions with the fastest speeds, improved security, and ultra-low latency.”

“We’ve worked closely with Verizon to deliver a way for AWS customers to easily take advantage of the ubiquitous connectivity and advanced features of 5G,” said Andy Jassy, CEO of AWS. “AWS Wavelength provides the same AWS environment -- APIs, management console, and tools -- that they’re using today at the edge of the 5G network. Starting with Verizon’s 5G network locations in the US, customers will be able to deploy the latency-sensitive portions of an application at the edge to provide single-digit millisecond latency to mobile and connected devices. ”

https://aws.amazon.com/wavelength/?hp=r

Microsoft and AT&T preview Network Edge Compute

Tuesday, November 26, 2019  AT&T, Microsoft  

Microsoft and AT&T announced select preview availability for Network Edge Compute (NEC) technology, which weaves Microsoft Azure cloud services into AT&T network edge locations closer to customers. NEC will initially be available for a limited set of select customers in Dallas. Next year, Los Angeles and Atlanta are targeted for select customer availability. NEC is enabled by AT&T’s software-defined and virtualized 5G core, which the...

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AWS previews EC2 instances running its own Graviton2 processors

AWS offered a sneak peek at its next generation of Arm-based EC2 instances powered by its own Graviton2 processor.

Graviton2 is a custom AWS design that is built using a 7nm manufacturing process and based on 64-bit Arm Neoverse cores. AWS says it can deliver up to 7x the performance of the A1 instances, including twice the floating point performance. Additional memory channels and double-sized per-core caches speed memory access by up to 5x.

AWS estimates up to 40% better price performance over comparable current generation instances for a wide variety of workloads, including application servers, micro-services, high-performance computing, electronic design automation, gaming, open-source databases, and in-memory caches.

Graviton2 will be able to run Amazon Linux 2, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Fedora, FreeBSD, and Debian. Container support includes Docker, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, Amazon Elastic Container Service, and Firecracker.

https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/

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AWS adds VPC Ingress Routing

AWS introduced Amazon VPC Ingress Routing, a new service designed to help customers simplify the integration of network and security appliances within their network topology. For example, VPC Ingress Routing allows customers to scan all ingress traffic with an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) appliance or to use the same firewall in the cloud as on-premises.

Customers are able to define routing rules at the Internet Gateway (IGW) and Virtual Private Gateway (VGW) to redirect ingress traffic to third-party appliances, before it reaches the destination.

AWS announced a number of partners, including:

• 128T Session Smart Routers
• Aviatrix and AWS 
• CloudGuard IaaS 
• Cisco 
• Citrix ADC 
• FireEye 
• Fortinet
• IBM Security 
• Lastline’s Network Detection and Response Platform 
• NETSCOUT for Smart Data Intelligence
• Palo Alto Networks' VM-Series Virtual Next-Generation Firewall 
• ShieldX 
• Sophos – Know where your VPC traffic is going
• Trend Micro
• Valtix 
• Vectra
• Versa Networks

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AWS extends Oregon data center region to LA over private backbone

AWS has activated a Los Angelese Local Zone to provide single-digit millisecond latency to applications accessed in Southern California.

The new Local Zone in Los Angeles is a logical part of the AWS US West (Oregon) Region and is connected over Amazon’s private backbone network. Connections to the public internet take place across an Internet Gateway.

Customers using the AWS Local Zone in LA will be able to run various AWS services (including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, Amazon Elastic Block Store, Amazon File Storage, and Amazon Elastic Load Balancing, with Amazon Relational Database Service support coming in a few months) local to their LA-based end-users for applications that require single- digit millisecond latencies.

AWS plans to launch Local Zones in other cities.

“Customers are excited about AWS Outposts because it gives them on-premises access to AWS compute, storage, and database with the same APIs, control plane, tools, and hardware as they get in AWS Regions. But, for some of our customers, they either don’t have an on-premises data center or want to get rid of their local data center, but still have a need for some of their workloads to run locally given latency requirements,” said Peter DeSantis, Vice President, AWS Global Infrastructure.
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/localzones/

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Aruba integrates SD-WAN into AWS Transit Gateway

Aruba is integrating its SD-WAN solution with the new AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager.  This will greatly simplify the deployment and management of networks connecting remote branch locations to Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (Amazon VPCs).

The integration enables customers deploying the Aruba SD-WAN solution alongside AWS will have the ability to monitor and manage connectivity between AWS resources and their on-premises locations using either Aruba Central or AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager in a simple and intuitive manner. Aruba Central completely automates the process of setting up and managing these networks using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to interact with AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager.

“With branch locations scaling up to the hundreds – if not thousands – of sites, the need for flexibility and simplified management powered by the cloud is critical,” said Kishore Seshadri, vice president and general manager of SD-WAN Solutions at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. “The integration between Aruba’s SD-WAN solution and AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager uses the power of the cloud to seamlessly connect branches to workloads in any region by connecting to the closest AWS Transit Gateway, accelerate VPN connectivity for any branch bypassing the public Internet, and deliver branch-to-branch connectivity in different AWS Regions.”

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Cisco ties its SD-WAN into AWS Transit Gateway

Cisco announced tighter integration between its SD-WAN and AWS Transit Gateway. The aim is to automate and manage connectivity from branches to the AWS Cloud, using the Cisco vManage SD-WAN Controller.

Network operators will be able to create end-to-end connectivity between users and cloud-hosted apps, while applying network segmentation and security policies to traffic flows. The system will also enable policy exchange between Cisco SD-WAN Controller and AWS Transit Gateway, which will allow IT teams to implement consistent network and data security rules.

Cisco also announced a second integration that extends its data center networking solution, ACI Anywhere, to AWS Outposts. Outposts are Amazon’s on-premise services for running applications that require the lowest possible latency or that have local data-processing requirements. The aim is allow customer to use Cisco’s policy-driven automation controller, ACI, to translate their business intent and policy models into consistent on-premise and cloud-native constructs that are deployed across AWS applications.

https://blogs.cisco.com/enterprise/cisco-and-aws-extend-partnership-in-campus-datacenter

Cisco expands its data center architecture with ACI Anywhere

Sunday, February 03, 2019  Cisco  

Cisco announced a new data center architecture that extends its Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) framework into public data and its HyperFlex hyperconverged servers into branch offices. The idea is "ACI Anywhere" and "HyperFlex Anywhere."

To bring this “data center anywhere” vision to life, Cisco is introducing a range of innovations across networking, hyperconvergence, security and automation. They include:

• The expansion of ACI into the cloud with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure environments. ACI is Cisco’s intent-based networking solution for the data center. It integrates with all hypervisors and container frameworks on which applications are deployed. With ACI Anywhere, that journey extends ACI to any workload, any location, any cloud. Virtual ACI already supports bare-metal clouds and remote edge locations. And now with the new Cloud ACI capabilities, Cisco extends automation, management, and security to AWS and Microsoft Azure by fully integrating with their Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) environments.  This will be available in Q2.
• The extension of HyperFlex into branch offices and remote locations to power applications at the edge. Cisco said this allows customers to seamlessly extend computing and storage from their core data centers to the edges of their operations. This will be available in Q2.
• Enhancements to CloudCenter to help customers manage the lifecycle of applications across multiple cloud environments.  The new CloudCenter Suite now features full application lifecycle management, greater workflow automation, and significantly enhanced cost optimization and governance.
• A simpler way for customers to buy and manage the technology across the entire data center architecture, via a single Enterprise Agreement.

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ADVA supplies 5G network timing for U.S. operator

A major U.S. communication service provider is deploying ADVA's timing technology to synchronize national 5G services. The name of the carrier was not disclosed.

The operator is using ADVA's OSA 5420 Series of grandmaster clocks with GPS receivers to deliver highly accurate and reliable phase and frequency synchronization to the edge of its network, enhancing LTE connectivity and enabling mass 5G rollout. The OSA 5420 provides fully assured PTP timing and extended holdover performance, removing vulnerability to GPS outages.

“Our synchronization technology is ideal to support these new 5G services. As a source of phase and frequency timing, our OSA 5420 Series meets the stringent accuracy requirements that Tier 1 carriers need to take their spectrum utilization to new levels,” said Nir Laufer, senior director, product line management, Oscilloquartz. “With its extended holdover, our OSA 5420 helps to ensure next-generation services that are not only extremely fast but also reliable and resilient. It empowers this major American CSP to deliver the benefits of 5G connectivity to mobile, residential and enterprise customers right across the country.”

https://www.adva.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/20191203-adva-timing-technology-synchronizes-major-us-5g-network

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Silver Peak links into AWS Transit Gateway

Silver Peak is integrating its Unity EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform with the new AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager.

This will enable enterprises to manage and monitor connectivity between AWS and their branch locations from a single console within AWS. Enterprises will gain a global view of cloud and network resources and will be able to centrally monitor and manage connectivity from branch and remote locations to cloud resources wherever they reside.

“We are pleased to expand our collaboration with AWS, announcing integration between the Unity EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform and the new AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager,” said David Hughes, founder and CEO of Silver Peak. “The new AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager will enable customers to centrally monitor and manage connectivity from on-premise EdgeConnect deployments to network devices on AWS, providing a global view of network telemetry, events and changes to deliver the highest quality of experience to branch and remote site users.”

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CenturyLink intros managed Network Storage

CenturyLink introduced a managed solution that allows businesses to store and manage data anywhere the CenturyLink network can reach.

The software-defined storage service encompasses block storage, object cloud storage, and cloud disaster recovery.

 "CenturyLink Network Storage is a flexible data management solution that delivers storage and transport capabilities closer to where businesses require them, helping improve processing times while also reducing data storage and processing complexity across cloud, datacenter and edge environments."

https://www.centurylink.com/business/hybrid-it-cloud/cloud-storage.html

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Frontier appoints Bernie Han as CEO

Frontier Communications appointed Bernie Han as President and CEO and a member of the Board, effective repacing Daniel McCarthy, who is stepping down as President and CEC and from his position on the Board.

Han previously served as CFO, COO and as Executive Vice President, Strategic Planning at DISH Network. He previously worked as Chief Financial Officer at Northwest Airlines, and Chief Financial Officer and Chief Marketing Officer at America West Airlines. He received his Master of Business Administration, Master of Electrical Engineering and Bachelor of Science degrees from Cornell University. Mr. Han currently serves on the Board of Directors of Frontier Airlines.

Mr. Han stated, “Frontier has a strong core business that maintains the trust of millions of customers across the country, and I am honored to take on the role of CEO at a time where we have both challenges to overcome and substantial opportunities ahead. I look forward to working with the Board of Directors and leadership team as we continue to execute on our initiatives to drive operational performance, invest in our business and become a stronger partner to our residential and enterprise customers.”

Mr. McCarthy stated, “It has been an incredible experience leading Frontier over the last four years, and I leave knowing the Company is in great hands with Bernie at the helm of this skilled and dedicated organization. I remain a firm believer in Frontier’s future. I look forward to cheering the team on, and I want to thank everyone I have had the pleasure to work with and learn from during my time with Frontier.”

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Russia's Rostelcom picks Juniper for IP Transport Backbone

Rostelecom, the largest digital services provider in Russia, selected Juniper for a large scale modernization of its IP Transport Backbone.

The contract covers Juniper Networks’ MX Series 5G Universal Routing Platform and PTX Series Packet Transport Routers. Financial terms were not disclosed.

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