Thursday, January 30, 2020

State of NFV: Telco Cloud Integration

State of NFV Resource Site and Report: https://ngi.how/nfv-20



The cost to operate a network is much higher than the cost to initially deploy a network says Ben Baker, Senior Director, Cloud/SP Marketing at Juniper Networks. Service providers realize they need more agility and speed. Juniper Networks is working with SPs to virtualize service delivery points farther out to the edge while keeping management and control centralized.



Dell'Oro: Demand for 400G switch expected to grow this year

Ethernet Switch Data Center port shipments are forecast to surpass 60 million by 2024, with more than 50 percent of the port shipments will operate at 100 Gbps, 400 Gbps and 800 Gbps - according to a recent report from Dell'Oro Group.

“800 Gbps, 400 Gbps, as well as new waves of 100 Gbps will be enabled by faster SerDes technologies and higher speed optics,” said Sameh Boujelbene, Senior Director at Dell’Oro Group. “Optics will continue to play a vital role in the data center switch market. The availability of high volume, low-cost optics is crucial in driving any speed transition. Additionally, as network speed increases beyond 800 Gbps, pluggable optics will hit density and power issues. Hence it will become imminent for the industry to adopt alternative options such as Co-Packaged Optics (CPO). We expect such transition to bring major disruptions to the supply chain as it requires new business and serviceability models,” added Boujelbene.

Additional highlights from the Ethernet Switch – Data Center 5-Year Forecast Report:

  • Demand for 400 Gbps from the broader market is expected to ramp by end 2020 and in early 2021.
  • 400 Gbps and higher speeds are predicted to account for more than 25 percent of port shipments by 2024.

Dell'Oro: 5G backhaul transport equipment sales to hit $3B by 2024

5G mobile backhaul transport equipment revenue will reach $3 billion by 2024. Demand for 5G backhaul is expected to drive multiple years of growth for the total mobile backhaul transport market for the next few years, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group.

“We anticipate the Mobile Backhaul Transport market to return to a period of growth as operators roll out 5G,” said Jimmy Yu, Vice President at Dell’Oro Group. “Hence, we are predicting that demand for backhaul equipment will grow at an average annual rate of four percent for the next four years, surpassing $5 billion annually. We suspect this demand will mostly further the sales of fiber backhaul equipment initially, but in the long term, there will be a growing share of new deployments using wireless backhaul,” Yu added.

Highlights from the Microwave Transmission & Mobile Backhaul 5-Year Forecast Report:

  • Over 50 percent of Mobile Backhaul Transport revenue and over 35 percent of Microwave Transmission revenue will be from equipment deployed in 5G networks by 2024.
  • 5G is also expected to drive the use of transport systems to increase the span between mobile radios and baseband units. As such, we forecast a strong adoption of Mobile Fronthaul during the forecast period.


https://www.delloro.com/news/5g-mobile-backhaul-transport-equipment-revenue-will-reach-3-billion-by-2024/

Spectra7 and Luxshare demo 400G with OSFP Active Copper Cables

Spectra7 Microsystems and Luxshare-ICT demonstrated OSFP format Active Copper Cables (ACCs) using Spectra7 technology in a live demo passing 400Gbps Ethernet traffic generated by a 12.6 Tbps switch.

Luxshare-ICT, which offers high performance interconnects and cable assemblies, has chosen Spectra7’s GaugeChanger technology for integration into this new line of OSFP Active Copper Cables. The embedded Spectra7 GC2502 Linear EQ Chips dramatically increase the length of standard copper cables by almost 3 times. This enables a significant number of cables in the 3 to 7m range to remain copper-based instead of having to switch to optical solutions which are dramatically higher in power and cost.

“Spectra7 continues its leadership in helping to drive the future of the data center interconnects industry, and we are proud to be collaborating with them to demonstrate next-generation high-speed solutions,” said Jinhua Chen, Enterprise GM at Luxshare-ICT. “Our continued collaboration with Spectra7 highlights our vision to build relationships that benefit our customers, partners, and provide flexible solutions to their toughest challenges.”

“Luxshare is a dynamic technology and market leader in the data center interconnect market," said Spectra7 CEO Raouf Halim. "Their adoption of our GaugeChanger™ technology has already led to the first 25G deployment in China in 2019 and we are now well on our way to significant 400G deployments in the US in 2020."

The demo was conducted at DesignCon this week in Santa Clara, California.

Spectra7 and Molex showcase 400G Active Copper Interconnects

Spectra7 Microsystems and Molex showcased 400 Gbps Active Copper Cables (ACCs) at DesignCon in the Santa Clara, California.

Molex recently began shipping its Passive Copper QSFP-DD (Quad Small Form Factor–Double Density) Cable Assemblies in volume production and the same customers are asking for Active Copper versions for longer lengths.

"Spectra7 has created a compelling solution to address the dramatically increasing power and cost of data center interconnects," said Greg Walz, advanced technical marketing manager, Molex. “We are seeing significant interest from our largest customers for 400 Gbps ACCs with Spectra7 technology and are pleased to be showcasing this product at DesignCon 2020.”

"Molex is a technology and market leader in the hyperscale interconnect market," said Spectra7 CEO Raouf Halim. "The adoption of our 400 Gbps GaugeChanger™ technology by Molex is a significant milestone in the coming volume deployment of GaugeChanger™, our data center product line."

AWS sales in Q4 reached $9.95 billion, up 34% yoy

Amazon Web Services (AWS) generated revenue of $9.954 billion during Q4 2019, up 34% compared to a year earlier. Operating income for AWS was up 19% year over year, reaching $2.596 billion for the quarter.

On an annualized basis, AWS is on a $35 billion run rate and represents 12% of Amazon's overall revenue.



Some additional highlights for AWS during Q4:


  • AWS announced several significant new customer commitments and migrations during the quarter spanning major industries, including finance with Western Union, FINRA CAT, LLC, a subsidiary of FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority), and Klarna, a leading global payments provider and bank; media with Fox Corporation, and ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE, Europe’s leading satellite and cable broadcaster; sports with a new player health and safety initiative with the NFL, the Seattle Seahawks, Bundesliga, Germany’s premier football league, and Formula One Group; energy with BP; pharmaceuticals with Novartis; and hospitality with Best Western Hotels & Resorts, among others.
  • •AWS announced three Arm-based instances (M6g, C6g, R6g) powered by AWS’s new Graviton2 processors, that deliver up to 40% better price and performance than current x86 processor-based instances. These new Arm-based instances are powered by the AWS Nitro System, a combination of dedicated hardware and lightweight hypervisor, enabling faster innovation and enhanced security for customers at a much lower cost.
  • AWS announced the general availability of AWS Outposts, a fully-managed service that extends AWS infrastructure and services to virtually any data center, co-location space, or on-premises facility. AWS Outposts offers customers the same AWS hardware infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools to build and run applications on premises and in the cloud for a truly consistent hybrid experience. AWS compute, storage, database, and other services run locally on Outposts, and customers can access the full range of AWS services available in the region to build, manage, and scale on-premises applications using familiar AWS services and tools.
  • AWS announced AWS Local Zones, a new type of AWS infrastructure deployment that places AWS compute, storage, database, and other select services closer to large population, industry, and IT centers where no AWS Region exists today. With the opening of the first AWS Local Zone in Los Angeles (LA), developers will have the ability to deploy applications that require single-digit millisecond latencies to end-users also in LA. AWS Local Zone customers will be able to use their compute, storage, database, and other select services locally in LA, while also being able to seamlessly connect back to the rest of their workloads running in the AWS U.S. West (Oregon) Region or other AWS Regions a customer may be using.
  • AWS announced AWS Wavelength, which enables developers to build applications that deliver single-digit millisecond latencies to mobile devices and users by deploying AWS compute and storage at the edge of the 5G network. With AWS Wavelength, developers can serve use cases that require ultra-low latency like machine learning inference at the edge, autonomous industrial equipment, smart cars and cities, Internet of Things (IoT), and Augmented and Virtual Reality. AWS is partnering with Verizon on making AWS Wavelength available across the U.S., and is collaborating with other leading telecommunications companies, including Vodafone and SK Telecom, to launch AWS Wavelength across Europe and South Korea in 2020, with more global partners coming soon. 

https://ir.aboutamazon.com/investor-relations

CenturyLink wins Social Security Administration WAN contract

CenturyLink was selected by the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) as a key provider for its Wide Area Network and related high-speed network services.

Under the contract, CenturyLink will provide Ethernet, virtual private network, intrusion prevention and self-healing optical wave ring services with speeds ranging from 100 Mbps to 100 Gbps at each of SSA's more than 1,700 locations in the U.S. and around the world, including data centers, field offices, foreign service posts, headquarters, program service centers, regional offices, remote operations centers and external business partner sites. CenturyLink said the award also includes secure high-speed cloud connectivity, proactive distributed denial of service protections and a network operations center that supports all SSA activities and its more than 60,000 employees 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year.

The SSA has a dual carrier network approach. CenturyLink won the task order with the largest scope and is responsible for all single and dual carrier requirements, including architecting and deploying SSA's 100 gigabit business-critical data replication network.

"Social Security's network, called SSANet, is the central nervous system of all SSA operations, which touch every American from birth throughout their entire life," said David Young, CenturyLink senior vice president, public sector. "SSA continues to place its trust in CenturyLink as a mission-critical network provider by extending and expanding its relationship with us as we help the agency modernize its IT systems that provide crucial services to the American public."

http://news.centurylink.com/

BT provides operational update

As part of its quarterly financial, provided the following operational updates:

  • 5G now live in over 50 locations; EE found to have broadest 5G network by RootMetrics
  • Openreach accelerates FTTP build at c.26k premises passed per week; 2.2m FTTP premises passed to date
  • Openreach awarded two of three lots to provide superfast speeds to Scotland; vast majority of build to be FTTP
  • Consumer fixed ARPC £38.2, down 4% year on year due to decline in voice revenue; postpaid mobile ARPC £20.3, down 5% due to impact of regulation and continued trend towards SIM-only; RGUs per address 2.38
  • Postpaid mobile churn remains low at 1.3% in Q3 despite impact of auto switching; fixed churn at 1.3% in Q3 down from 1.4% in prior year following customer experience improvements and new pricing strategy
  • Capital expenditure for the nine months to 31-Dec-2019 reached £2,877m. Up £251m excluding BDUK funding deferral, driven by fixed and mobile network investment

"The security of our network is paramount for BT. We therefore welcome and are supportive of the clarity provided by Government around the use of certain vendors in networks across the UK and agree that the priority should be the security of the UK’s communications infrastructure. We are in the process of reviewing the guidance in detail to determine the full impact on our plans and at this time estimate an impact of around £500 million over the next 5 years," stated Philip Jansen, Chief Executive, BT.