Tuesday, April 7, 2020

Vantage Data Centers to acquire data center campus in Wales

Vantage Data Centers  signed a definitive agreement with InfraVia Capital Partners, along with the two founders of the business, to acquire Next Generation Data (NGD), which operates a data center campus located on 50-acres in the Cardiff Capital Region in South Wales, UK.

The existing NGD data center campus is a Tier III 180MW facility, including an existing 72MW capacity and 108MW of expansion capacity. It uses 100% renewable energy and is rich in fiber delivered by many Tier 1 service providers. Latency between Wales and London is less than 1.5 milliseconds. In addition, NGD Cloud Gateway provides multiple access services, including Express Route and Connect, and NGD recently became a new hosting facility for LINX Wales. The highly secure site meets the U.K. government’s highest standards, and is one of many reasons that multiple blue-chip, high growth companies currently house their IT infrastructure within NGD’s 750,000 square foot facility.

Upon closing, Wales will mark Vantage’s sixth strategic market in Europe following its entrance into five markets (Berlin, Frankfurt, Milan, Warsaw and Zurich) announced in February 2020, including the acquisition of Etix Everywhere.

“As the needs of our hyperscale, cloud and large enterprise customers continue to grow, Wales represents a highly attractive U.K. market offering both lower cost and greater scalability versus London,” said Sureel Choksi, president and CEO, Vantage Data Centers. “NGD customers benefit from very low network latency to London, low power costs and excellent fiber connectivity, coupled with the company’s massively scalable campus outside London’s highly constrained M25 area. We are thrilled to welcome Justin Jenkins and the entire NGD team to Vantage Europe.”

“The NGD team is excited to join Vantage Europe given our shared commitment to operational excellence, high quality facilities and sustainable building practices,” said Jenkins. “Vantage’s global footprint and broad customer relationships, combined with NGD’s growing hyperscale and enterprise U.K. customer base, position us ideally to accelerate the investment and growth of our U.K. business.”

The transaction will be funded with equity commitments from Digital Colony Partners and other investors in Vantage, as well as acquisition debt financing.

Vantage Data Centers launch $2 billion European expansion strategy

Vantage Data Centers has launched a $2 billion expansion into Europe with the aim of establishing itself in the hyperscale market.

As part of its expansion strategy, Vantage has acquired Etix Everywhere, which has 50MW of built data center capacity across its footprint and is building a 55MW hyperscale data center campus in Frankfurt, Germany. Financial terms were not disclosed. In conjunction with the Etix acquisition, Antoine Boniface, former CEO of Etix, has joined the Vantage executive team to serve as president, Europe.

In addition, Vantage Europe has secured land and is planning to develop hyperscale data center campuses in Berlin, Milan, Warsaw and Zurich. The facilities, which are currently underway, are in the following European markets:

  • Berlin: 64MW campus on 13 acres (5 hectares)
  • Milan: 32MW campus on 17 acres (7 hectares)
  • Warsaw: 64MW campus 12 acres (5 hectares)
  • Zurich: 40MW campus on 7 acres (3 hectares)

Vantage said intends to invest USD $2 billion in its planned European expansion, including more than USD $800 million in new equity capital provided by Vantage’s current investors and a new commitment from Digital Colony Partners.

“As data center demand from our customer base continues to rapidly increase worldwide, Vantage is embarking upon its largest expansion ever into Europe through the development of five strategic markets,” said Sureel Choksi, president and CEO of Vantage. “The acquisition of Etix accelerates our expansion to Frankfurt, Europe’s highest growth hyperscale market. We are very excited to welcome Antoine and his team to lead our European business.”

Inclusive of this European expansion, Vantage will operate hyperscale data center campuses in 11 markets globally.

Windstream tests 400GbE QSFP-DD customers interfaces with Infinera

Windstream Wholesale and Infinera demonstrated 400GbE client-side services with commercially available ultra-efficient 400GbE-LR8 QSFP-DD compact pluggable interfaces.

The trial leveraged Infinera’s commercially available 2x 600G Wavelength muxponder on its Groove (GX) G30 Compact Modular Platform with the CHM-2T sled, which enabled the customer-facing 400GbE service to be transmitted using a single-carrier 600G wavelength.

Windstream Wholesale said it is currently engaging with customers for initial deployment of the end-to-end 400G Wave service.

“We’re excited to partner with Windstream and leverage the power and flexibility of our 600G Wavelength technology to deliver enhanced high-speed services,” said Glenn Laxdal, SVP, GM of Product Management, Infinera. “The ability to support 400GbE services with a wide-variety of client interfaces and to carry those services across metro, regional and long-haul distances enables Windstream to seamlessly support their customers’ evolving connectivity needs.”

“Our customers’ bandwidth requirements are growing rapidly, and Windstream is increasing network capacity to meet this demand,” said Buddy Bayer, chief network officer at Windstream. “Infinera’s GX G30 Compact Modular Platform provides an ultra-efficient transport solution enabling us to offer 400GbE services to support our customers’ high-bandwidth needs. The use of LR8 clients with a single mode fiber interface and a 10-kilometer reach provides an extremely cost-effective solution by enabling us to extend these services directly to our customers’ premises.”

https://www.windstreamenterprise.com/wholesale/interactive-map

Windstream adds to long-haul with Infinera’s FlexILS Line System

Windstream Wholesale will add over 1,000 miles to its Next Gen flexible ultra-long-haul fiber network using Infinera’s FlexILS line system.

The route from Salt Lake City to Portland and Seattle will provide diverse, low-latency connectivity to markets in the Pacific Northwest.

Windstream also announced that, as part of an ongoing program to enhance its long-haul network, it has increased the capacity of several major routes to 48 Tbps.

The overlay is powered by Infinera’s FlexILS line system. The flexible grid-compliant open optical line system features C+L-band support and colorless-directionless-contentionless (CDC) ROADM.

“Our new route to the Pacific Northwest, along with the overlay of existing routes with Infinera’s FlexILS technology, is a response to increasing customer demand for bandwidth,” said Joe Scattareggia, executive vice president of Windstream Wholesale. “These ongoing initiatives pave the way for Windstream Wholesale to meet customers’ needs for high-quality, low-latency services across our most popular routes for years to come.”

“We are delighted to support Windstream with solutions that enable them to meet their customers’ evolving need for high-bandwidth, low-latency services,” said Nick Walden, senior vice president, worldwide sales, Infinera. “Infinera’s uniquely scalable C+L solution is an ideal fit to meet Windstream’s initiatives for future bandwidth needs by significantly increasing and, in some cases, more than doubling capacity on its existing fiber links.

Windstream Wholesale previously announced an overlay of its Dallas to Atlanta route.

Windstream signs its largest wavelengths deal

Windstream Wholesale signed its largest capacity wavelengths deal to date. A major hyperscale customer (unnamed) will purchase wavelengths to interconnect data centers in key cities in the United States.

Windstream said this deal, combined with additional wave capacity contracted in October, represents 5.7 terabits of capacity – the most sold in any single month at Windstream Wholesale.

Windstream Wholesale’s coast-to-coast long-haul and regional express fiber-optic network provides high-speed optical Wavelengths to support today’s massive data demands stemming from cloud computing, multimedia and bandwidth intensive applications. Our optical Wavelengths service features unique, diverse routes with high-speed connections from attractive Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets back to the most popular carrier hotels, data centers, cable landing stations and 1,200+ 1G to 100G capable POPs in Tier 1 markets in the country.

Orange Business Services enables digital transformation for AkzoNobel

Orange Business Services by AkzoNobel, a paint company headquartered in the Netherlands with operations in 150 countries, to transform its global network and security infrastructure, converge information technology/operational technology (IT/OT) and enhance security. Orange is providing a range of services, including SD-WAN and LAN, multisourcing service integration (MSI), security and consulting services for AkzoNobel’s global connectivity transformation. Orange will also support AkzoNobel in centralizing its IT/OT network operations, connecting and managing its entire footprint from factory to store, across all regions.

In addition, Orange is establishing a CyberSOC as part of overseeing end-to-end security for both IT and OT. Powered by Orange Cyberdefense, this will pull together forensic security, security event analysis and risk analysis. Orange will also roll out additional security processes for the company’s network infrastructure, including for roaming users and third parties.

As AkzoNobel moves its applications to the cloud. Orange is providing robust, secure connectivity from digital workspaces to cloud-based applications for their global workforce.

“To operate more efficiently, we wanted to simplify our IT ecosystem partner landscape. Building on our more than 15-year successful track record with Orange, we knew we could count on them as our strategic IT services provider. Looking forward, we are eager to co- innovate with Orange around OT and data intelligence services to further boost our business,” said Dirk van der Heijden, Director Global IT Operations at AkzoNobel.

“We have a long and rich history with AkzoNobel in optimizing its infrastructure to provide a competitive edge. We are excited to continue our collaboration, finding secure and innovative ways to support growth and leverage valuable data insights for future innovations in their industry. It’s what we do to support our key customers: connect, protect and innovate,” said Frank Baggermans, Managing Director, Benelux at Orange Business Services.

AkzoNobel's portfolio of brands includes Dulux, International, Sikkens and Interpon. The company has been operating since 1792.

NXP Semiconductors trims Q1 outlook due to coronavirus

NXP Semiconductors trimmed its financial outlook for first quarter 2020, due to a worse than anticipated impact from the COVID-19 pandemic versus what the company had anticipated on March 2, 2020.

“Consistently during this challenging period, we have taken stringent actions to ensure the health and safety of all of our NXP team members and are extremely proud of their continued dedication,” said Richard Clemmer, NXP Chief Executive Officer. “Additionally, the impact to our first quarter results due to COVID-19 were more significant than we anticipated on March 2. While the supply chain disruption experienced post Lunar New Year in China appears to be subsiding, the end market demand trends in the rest of the world have started to significantly deteriorate. Throughout March, the demand headwinds accelerated in the automotive market where many global auto OEMs outside of China have shut production lines, and within the industrial and mobile markets where customer demand trends have resulted in the push-out of orders. We continue to be vigilant in the management of our distribution channel, aligning channel inventory to the sales out of the channel, and expect channel inventory to be consistent with prior periods, in the 2.4 months of supply range. Furthermore, we chose not to ship roughly $150 million of orders to our distribution partners in order to maintain our normal channel inventory. The current customer demand environment remains quite fluid and we will provide our best perspective for the second quarter during our earnings call on April 28.”

“While the demand environment is challenging, NXP continues to have a strong balance sheet and excellent liquidity. We expect our cash balance to be $1.1 billion as of the end of March, and in addition we have an untapped revolving credit facility of $1.5 billion, should we need it,” said Peter Kelly, NXP Chief Financial Officer.


Russia's Bank Otkritie deploys ADVA for 32G Fibre Channel

Russia's Bank Otkritie has deployed ADVA's FSP 3000 to enable 32Gbit/s Fibre Channel as well as 40 and 100Gbit/s Ethernet services.

One of Russia's largest commercial financial companies, Bank Otkritie is the first bank in the country to leverage Gen 6 Fibre Channel technology.

“As one of Russia’s leading banks, it’s vital that we provide our customers with continuous access to their mission-critical financial data. That’s why the ADVA FSP 3000 combined with OpenFabric™ and ALM assurance technology is the ideal tool. It ensures comprehensive monitoring and testing for the highest network availability and service reliability,” said Andrey Ivashenko, VP and CIO, Bank Otkritie. “By supporting 32Gbit/s Fibre Channel, this new solution has taken our storage data transport to the next stage. And, with the ADVA FSP 3000 OpenFabric™ aggregating lower-speed services onto high-speed wavelengths, we have the power to efficiently provide the data rates that our individual customers require.”

“Bank Otkritie’s new network provides a significant boost in terms of capacity and efficiency. With our FSP 3000 technology, it supports the most advanced low-latency Fibre Channel services, enabling the bank to maximize the performance of flash-enhanced storage in its data centers,” commented Andreas Jelinek, senior director, sales, Eastern Europe, Russia and CIS, ADVA. “Robustness and reliability were key to this project. That’s why Bank Otkritie also selected our ALM solution. Specifically engineered to be a simple plug-and-play fiber assurance device, it provides continuous monitoring, enabling operators to know immediately if and where issues arise. This real-time data is key to supervising and assuring dark fiber services. And, in the event of any fiber issues, our FSP 3000 OpenFabric™ automatically discovers new paths, enhancing availability and quality of service.”
http://www.adva.com

ZTE wins largest share of China Mobile western optical transport network

ZTE has secured the western network project in China Mobile’s phase-13 centralized procurement for inter-provincial backbone transport network equipment. Financial terms were not dislcosed.

The western network, covering 19 provinces of China, will be the world’s largest commercial optical transport network (OTN), with a total link length reaching 53,828 km.

In this western 100G OTN network project, ZTE will provide different coding modes to flexibly meet long-haul, medium-haul and short-haul transmission scenarios in China Mobile’s western network.

ZTE notes that it has been deeply involved in the construction of China Mobile’s western backbone OTN, and has built two 100G OTN western networks for China Mobile. The two networks cover 20 provinces and municipalities across China, achieving a total area of 7,729,100 square kilometers, about 80% of the land area of China.

Poland's PGE Systemy tests 450 MHz private LTE with Nokia

PGE Systemy, the leading Polish energy company, is testing a 5G-ready private wireless network supplied by Nokia.

The Polish Energy Ministry has chosen PGE Systemy to operate a 4.9G private wireless network on the 450 MHz band for critical and operational communications in its next-generation power grid.

Andrzej Piotrowski, Vice-President of PGE Systemy, said: “Poland has a strong concern to digitalize our energy grid because further integration of Renewables with grid as well as conversion to distributed energy systems requires ubiquitous, reliable and safe communications. Private wireless operating in the 450 MHz range is the communications technology of choice for the energy sector right across Europe, which ensures support from industry suppliers. The Nokia proof of concept has demonstrated that it will meet our needs in terms of coverage, service quality, resilience and long-term availability.”

https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2020/04/07/nokia-deploys-worlds-first-450-mhz-private-wireless-lte-network-poc-for-power-grid-operators-in-poland/

China clears Infineon + Cypress merger

Infineon Technologies AG has obtained antitrust clearance from China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (“SAMR”) for Cypress' previously announced merger transaction with Infineon. Cypress expects the merger to close this month.

uire Cypress for €9.0 billion

Infineon Technologies agreed to acquire Cypress Semiconductor for US$23.85 per share in cash, corresponding to an enterprise value of €9.0 billion. The deal will make Infineon the number one supplier of chips to the automotive market.

Cypress has a differentiated portfolio of microcontrollers as well as software and connectivity.

Infineon said its security expertise combined with Cypress’s connectivity know-how will accelerate entry into new IoT applications in the industrial and consumer segments.

Infineon also adds to its R&D presence in Silicon Valley and gains presence, as well as market share, in the strategically important Japanese market. At the same time, Infineon aims to achieve significant economies of scale, making Infineon's business model even more resilient. Based on pro forma revenues of €10 billion in FY 2018, the transaction will make Infineon the number eight chip manufacturer in the world.

Reinhard Ploss, CEO of Infineon, said: “The planned acquisition of Cypress is a landmark step in Infineon’s strategic development. We will strengthen and accelerate our profitable growth and put our business on a broader basis. With this transaction, we will be able to offer our customers the most comprehensive portfolio for linking the real with the digital world. This will open up additional growth potential in the automotive, industrial and Internet of Things sectors. This transaction also makes our business model even more resilient. We look forward to welcoming our new colleagues from Cypress to Infineon. Together, we will continue our shared commitments to innovation and focused R&D investments to accelerate technology advancements.”

Hassane El-Khoury, President and CEO of Cypress, said: “The Cypress team is excited to join forces with Infineon to capitalize on the multi-billion dollar opportunities from the massive rise in connectivity and computing requirements of the next technology waves. This announcement is not only a testament to the strength of our team in delivering industry-leading solutions worldwide, but also to what can be realized from uniting our two great companies. Jointly, we will enable more secure, seamless connections, and provide more complete hardware and software sets to strengthen our customers’ products and technologies in their end markets. In addition, the strong fit of our two companies will bring enhanced opportunities for our customers and employees.”




Clearfield intros FTTH Home Deployment Kits

Clearfield introduced new FTTH Home Deployment Kits containing everything a service provider needs to connect a home to fiber.

Clearfield said its Home Deployment Kits can reduce install time by 30 minutes per install.

Home Deployment Kits include four choices of an Outside Plant (OSP) Test Access Point (TAP) as follows:

  • NEW CraftSmart TAP-Base – splice only, limited slack storage, NEMA 4
  • NEW CraftSmart TAP-Flex – plug-and-play, 25’ incoming slack storage, NEMA 3S
  • YOURx TAP – plug-and-play, 50’ incoming/100’ outgoing slack storage, NEMA 4
  • FieldSmart TAP – plug-and-play, 100’ incoming/200’ outgoing slack storage, NEMA 4

“At Clearfield our priority is to accelerate cost-effective fiber fed deployments. Our customers are eager for a product package that includes all the necessary materials to easily install fiber and feed it all the way to the customer equipment no matter the varying scenario,” said Kevin Morgan, Chief Marketing Officer, Clearfield. “With everything needed for a home installation all in one box, not only are truck rolls reduced, but service providers will have everything from fasteners to the correct length of patch cord right at their fingertips. We anticipate service providers will save time and money for any deployment model, suiting even the most challenging home installations.”
http://www.SeeClearfield.com