LightCounting: Sales of optics to cloud companies on pace

Despite supply chain disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, sales of optical components and modules to cloud companies seem to remain on track, according to LightCounting's new 2020 Mega Datacenter Optics Report. The report provides sales projections of more than 50 product categories of Ethernet optical transceivers, DWDM optics, Active Optical Cables (AOCs) and Embedded Optical Modules (EOMs), segmented into three main applications: telecom,...

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Microsoft expands Azure Virtual WAN capabilities

Microsoft Azure is adding the ability to deploy and run third-party Network Virtual Appliances such as SD-WAN natively within the Azure Virtual WAN hubs. Azure Virtual WAN provides a service architecture to take full advantage of Microsoft's fast global network. Virtual WAN makes it easy to connect Virtual Networks (VNets), Azure ExpressRoute, VPN, and now SD-WAN in "virtual hubs." Microsoft says its connectivity agnostic approach allows full transit...

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Multi-access Edge Computing spec expected in Q3

The 5G Future Forum expects to release its first specification for Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) in the third quarter of 2020. The “MEC Experience Management” technical specification defines a set of intent-based APIs for functional exposure of edge and workload discovery with potential expansion to include future MEC functions and capabilities which are driven by network intelligence The “MEC Deployment” technical specification defines the...

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NTT Ltd. expands cloud exchange in U.S. with Packet Fabric

NTT Ltd.’s Global Data Centers division, one of the world’s largest data center providers, is now offering data center customers in the U.S. access to cloud exchange services from PacketFabric. NTT’s Cloud Connect portfolio enables customers to integrate public clouds with their enterprise applications running in NTT’s data centers. PacketFabric’s Network-as-a-Service platform leverages an automated SDN-based network architecture and a private,...

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Graphcore debuts 2nd gen AI processor, blade and data center fabric

Graphcore, a start-up based in the UK, introduced its second-generation Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU) platform with greater processing power, more memory and built-in scalability for handling extremely large Machine Intelligence workloads. The IPU-Machine M2000 is a plug-and-play Machine Intelligence compute blade that delivers one PetaFlop of Machine Intelligence compute and includes integrated networking technology. Each blade is powered...

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Singapore's Transcelestial raises US$9.6M for free space optics

Transcelestial, a start-up based in Singapore, has raised US$9.6 million in Series A funding for its work in free space laser communications. The funding round was co-led by EDBI, a Singapore Government investment arm, and Wavemaker Partners. The round included participation by new investors Airbus Ventures, Cap Vista, the strategic investment arm of the Defence Science and Technology Agency of Singapore, Partech and Tekton Ventures, with participation...

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Cloudflare outage blamed on router config error

On Friday, 17-July-2020 Cloudflare suffered a major outage in several geographies, impacting websites across the world. The company provides DNS, DDoS mitigation, and content delivery network (CDN) services. The outage last 27 minutes and Cloudflare saw a 50% drop in traffic across its network. Cloudflare blamed the outage on a router configuration error by its network engineering team. The error caused all traffic across the Cloudflare backbone...

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Verizon and IBM work on 5G and edge computing

Verizon Business and IBM are collaborating on 5G and edge computing innovation to help enable the future of Industry 4.0. The companies plan to combine the high speed and low latency of Verizon’s 5G and Multi-access Edge Compute (MEC) capabilities, IoT devices and sensors at the edge, and IBM’s expertise in AI, hybrid multicloud, edge computing, asset management and connected operations. “The industrial sector is undergoing unprecedented transformation...

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