Facebook reports 1.79 billion daily active users, up 12%

Facebook reported a significant increase in audience engagement as people around the globe sheltered at home during the COVID-19 pandemic during Q2.

Key metrics:

• Facebook daily active users (DAUs) – DAUs were 1.79 billion on average for June 2020, an increase of 12% year-over-year.
• Facebook monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 2.70 billion as of June 30, 2020, an increase of 12% year-over-year.
• Family daily active people (DAP) – DAP was 2.47 billion on average for June 2020, an increase of 15% year-over-year.
• Family monthly active people (MAP) – MAP was 3.14 billion as of June 30, 2020, an increase of 14% year-over-year.
• Capital expenditures – Capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases, were $3.36 billion for the second quarter of 2020. The company said full-year 2020 capital expenditures are now to be approximately $16 billion, at the high end of our prior $14-16 billion range, as we have resumed data center construction efforts earlier than expected.
• Cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities – Cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities were $58.24 billion as of June 30, 2020. On July 7, 2020, we paid approximately $5.8 billion at the then–current exchange rate for our investment in Jio Platforms Limited.
• Headcount – Headcount was 52,534 as of June 30, 2020, an increase of 32% year-over-year.

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AWS hits Q2 sales of $10.8 billion, up 29%

AWS racked up $10.808 billion in Q2 revenue, up 29% compared to a year ago. Operating income for the division was $3.357 billion, up 58% compared to last year. AWS is now on an annual revenue run rate of $40.0 billion, representing a 12% share of Amazon's business.

https://ir.aboutamazon.com/quarterly-results/default.aspx

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Google Cloud generates $3 billion in Q2, up 43%

Google Cloud services generated $3.007 billion in revenue in Q2, up 43% from $2.100 billion a year earlier.

"In the second quarter our total revenues were $38.3B, driven by gradual improvement in our ads business and strong growth in Google Cloud and Other Revenues,” said Ruth Porat, Chief Financial Officer of Alphabet and Google. “We continue to navigate through a difficult global economic environment.”

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MACOM begins 100G PAM4 DSP production

MACOM announced the production release of its low power CMOS DSP-based PAM4 PHYs for next generation optical transceiver modules.

MACOM’s PAM4 PHYs with integrated DSP, forward error correction (FEC) and multiplexing functionality are designed to enable single-wavelength 50 Gbps and 100 Gbps optical transceivers.

The integrated driver is suitable for direct connection to an optical modulator, avoiding the need for a discrete driver, and, thereby, enabling reduced cost and complexity. The on-board management processor simplifies module implementation, while the flexible DSP-based equalizer supports optical links up to and beyond 10 km over single mode fiber. Optional low latency FEC enables IEEE compliant link performance with both legacy and current generation switch silicon. A full suite of test and diagnostic features enable efficient bring up and fast time to market.

https://www.macom.com/ncs

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Arista expands multicloud capabilities

Arista announced an expansion of its multi-cloud and cloud-native software capabilities, including:

• CloudEOS Edge - supporting dynamic path selection services across all major cloud providers at the high-throughput network edge facing the Internet and multiple private and public carriers
• AWS Transit Gateway Integration - seamless automated provisioning and multi-cloud routing, interoperable with AWS Transit Gateway services
• Availability of Pay-as-You-Go elastic consumption of CloudEOS across AWS, Azure and GCP
• Delivery of the Arista CloudEOS Terraform provider, enabling declarative software-defined provisioning of multi-cloud backbones through Hashicorp Terraform and Arista CloudVision
• Multi-Cloud Dashboard - centralized visibility of enterprise multi-cloud backbones and resources through Arista CloudVision

“Simplifying the networking between cloud providers and geographic regions using fully-interoperable open standards enables the network to be as on-demand as compute and storage cloud services,” stated Douglas Gourlay, vice president and general manager of cloud networking software at Arista. “Production customers with hundreds of workloads deployed globally are realizing the quality and reliability of Arista EOS, now in an on-demand and elastic consumption model designed to interoperate with all major routing, WAN, and SD-WAN multi-vendor offerings.”

Arista's CloudEOS Edge is available in all major public cloud marketplaces now.

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Nokia completes 5G standalone call with China Unicom

Nokia completed its first 5G standalone (SA) call on a live network with China Unicom.

The data and voice calls, which marked firsts for Nokia on a 5G SA network, were completed earlier than planned, occurring within 25 days of Nokia software deployment.

Nokia deployed its Unified Data Management, Shared Data Layer (5G Unified Data Repository), and Cloud Mobile Gateway (from its Cloud Packet Core portfolio) for the 5G Session Management Function and User Plane Function. This was complemented by Data Refinery charging and NetAct network management, with all products deployed in the cloud using the Nokia CloudBand cloud infrastructure and management solution.

Nokia CBIS is an open, scalable, vendor-agnostic platform that is enabling software deployment across China Unicom’s existing multi-vendor hardware.

Markus Bochert, President of Nokia Greater China, said: “Nokia has skillfully managed both the overall project and technical components during these unprecedented times, which has been crucial to the speed and success of this deployment that will provide our customers with fast, modernized network management features.” 

Bhaskar Gorti, President of Nokia Software and Nokia Chief Digital Officer, said: “We are very proud to reach this key milestone with China Unicom, which illustrates that the transition to 5G standalone networks can be completed rapidly – regardless of existing hardware; and that is part of what makes Nokia Software products distinct.”

https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2020/07/30/nokia-completes-its-first-5g-standalone-call-on-live-network-with-china-unicom/

Nokia wins 10% share of China Unicom’s 5G core

Monday, June 15, 2020  China Unicom, Nokia  

Nokia has been awarded an approximately 10% share of China Unicom’s 5G core network.

The Nokia Cloud core products that China Unicom selected provide Unified Data Management, Session Management and User Plane functions, and are complemented by Data Refinery and NetAct, all deployed on Nokia’s CloudBand.

Unified Data Management, a critical function with the arrival of 5G and the evolution to cloud architecture, manages all subscriber data and services efficiently and cost effectively. The Session Management Function is a fundamental element of the 5G Service Based Architecture, primarily responsible for interacting with the decoupled User Plane Function as well as subscriber session management. The User Plane Function delivers the packet processing foundation for the Service Based Architecture, by allowing packet processing and traffic aggregation to be performed closer to the network edge, thereby increasing bandwidth efficiencies while reducing costs.

The deal also includes products from Nokia’s Cloud Packet Core portfolio, including the Nokia Cloud Mobile Gateway. The product provides the 5G standalone Session Management Function and User Plane Function, in addition to supporting the 4G Serving Gateway and the Packet Data Network Gateway in China Unicom’s network.

“Nokia is very proud to expand our working relationship with China Unicom beyond 4G. We are looking forward to close collaboration with China Unicom on novel business models and 5G service innovation to enable an open 5G ecosystem,” stated Markus Borchert, President of Nokia Greater China.

Nokia noted that it currently has a 17% market share in China Unicom’s rapidly expanding VoLTE network, where it has deployed Nokia’s cloud-based vIMS platform.

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Ooredoo Qatar activates Nokia-powered cloud-native 5G core

Ooredoo Qatar has activated commercial services over a Nokia cloud-native 5G core network. More than 10 virtualized network functions (VNFs) are deployed on the cloud platform, covering data, voice, subscriber management registers and policy control enabling voice and data services. The new cloud core network supports 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) architecture and provides a smooth transition to a 5G Standalone network architecture.

Nokia said the new core network facilitates automation for improved network efficiency and streamlined network management. The transformation of the core network also enables Ooredoo Qatar to bring new use cases such as Industrial IOT (IIoT), Voice over Broadband (VoBB), Voice over WiFi (VoWiFi) to its subscribers. Furthermore, Nokia’s equipment and professional services will help Ooredoo Qatar to scale its network more efficiently with automated operations and enhanced robustness.

The deployment includes:

• Nokia AirFrame data center solution supports open-source and enables full hyper-scale to extremely distributed capabilities that will be necessary for future telco and IT networking and service delivery.
• Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) include Mobile Core for Voice, with Cloud Packet Core, Subscriber Management Registers and Policy control on a cloud platform.
• Nokia CloudBand allows service providers to host, orchestrate, automate and manage Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) and services. It makes it easier for telcos to reduce time to revenue for new services and use automation and optimization to make network operations lean
• Nokia NetAct provides a consolidated view of multi-domain, multi-technology networks, helping service providers in proactively addressing any network-related issue
• Nuage Networks from Nokia SDN solutions enable telco cloud network automation.
• Nokia Professional services ensured an efficient and timely execution of the project 

Henrique Vale, Vice President of Nokia Software for Middle East and Africa, said: “The transformation of Ooredoo Qatar’s legacy core network to a fully cloud-native 5G core in a very short time frame demonstrates the strength of our end-to-end portfolio and exceptional delivery expertise. Ooredoo Qatar's new core network will enable it to bring innovative and the latest use cases to its subscribers and also prepares the network for providing scalable 5G commercial services."

https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2020/07/29/ooredoo-qatars-5g-commercial-services-go-live-with-nokia-cloud-native-5g-core-network/

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Xilinx sees strength in data center product and some order acceleration

Xilinx reported revenues of $727 million for the first quarter of its fiscal year 2021,  exceeding initial guidance and in-line with revised guidance. GAAP net income for the quarter was $94 million, or $0.38 per diluted share. Non-GAAP net income was $160 million, or $0.65 per diluted share.

The company noted record Data Center Group (DCG) revenue, with 10% sequential and 104% annual growth. Wireless Group (WWG) revenue increased 27% sequentially.

“Our fiscal Q1 revenue was well above the initial guidance despite ongoing business challenges from COVID-19 and global trade issues,” said Xilinx president and CEO Victor Peng. “Results were driven by strength in the Data Center Group (DCG), Wired and Wireless Group (WWG), and the Industrials market, offsetting expected headwinds in consumer-oriented end markets, including Automotive and Broadcast. The outperformance was due to a combination of strength in multiple end markets, as well as some order acceleration driven by recent additional U.S. government trade restrictions on sales of certain Xilinx products to some customers based, or with operations, in China.”

http://investor.xilinx.com/

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Orange reports a slight drop in revenue due to COVID

Orange reported Q2 revenue of EUR 10.375 billion, representing a drop of 0.4% due to a decline in roaming and equipment sales directly linked to COVID-19. EBITDAaL showed a limited decline of 1.8% year on year, negatively impacted by the cost of health measures, the decrease in roaming and a slight increase in provisions for bad debts.
Some highlights for Q2:

• France and Africa & Middle East rose 2.7% and 1.3% respectively year on year, almost completely offsetting the combined decline in other segments: Spain (-6.8%), Europe (-3.6%), Enterprise (-3.3%).
• Convergent offers totaled 10.8 million customers at June 30, 2020, up 2.1% year on year, allowing Orange to strengthen its position as the leading convergent operator in Europe.
• In fiber, despite the lockdown, Orange posted a record 2nd quarter in France with 238,000 net customer additions and strong growth in Poland with 44,000 net additions. At June 30, Orange had 8.1 million fiber customers.
• In Africa & Middle East, 4G deployment continues reaching 27.9 million customers in the 2nd quarter, growth of 40.4% year on year. Orange Money had 19.6 million active customers in the 2nd quarter, up 18.9%.
• As of June 30, 2020, Orange Bank had a total of 1 million customers, following the integration of Orange Courtage and the expansion of its offer in Spain. In becoming an insurance broker, the bank took a further step in its cross-selling policy with Orange France.
• In the 1st half, the Group's eCAPEX declined 9.9% due to the significant increase in co-financing in France and asset disposals, in particular the disposal of non-strategic towers in Spain. This decrease is also explained by a slowdown of investment in mobile and traditional services which offset growth in FTTH investments, particularly in France, which was lower than expected following the health crisis.

https://results.orange.com/20200730-3541AB5E/en/startup.php#

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Qualcomm cites strong outlook, patent deal w Huawei

Qualcomm reported quarterly revenue of US$4.893 billion and diluted EPS of $0.74, exceeding the high range of its previous guidance. 

Qualcomm also announced a legal settlement and long-term, global patent license agreement with Huawei, including a cross license granting back rights to certain of Huawei’s patents, covering sales beginning January 1, 2020. The settlement is valued approximately $1.8 billion.

“As 5G continues to roll out, we are realizing the benefits of the investments we have made in building the most extensive licensing program in mobile and are turning the technical challenges of 5G into leadership opportunities and commercial wins,” said Steve Mollenkopf, CEO of Qualcomm Incorporated. “We delivered earnings above the high end of our range, continued to execute in our product and licensing businesses and entered into a new long-term patent license agreement with Huawei, all of which position us well for the balance of 2020 and beyond.”

https://investor.qualcomm.com/

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NETSCOUT reports steady revenue, growing EPS

NETSCOUT reported total revenue (GAAP and non-GAAP) for its first quarter of fiscal year 2021 of $183.8 million, compared with $186.0 million (GAAP) and $186.1 million (non-GAAP) in the same quarter one year ago. A reconciliation of GAAP and non-GAAP results is included in the attached financial tables.

Product revenue (GAAP and non-GAAP) for the first quarter of fiscal year 2021 was $71.7 million, which was approximately 39% of total revenue. This compares with first-quarter fiscal year 2020 product revenue (GAAP and non-GAAP) of $75.7 million, which was approximately 41% of total revenue.

Service revenue (GAAP and non-GAAP) for the first quarter of fiscal year 2021 was $112.1 million, or approximately 61% of total revenue versus service revenue (GAAP) of $110.3 million, or approximately 59% of total revenue, for the same period one year ago. On a non-GAAP basis, service revenue for the first fiscal quarter of fiscal year 2020 was $110.4 million, also approximately 59% of total non-GAAP revenue.

NETSCOUT’s loss from operations (GAAP) was $14.5 million in the first quarter of fiscal year 2021, compared with a loss from operations (GAAP) of $24.4 million in the comparable quarter one year ago.

“We delivered strong earnings per share growth on a relatively consistent level of revenue in the first quarter of fiscal year 2021, compared with the same period last year,” stated Anil Singhal, NETSCOUT’s president and chief executive officer. “Our enterprise business was strong given our ability to provide service assurance, with real-time, pervasive visibility and insight, and security solutions that mitigate disruption for our customers regardless of their underlying infrastructure.

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