Microsoft launches Azure for Operators

 Microsoft launched an initiative called "Azure for Operators" that will provide core infrastructure to network operators.

The strategy aims to harness the power of the intelligent edge, connected by high-bandwidth fiber or 5G, to create new opportunities and better efficiencies for communication service providers.

Microsoft Azure for Operators is built on the company's recent acquisitio of Affirmed Networks and Metaswitch, as well as on its development of Azure Edge Zones, which are local extensions of Azure, deployed with carriers or as private infrastructure.

Jason Zander, Executive Vice President, Microsoft Azure, states "By harnessing the power of Microsoft Azure, on their edge, or in the cloud, operators can transition to a more flexible and scalable model, drive down infrastructure cost, use AI and machine learning (ML) to automate operations and create service differentiation. Furthermore, a hybrid and hyper-scale infrastructure will provide operators with the agility they need to rapidly innovate and experiment with new 5G services on a programmable network."

In a blog posting, Zander acknowledges that operators will want to have the control and visibility necessary to manage their unique industry requirements. Microsoft's network already connects with operators at more than 170 points of presence and over 20,000 peering connections around the globe.

Azure for Operators partners include Accenture, Asco’s, AT&T, Etisalat, HPE, Intel, Mavenir, RedHat, Samsung, Tech Mahindra, Telstra, Tillman Digital Cities, Verizon and VMWare, in addition to Microsoft’s own Affirmed and Metaswitch.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-partners-with-the-telecommunications-industry-to-roll-out-5g-and-more/

Microsoft to acquire Metaswitch, extending its reach into telco cloud

Thursday, May 14, 2020  Mergers And Acquisitions, Metaswitch, Microsoft  

Microsoft agreed to acquire Metaswitch Networks, a long-time leader in providing high-performance software to the communications industry. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Metaswitch has been a pioneer in cloud-native solutions for telecom operators. Its range of solutions include:

• VoIP softswitches and gateways
• VoLTE/VoWiFi
• Voice and VoLTE interconnect
• IMS core deployments
• Session Border Control
• Robocall blocking
• Converged voice and data messaging
• Group Communications and Collaboration
• Cloud contact centers

Metaswitch (formerly Data Connection Ltd) was founded in 1981 and is based in London. The company is privately held.

Microsoft to acquire Affirmed Networks for telco cloud vEPC

Thursday, March 26, 2020  Affirmed Networks, Mergers And Acquisitions, Microsoft  

Microsoft agreed to acquire Affirmed Networks. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Affirmed Networks, which is based in Acton, Massachusetts, supplies virtualized Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) solutions for mobile operators. 

Affirmed’s virtualized evolved packet solution capabilities include CUPS, 5G NSA, network slicing, integrated virtual probe, virtualized DPI, GiLAN, analytics and security services, virtualized Wi-Fi, and service automation platform. The company claims 76 deployments, including announced projects with AT&T, Etisalat, and Vodafone.

Microsoft Azure Edge Zones previews with carriers

Sunday, April 05, 2020  5G, Azure, Cloud, Edge, Microsoft  

Microsoft has begun previewing Azure Edge Zones, which are 5G customer scenarios that can leverage its cloud capabilities.

Microsoft said Azure Edge Zones and Azure Private Edge Zones will enable:

• Development of distributed applications across cloud, on-premises, and edge using the same Azure Portal, APIs, development, and security tools.
• Local data processing for latency critical industrial IoT and media services workloads.
• Acceleration of IoT, artificial intelligence (AI), and real-time analytics by optimizing, building, and innovating for robotics, automation, and mixed reality.
• New frontiers for developers working with high-density graphics and real-time operations in industries such as gaming.
• An evolving platform built with customers, carriers, and industry partners to allow seamless integration and operation of a wide selection of Virtual Network Functions, including 5G software and SD-WAN and firewalls from technology partners such as Affirmed, Mavenir, Nuage Networks from Nokia, Metaswitch, Palo Alto Networks, and VeloCloud By VMware.

Microsoft, which has already announced an Azure Edge Zone partnership with AT&T, is now expanding the program to the following carriers: Etisalat, NTT Communications, Proximus, Rogers, SK Telecom, Telefonica, Telstra, SK Telecom, and Vodafone Business.

By connecting Azure services directly to 5G networks inside the carrier's data centers, applications will benefit from significantly reduced latency,

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AT&T deploys open disaggregated core router

AT&T has deployed its open disaggregated core routing platform on its 400G transport network. The router leverages technology from Broadcom, DriveNets, and UfiSpace. 

The white box hardware, which was designed and manufactured by UfiSpace, is based on Broadcom’s Jericho2 switching silicon and Distributed, Dis-aggregated Chassis (DDC) design. It consists of three components: a 40x100G line card system, 10x400G line card system, and a 48x400G fabric system. These building blocks can be deployed in various configurations to build routers with capacity anywhere between 4 Tbps to 192 Tbps.

DriveNets Network Cloud solution and its  Network Operating System (NOS) software provides the management and control of the white box hardware. This enables MPLS transport across AT&T's global, multi-service core backbone. The software then connects into AT&T’s centralized SDN controller that optimizes the routing of traffic across the core.

AT&T notes that the deployment of this dis-aggregated core routing platform is coupled with the deployment of the company’s next gen long haul 400G optical transport platform.

“I’m proud to announce today that we have now deployed a next gen IP/MPLS core routing platform into our production network based on the open hardware designs we submitted to OCP last fall,” said Andre Fuetsch, AT&T’s CTO of Network Services, in his keynote speech at the Open Networking and Edge Summit (ONES). “We chose DriveNets, a disruptive supplier, to provide the Network Operating System (NOS) software for this core use case.”

“We are thrilled about this opportunity to work with AT&T on the development of their next gen, software-based core network,” said Ido Susan, CEO of DriveNets. “AT&T has a rigorous certification process that challenged my engineers to their limits, and we are delighted to take the project to the next level with deployment into the production network.”

AT&T contributes Distributed Disaggregated Chassis white box to OCP

Sunday, September 29, 2019  ATT, OCP  

AT&T has contributed its specifications for a Distributed Disaggregated Chassis (DDC) white box architecture to the Open Compute Project (OCP). The contributed design aims to define a standard set of configurable building blocks to construct service provider-class routers, ranging from single line card systems, a.k.a. “pizza boxes,” to large, disaggregated chassis clusters.  AT&T said it plans to apply the design to the provider edge (PE) and core routers that comprise its global IP Common Backbone (CBB).

“The release of our DDC specifications to the OCP takes our white box strategy to the next level,” said Chris Rice, SVP of Network Infrastructure and Cloud at AT&T. “We’re entering an era where 100G simply can’t handle all of the new demands on our network. Designing a class of routers that can operate at 400G is critical to supporting the massive bandwidth demands that will come with 5G and fiber-based broadband services. We’re confident these specifications will set an industry standard for DDC white box architecture that other service providers will adopt and embrace.”

AT&T’s DDC white box design, which is based on Broadcom’s Jericho2 chipset, calls for three key building blocks:

• A line card system that supports 40 x 100G client ports, plus 13 400G fabric-facing ports.
• A line card system that support 10 x 400G client ports, plus 13 400G fabric-facing ports.
• A fabric system that supports 48 x 400G ports. A smaller, 24 x 400G fabric systems is also included.

AT&T points out that the line cards and fabric cards are implemented as stand-alone white boxes, each with their own power supplies, fans and controllers, and the backplane connectivity is replaced with external cabling. This approach enables massive horizontal scale-out as the system capacity is no longer limited by the physical dimensions of the chassis or the electrical conductance of the backplane. Cooling is significantly simplified as the components can be physically distributed if required. The strict manufacturing tolerances needed to build the modular chassis and the possibility of bent pins on the backplane are completely avoided.

Four typical DDC configurations include:

• A single line card system that supports 4 terabytes per second (Tbps) of capacity.
• A small cluster that consists of 1 plus 1 (added reliability) fabric systems and up to 4 line card systems. This configuration would support 16 Tbps of capacity.
• A medium cluster that consists of 7 fabric systems and up to 24 line card systems. This configuration supports 96 Tbps of capacity.
• A large cluster that consists of 13 fabric systems and up to 48 line card systems. This configuration supports 192 Tbps of capacity.
• The links between the line card systems and the fabric systems operate at 400G and use a cell-based protocol that distributes packets across many links. The design inherently supports redundancy in the event fabric links fail.

DriveNet scales its disaggregated router to 400G

Wednesday, April 17, 2019  DriveNets, Start-Ups  

DriveNets, a start-up based in Israel, announced 400G-port routing support to its Network Cloud software-based disaggregated router.

The company says its Network Cloud is the only router on the market designed to scale 100/400G ports up to performance of 768 Tbps. Inspired by the hyperscalers, Network Cloud runs the routing data plane on cost-efficient white-boxes and the control plane on standard servers, disconnecting network cost from capacity growth.

DriveNets’ latest routing software release supports a packet-forwarding white-box based on Broadcom’s Jericho2 chipset which has high-speed, high-density port interfaces of 100G and 400G.

The platform is now being tested and certified by a tier-1 Telco customer.

DriveNets was founded in 2015 by Ido Susan and Hillel Kobrinsky. Susan previously co-founded Intucell, which was acquired by Cisco for $475 million. Kobrinsky founded the web conferencing specialist, Interwise, which was acquired by AT&T for $121 million.

In February, the company emerged from stealth with $110 Million in Series A funding.

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Google Cloud joins Linux Foundation Networking

Google Cloud has joined LF Networking (LFN) as a Platinum member.

LFN facilitates collaboration and operational excellence across open source networking projects.

Google Cloud joins additional LFN Platinum members: Amdocs, AT&T, Bell, China Mobile, China Telecom, Cisco, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Juniper Networks, Nokia, Orange, RedHat, Samsung, Tech Mahindra, Turk Telekom, Verizon, VMWare, Vodafone, and ZTE. 

“We look forward to working with all members and the larger community to continue to find ways to bring further value to consumers and communications services providers alike, demonstrating how public cloud can help fundamentally transform networking in new and exciting ways“, said Amol Phadke, Managing Director: Global Telecom Industry Solutions, Google Cloud. “Google’s excellence in creating and sponsoring components like Kuberntes, Istio and Knative—and successfully integrating them into products like Anthos—will be a key pillar within the Linux Foundation Networking.”

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Microsoft 365 hit by outage

Microsoft 365 experienced a widespread on Monday evening across the United States.

The disruption left some users unable to access any services that leverage Azure Active Directory (AAD) including Outlook, Microsoft Teams and Teams Live Events as well as Office.com. 

While the issue was being resolved, Microsoft said it was rerouting some traffic to alternate infrastructure.

About 4 hours after reports of the outage surfaced, Microsoft tweeted that the majority of services for most users had been recovered.

https://twitter.com/MSFT365Status

 

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Arista to acquire Awake Security

Arista Networks agreed to acquire Awake Security, a start-up offering a Network Detection and Response (NDR) platform. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Awake, which is based in Santa Clara, California, combines artificial intelligence (AI) with human expertise to autonomously hunt and respond to insider and external threats. The Awake platform analyzes network traffic and autonomously identifies, assesses, and processes threats. 

"We see an exciting future for Awake within the Arista family," said Rahul Kashyap, CEO for Awake Security. “Awake pioneered NDR platforms for real-time AI-driven situational awareness to secure digital assets and then respond to mitigate those risks. This acquisition allows us to further that mission.”

"We warmly welcome Awake Security to the Arista team,” stated Anshul Sadana, COO for Arista Networks. “With the proliferation of users, devices and Internet of Things (IOT), Awake’s best of breed threat detection platform is synergistic with Arista’s market leading cognitive cloud networks, delivering proactive security for our customers.”

• In April 2020, Awake Security, raised $36 million in Series C financing led by Evolution Equity Partners with participation from Energize Ventures and Liberty Global Ventures, as well as existing investors Bain Capital Ventures and Greylock Partners. The latest investment brings Awake’s total funding to nearly $80 million and will be used to propel expansion in areas including R&D, sales and marketing to meet the growing demand for the company’s advanced network traffic analysis platform. Awake also said that it has increased its annual recurring revenue (ARR) by close to 700% and doubled its employee headcount over the past year. 

 

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Nikkei: NTT to take over Docomo

NTT Group is preparing to buy back all shares of publically- traded DOCOMO, making it once again a wholly-owned subsidiary, according to Nikkei. The article cites pressure from the new Suga administration to lower mobile prices. The news also puts pressure on rivals Softbank and KDDI.

NTT Group currently retains about 66% equity in DOCOMO.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-deals/NTT-to-take-over-wireless-unit-Docomo-for-38bn

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Juniper to acquire Netrounds for service assurance platform

Juniper Networks agreed to acquire Netrounds, which offers a programmable, software-based active test and service assurance platform for fixed and mobile networks. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Netround, which was founded in 2007 and is based in Lulea, Sweden, focuses on lifecycle service assurance. Its vendor-agnostic platform is offered as on-demand as a SaaS solution or on-premise for NFV deployment. Netrounds’ traffic-generating test agents allow OSS and NFV orchestrators to remotely test, monitor, and assure their network service KPIs and SLAs.

Juniper said Netrounds will enhance its automated WAN solutions to further simplify operations for service providers and ensure positive end-user experiences. 

“End-user expectations for a consistently high quality of experience for services delivered over IP networks in the cloud era are extremely high, and the onset of 5G will only accelerate this. Service providers are increasingly looking to differentiate themselves by looking beyond offering basic connectivity and focusing on the quality assurance of their services,” said Manoj Leelanivas, chief product officer, Juniper Networks. “Today’s announcement and plan to bring Netrounds into Juniper will fully automate the complexities of testing and actively monitoring those customer service experiences at scale, a crucial step to staying competitive in today’s dynamic market.”

“Today, end users are often the first to discover service quality problems, as traditional assurance solutions primarily focus on passive device health instead of service quality,” said Mats Nordlund, CEO and Co-Founder of Netrounds. “Combined with Juniper Networks’ sophisticated network automation solutions, service and cloud providers are now able to rapidly deliver software-defined network services with guaranteed end-to-end service quality. For our customers, this is a key success factor when rolling out solutions in dynamic environments built on 5G network slicing, Kubernetes, SD-WAN and hybrid-cloud. We are thrilled to be joining Juniper to provide higher levels of automated assurance to complex networks.”

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MobileIron to be acquired by Ivanti for $872 million in cash

 Ivanti, which offers enterprise-grade IT management and security software solutions, agreed to acquire all outstanding shares of MobileIron (NASDAQ:MOBL) for $872 million in cash. MobileIron stockholders will receive $7.05 in cash per share, representing a 27% premium to the unaffected closing price as of September 24, 2020.

MobileIron’s mobile security platform combines unified endpoint management (UEM) capabilities with passwordless multi-factor authentication (Zero Sign-On) and mobile threat defense (MTD) to validate the device, establish user context, verify the network, and detect and remediate threats. This ensures that only authorized users, devices, apps, and services can access business resources in a “work from everywhere” world. The MobileIron platform is used by over 20,000 organizations.

Ivanti also announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Pulse Secure LLC, a leading provider of Secure Access and mobile security solutions to enterprise customers.

Privately-held Ivanti, which is based in South Jordan, Utah, is backed by Clearlake Capital Group, L.P. and TA Associates Management L.P..

“By combining MobileIron and Pulse Secure with Ivanti, we are creating a leader in the large and growing Unified Endpoint Management, Security and Enterprise Service Management markets. We now have the most comprehensive set of software solutions that addresses the growing market demand for the future of work, where working from anywhere on any device type is the new normal,” said Jim Schaper, Ivanti Chairman and CEO. “With the integration of our industry knowledge and complementary product offerings, Ivanti will be well positioned to provide our expansive customer base with the critical tools needed to tackle IT challenges in the new normal. We welcome MobileIron’s and Pulse Secure’s employees, customers, and partner network to the Ivanti family, and thank Clearlake and TA Associates for their strong support in enabling these transformational transactions.”

https://www.ivanti.com/

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Mavenir acquires ip.access for OpenRAN radio expertise

 Mavenir has acquired ip.access Ltd, a leading 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G-ready small cell solutions provider. Financial terms were not disclosed.

ip.access, which is based in Cambridge, UK, has two primary lines of business; commercial communications networks deployed with service providers, and private networks deployed with system integrators for critical infrastructures, security and surveillance. The product line includes a family of plug-and-play cellular access points (APs) for small, medium and large indoor or outdoor deployments.

Mavenir said the acquisition extends its leadership in OpenRAN radio on three fronts:

• Communication Service Providers: Adding 2G and 3G capabilities to the OpenRAN portfolio
• Enterprise: Adding a full suite of enterprise radio solutions for Mavenir’s Private Network offerings, including OnGo/CBRS certified solutions
• Nontraditional Networks: Leveraging market leading software defined vRAN solutions for Aviation, Maritime, Rural and Remote networks with next generation solutions in the air, on land and at sea.

“Operators are looking to transform their 2G/3G networks as they migrate to 4G and 5G,” said Pardeep Kohli, President and CEO, Mavenir. “We expect to provide a seamless, multi radio access technology single RAN offering for those operators that allows them to have the benefits of advanced radio solutions across all layers.”

Nick Johnson, Founder and CTO of ip.access added, “CBRS/OnGo in the US and shared spectrum initiatives in Europe are but a few of the potential opportunities. It’s not just consumer services anymore, but industrial private networks, professional closed group networks for financial, healthcare, leisure and hospitality, among many others. We look forward to applying our long experience in private networks to complement Mavenir’s existing portfolio in serving this hugely expanded customer base.”

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Three Ireland launches 5G with Ericsson

 Three Ireland is launching its commercial 5G network using Ericsson's radio portfolio and virtualized 5G core products.

5G has been rolled out on 315 sites across Ireland, offering 35 percent population coverage with a further 500 sites set to be deployed in 2021.

Robert Finnegan, CEO of Three Ireland and Three UK said: “As Ireland’s largest mobile data network, carrying 68% of all mobile data, I am delighted that Three is now launching Ireland’s largest 5G network, which will be available to Three customers in every county from today. We started our 5G rollout with Ericsson last year, building our network to bring customers in both rural and urban areas the best possible experience of 5G from the very beginning, which includes providing superfast broadband to remote areas in Ireland. With our nationwide 5G footprint now in place and a variety of 5G enabled devices on the market, we believe now is the right time to launch. 

”

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