OIF begins co-packaging framework IA project

OIF has kicked off a Co-Packaging Framework Implementation Agreement (IA) umbrella project to study the application spaces and relevant technology considerations for co-packaging of communication interfaces with one or more ASICs. 

A primary objective of this specification is to identify new opportunities for interoperability standards for possible future work at the OIF or other standards organizations. Upon completion, the work will be summarized in a Framework IA.

“It is critical that the industry be aligned on the solutions needed to move co-packaged interoperability forward,” said Jeff Hutchins, Ranovus and OIF Physical and Link Layer (PLL) Working Group – Co-Packaging Vice Chair. “With its member-driven focus, OIF is the ideal forum to facilitate industry conversation and drive interoperability of co-packaging with ASICs.”

The scope of the Co-Packaging Framework project is to:

• Identify the key co-packaged applications and their requirements
• Study and identify key issues associated with co-packaged optics
• Identify opportunities and develop industry consensus to pursue interoperability standards
• Document the study in the Framework IA (a technical whitepaper)
• Launch follow-on standardization activities at the OIF or other appropriate standard bodies

http://www.oiforum.com

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AT&T picks Amdocs to power its 5G monetization

AT&T has selected Amdocs'cloud-native Openet 5G solution to monetize services over its 5G network. The 5G monetization solution is certified to run on AWS and Microsoft Azure. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Amdocs said its solution supports AT&T’s strategy to take full advantage of its 5G network by quickly launching new services to market such as gaming, mobile AR/VR, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications, remote health, etc.

“AT&T’s 5G network reached nationwide coverage earlier this year and we continue to be excited about creating new ways it will help make life easier, more efficient and more enjoyable for our customers,” said Eric Boyer, EVP, AT&T Consumer Technology Platforms. “As we looked to future-proof our network with an open, standards-based approach to new services and business models, we selected Amdocs for its 5G expertise and deep set of network, IT, cloud and DevOps capabilities to help us provide these new services at a global scale.”

“AT&T has always stood out for its rich history of innovation and driving revolutionary new capabilities for its customers,” said Anthony Goonetilleke, Group President of Media, Network and Technology at Amdocs. “We are delighted that AT&T will be leveraging our unique 5G monetization capabilities - including those from our recent acquisition of Openet, a world-leading provider of 5G network software – to accelerate its journey to the cloud and bring new 5G experiences to life for its customers. 5G is much more than just a faster network for services; it is also a pivotal moment for service providers to enable new business models for IoT and enterprise customers utilizing the rich capabilities of 5G. We look forward to helping accelerate this exciting 5G journey.”

http://www.amdocs.com

Amdocs to acquire Openet for Digital BSS

Sunday, July 26, 2020  Amdocs, Openet  

Amdocs agreed to acquire Openet, a provider of 5G charging, policy and cloud technologies, in a deal valued at US$180 million.

Openet is a privately-owned company headquartered in Ireland, with offices in the US, Malaysia and Brazil and a global customer base.


“We are delighted the innovative Openet team is joining Amdocs. They bring world-class cloud-native capabilities, network pedigree, and deep 5G charging, policy and data management expertise,” said Shuky Sheffer, President and Chief Executive Officer of Amdocs Management Limited. “The Openet solutions complement our portfolio and this acquisition is part of our mission to accelerate the industry’s move to the cloud.”

“We are excited to join Amdocs, with whom we have been alongside at customers for many years, and help bring fast value to service providers’ 5G plans. It is truly a momentous day for Openet and for all of our stakeholders,” said Niall Norton, Openet CEO. “Given the strong momentum of our business this is an optimal time to be joining Amdocs. The caliber, resources and reach of Amdocs will bring significant and widespread opportunities across each of our disciplines.”

“We have been on a 20-year journey in Openet to build a business of which we can all be proud,” said Joe Hogan, Openet founder and CTO. “In recent years, we have built new 5G products which are recognized worldwide for their innovation and modern open, cloud-native architecture. We all look forward to the combined technology strengths of Openet and Amdocs creating new opportunities for service providers at this exciting time of 5G adoption.”

https://www.openet.com/

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Amdocs to offer its Business Support Systems (BSS) on AWS

Amdocsreached a new multi-year, strategic agreement with Amazon Web Services to deliver integrated, cloud-native Business Support Systems (BSS) offerings for communications service providers (CSPs). 

Amdocs and AWS will offer CSPs access to a cloud-native, open and dynamic portfolio of digital services that gives them faster time to market and higher agility to meet the evolving needs of customers. As part of the deal, AWS will be Amdocs’ preferred cloud provider for Amdocs’ internal IT transformation to enable new operating models, reduced operating costs, and help transform their business in the cloud. This agreement expands on existing work between AWS and Amdocs to enable Amdocs’ BSS and service automation portfolio to run natively on AWS.

“AWS and Amdocs are laser focused on accelerating the journey to the cloud for CSP’s around the world. Leveraging our combined global scale, cloud capabilities and industry leading products, we have created a unique carrier-grade cloud portfolio that addresses the needs of every customer,” said Shuky Sheffer, President and Chief Executive Officer of Amdocs Management Limited. “As we see the increased adoption of 5G, IoT and edge technologies powering and monetizing both consumer and enterprise experiences, we are excited to collaborate with AWS to drive industry growth through innovation and business agility on the cloud.”

“Together, Amdocs and AWS are providing the world’s largest telecommunications providers with a full portfolio of cloud services to help them reduce costs, innovate faster, and deliver business-critical communication services with the utmost flexibility, reliability and scalability,” said Andy Jassy, Chief Executive Officer of Amazon Web Services, Inc. “By integrating AWS and Amdocs’ business operations and cloud-native solutions, CSPs now have the ability to create new revenue streams, speed up the introduction of new cloud-based services and enhance the customer experience through machine learning.”

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ADTRAN refreshes its line-up of Service Delivery Gateways

ADTRAN introduced a portfolio of Service Delivery Gateways (SDGs) featuring Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6.

The new line-up includes Ethernet, GPON and 10G XGS-PON residential gateways and Wi-Fi mesh access points (APs), all with a consistent elegant design.

ADTRAN said its SDGs are the first in the industry to leverage both EasyMesh, a standards-based approach to Wi-Fi networks that utilize multiple meshed APs, and OpenSync, an open-source interface that is a true differentiator due to its open approach and ability to accelerate deployment of services without reliance on customer premises equipment (CPE) silicon or integration partners.

The portfolio will integrate with ADTRAN's Mosaic One, which provides ISPs with a single pane view of their access and smart home network. Availability for these SDGs will begin Q4 2020, with additional solutions launching in 2021. 

http://www.adtran.com/sdg-series

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ADTRAN launches cloud-based network and service optimization

ADTRAN introduced Mosaic One, a cloud-based network and service optimization platform for simplifying the deployment of broadband services. 

Mosaic One collects, correlates and analyzes data from the broadband network gateway, the broadband access network and the in-home network to proactively address service issues and improve the subscriber experience. ADTRAN says its platform combines a rich set of data visualization, analysis and optimization tools with an open, multi-vendor architecture to streamline and simplify network operations. In addition to a centralized dashboard view of the network, Mosaic One provides advanced tools to assess bandwidth capacity, isolate pain points in the network and identify subscribers that would benefit the most from service upgrades. These capabilities improve customer experience while providing revenue-generating insights to the marketing organization.

“ADTRAN continues to enhance and expand our software capabilities so that we can help our customers build more automated and intelligent networks,” said Robert Conger, Senior Vice President of Technology and Strategy at ADTRAN. “Mosaic One will present new levels of efficiency across the network, as it unifies network and subscriber data that has always been disparate. It equips service providers with real-time information about the health of the network. Instead of working to understand why or where an issue occurred, they can refocus their attention on accelerating service revenue and customer growth.”

ADTRAN also notes that in this year alone, it has won 82 new Mosaic customers. Mosaic applications will continue to be offered as a software toolset or as a service. 

http://www.adtran.com/MosaicOne

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CXL Consortium releases 2.0 spec for CPU-to-device interconnect

The CXL Consortium, which was formed in 2019 to develop an open industry standard group for high-speed CPU interconnect, announced the release of the CXL 2.0 specification. 

CXL is an open industry-standard interconnect offering coherency and memory semantics using high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity between host processor and devices such as accelerators, memory buffers, and smart I/O devices. The CXL 2.0 specification adds support for switching for fan-out to connect to more devices; memory pooling for increased memory utilization efficiency and providing memory capacity on demand; and support for persistent memory – all while preserving industry investments by supporting full backwards compatibility with CXL 1.1 and 1.0.

Key Highlights of the CXL 2.0 Specification:

• Adds support for switching to enable device fan-out, memory scaling, expansion and the migration of resources.
• Includes memory pooling support to maximize memory utilization, limiting or eliminating the need to overprovision memory.
• Introduces standardized fabric manager specification for inventory and resource allocation to enable easier adoption and management of CXL-based switch and fabric solutions.
• Provides standardized management of the persistent memory interface and enables simultaneous operation alongside DDR, freeing up DDR for other uses.
• Introduces managed hot-plug support to take a CXL device online or offline from the system.
• Adds link-level Integrity and Data Encryption (CXL IDE) to provide confidentiality, integrity and replay protection for data transiting the CXL link.
• Supports a wide variety of industry interconnect form factors and standardized management interfaces to ease implementation.
• Includes Compliance and Interoperability specifications and in-system testing to enable a robust and interoperable multi-vendor ecosystem.

Compute Express Link (CXL) promises high-speed CPU interconnect

Tuesday, March 12, 2019    

Alibaba, Cisco, Dell EMC, Facebook, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Huawei, Intel and Microsoft have teamed up to form Compute Express Link (CXL), an open industry standard group for high-speed CPU interconnect.

CXL will maintain memory coherency between the CPU memory space and memory on attached devices, which allows resource sharing for higher performance, reduced software stack complexity, and lower overall system cost. The technology is built upon PCI Express (PCIe) infrastructure, leveraging the PCIe 5.0 physical and electrical interface to provide advanced protocol in three key areas:

• I/O Protocol 
• Memory Protocol, initially allowing a host to share memory with an accelerator
• Coherency Interface

The group has completed work on a CXL Specification 1.0 for interconnect between the CPU and platform enhancements and workload accelerators, such as GPUs, FPGAs and other purpose-built accelerator solutions.

https://www.computeexpresslink.org/

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Amdocs posts revenue of $1.053 billion, up 2.2% yoy

Amdocs reported revenue for its fourth fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2020 of $1,053 million, up 2.2% as reported and 1.8% in constant currency as compared to last year’s fourth fiscal quarter.  The company's GAAP net income for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020 was $134.5 million, or $1.01 per diluted share, compared to GAAP net income of $122.0 million, or $0.90 per diluted share, in the prior fiscal year’s fourth quarter.

“I am pleased to report a return to sequential revenue growth in our fourth fiscal quarter, primarily driven by healthy activity levels in North America and the ramp-up of new customer engagements in Europe, where we had our best-ever performance. At the operating level, we accelerated our R&D investments while maintaining consistent project execution and stable profitability. Amid the ongoing global pandemic, our sales momentum also accelerated, as reflected in our record 12-month backlog which grew $140 million sequentially and 3.7% year-over-year,” said Shuky Sheffer, president and chief executive officer of Amdocs Management Limited.

Sheffer continued, “Over the last few months, we have taken several steps to accelerate our growth strategy around 5G and the cloud. The post-merger integration of Openet is proceeding well and we are happy to report a new award at AT&T, which has selected Openet’s 5G solution to quickly launch and monetize exciting new 5G services on the cloud. Additionally, we have signed a new multi-year strategic agreement with AWS as part of which we will bring our cloud-native BSS offerings and wide range of services to jointly address the rapidly growing cloud market in the coming years. As part of another move to focus on our strategy, we have also signed an agreement for the divestiture of OpenMarket for approximately $300 million cash with Infobip, a company in which One Equity Partners is the primary institutional investor. With this transaction, Amdocs is divesting a non-strategic asset in the mobile messaging domain and remaining laser-focused on our core strategic growth initiatives.”

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